Ramadan serials have long history of preaching at the audience and this year is no exception, writes Hani Mustafa One of the hallmarks of Egyptian television serials is the tendency to marry drama, or more often melodrama, with a good dose of guidance on moral and ethical issues. Over the past three decades, there have been many serials that pit what are posited as traditional values, as an authentically Egyptian, essentially rural moral code, against the corruption of urban mores. Abna'i Al-A'izza', Shukran (Dear Children, Thank You), directed by Mohamed Fadel in the late 1970s with the late actor Abdel-Moneim Madbouli in the lead role, is the model for all subsequent endeavours along these lines. Later known as Baba Abdou, after Madbouli's character, the serial centred on the compromising moral choices made by Abdou's children at a time when Sadat's open door policy was beginning to shake Egyptian society at its roots. Throughout the 1980s, these moral tales were a staple of Ramadan TV. Think of Rihlat El-Sayyid Abul-Ela El-Bishri (The Journey of Mr Abul-Ela El-Bishri). Also directed by Fadel, it starred Mahmoud Mursi as the irrigation engineer who lives in the countryside, isolated from the afflicting the city, surrounded by old books and music. The serial opened with his decision to travel to Cairo in a Quixotic attempt to aid his relatives evade the moral degradation they faced. Yehia El-Fakharani, who once appeared in the role of one of Baba Abdou's children, this year takes the title role in Sekket El-Hilali (El-Hilali's Path), directed by Fadel and scripted by Youssef Maati. It is yet another Quixotic morality tale. The main character, Mustafa El-Hilali, is a professor of Arabic literature who specialises in poetry and also presents a television programme, Al-Tariq Al-Wahid (The Only Path). El-Hilali is a kind of hero-preacher, holding forth in his lectures on classical Arabic poetry and poets. He is always seen with prayer beads in his hand to reinforce his piety, and in his TV programme we see him offering moral guidance to a group of young men, and beyond them the audience. The names of the characters are loaded. To start with the hero's surname El-Hilali immediately suggests associations with the epic Al-Sira Al-Hilaliya, underlining the "authenticity" of his character. Then there are names with religious overtones such as Al-Fadila (Virtue), the political party to which El-Hilali belongs and of which he will be nominated head. When El-Hilali's TV progamme "The Only Path" is resumed, it is aired on a channel called Al-Iltizam (Commitment). This genre of TV drama relies on one character being the focus of the plot from which subplots diverge, like the branches of a river, only to flow back into the main course, feeding it like tributaries. The central storyline concerns El-Hilali's running for a parliamentary seat in the constituency of Kafr Asala (which translates as the Hamlet of Authenticity), the place from which his family hails. He faces a powerful candidate from the Wuhda (Unity) party, Attiya El-Sa'ati, a man who enjoys government backing. El-Sa'ati is seen in some scenes taking credit for services to the constituency performed by El-Hilali, in others receiving advice about ways to buy votes. The storyline is obviously intended to capitalise on the interest displayed in last year's parliamentary elections and which the scriptwriter and director clearly hope remains fresh in the minds of the audience. A second storyline follows El-Hilali's relationship with a belly dancer (played by Aida Riyad) whom he persuades to retire from the stage. Subsequently, we learn that as a young man El-Hilali slept with this woman for a single night, the result being an illegitimate child, Nancy (played by Menna Shalabi), now a young woman and a student in the Faculty of Commerce. A second surprise comes when an acquaintance from Kafr Asala, Radwan (played by Ahmed Rateb), tells El-Hilali that his father long ago sought the help of Radwan's father, who was employed by the Ministry of Education, in rigging the results of El-Hilali's own thanawiya aama (school-leaving certificate), so that he would appear to have passed in two subjects he had actually failed. The original certificate is now in Radwan's hands and it becomes central to several episodes of the drama. When Radwan sells it to El-Sa'ati it leads to a series of catastrophes for El-Hilali who is dismissed from his university post and dropped as an election candidate. After this crescendo, half-way through the serial, the scriptwriter and director go on to further embellish the confrontation between El-Hilali and El-Sa'ati, with the former representing virtue and the latter vice. A third storyline concerns El-Hilali's relationship with the businessmen who back him (played by Ahmed Khalil, Khalil Mursi and Adel Amin). When El-Hilali's programme on a local TV channel is axed following concerns that it could become a tool of his campaign the businessmen see that it is reinstated on another channel, Al-Iltizam, though their decision is weighed by their conclusion that the programme offers the best way to advertise a brand of detergent which they have interests in selling. More significant is that El-Hilali demands a fee of LE5 million for 100 installments of his programme, a sum to be paid by installing lighting and paving the road from Kafr Asala to the nearest big town. That the businessmen should go along with the scheme is perhaps an attempt to redraw the image of a group who, two decades ago, were a symbol of opportunism and irresponsible materialism. In the latest installments of the serial it is Nancy and her boyfriend Khaled (played by Khaled Sarhan) who have occupied much of the limelight, portrayed as a reckless couple who offer great scope for El-Hilali to exercise his penchant for moral guidance. As El-Hilali tries to draw close to his illegitimate daughter in order to encourage her to change her ways, without divulging that he is her father, the couple suspect that he is in love with her and play pranks on him. When El-Hilali tries to talk Khaled into marrying Nancy, who is becoming very attached to him, and the young man refuses on the grounds that he could never marry the daughter of a belly dancer, the subplot veers off into the well- worn terrain of melodrama. As a result Nancy collapses, separating from the crowd with which she had become involved, only to then announce to her father that she is a drug addict. Suddenly the serial's insistence on guidance, and on melodrama, is being laid on with a trowel, distracting from the far more interesting dialogue between Nancy and her mother. The girl admits to having made mistakes, to having done things that were bad or dishonourable, leaving her mother to worry that she may no longer be a virgin. But, asks Nancy, does honour consist only of virginity? Are not other things, such as lying and deceit, dishonourable? Thus far the serial has steered a reasonable path between the two poles of preachiness and melodrama. And as all the narrative strands begin to be tied together it has increasingly come to question just how history is evaluated, and how personal histories feed into the greater whole. For El-Hilali the past may be the repository in which he searches for abiding moral values but in doing so he must square the search with his own far from unsullied past.
