Maggie Morgan speaks with filmmaker Tahani Rached whose documentary on street girls, Al-Banat Dol, may soon be on public release El-Banat Dol (These Girls), premiered last May at the Cannes Film Festival ( see Samir Farid, "Survival strategies", Al-Ahram Weekly, 25-31 May, 2006 ), predictably raised the hackles of some Egyptian critics who suggested it sullied the reputation of Egypt. A girl riding a horse on crowded Game'et El-Dowal El-Arabiya Street in Mohandessin, another sitting on top of a car polishing her nails, a group of children washing an old box in order to put a newborn baby in it -- such are the images in Al-Banat Dol. Documentary filmmaker Tahani Rached -- who lived in Canada for 40 years -- explained her return to Egypt thus: "I came here because the dearest person in the world to me, my sister Eglal, lives here." Her latest film follows a similar logic -- that "time is how you spend your love". And Al-Banat Dol took time -- not budgets, locations, facilities and equipment -- to make. Tata, Mariam, Reda, Donya and Abeer -- wearing Ronaldino t-shirts and other matched and mismatched clothes -- speak to the camera in sequences that are neither contrived nor staged. These so-called "street children" have faces of their own and luminous smiles. The film shows the savoir vivre and joie de vivre that the girls must have in order to survive, though these qualities are rarely associated with "girls who live on the street". Individuality defies the invisibility of groupings and reminds us that seeing people in categories is as good as not seeing them at all. Some viewers found the visual content of the film questionable. Yousri Nasrallah, filmmaker and friend of Rached's, explains: "Tahani and I were guests on a live television programme when one woman called to ask whether I found it distasteful that girls were dancing so loosely on the street. I wish I had thought quickly enough to tell her that the street is these girls' home. When we see them they are either begging, or wiping the windows of cars. Otherwise, they are invisible to us. If we treat them as invisible, then it's natural that we are invisible to them as well. They dance in the street the same way that your girls would dance at home." Rached spent much time probing an unknown world. "Most people don't see these girls, they give them a pound and half a glance, and that's it. I was intrigued... I went to see these girls every day and I just hung out on the street. One girl, Tata, was my guide. She would walk beside me and carry my bag. I felt very safe and secure with her. I was ignorant and keen to learn, and they taught me. They could have easily chosen not to teach me. They could have dismissed the whole thing and taken it lightly. But they didn't do that and they took me in and taught me." There were no tricks in Rached's association with the girls. She was not there as a social worker. "The only pretext I had for being there was to make the film. I spent four months going there every day. And, the girls wanted the film. Tata said she wanted people to know about them. She accepted to be the heroine of the film. The responsibility was shared between us -- it was not me that was making a film, we were working on something together." "You can't hide what's in your heart, you could burst! You have to talk. You see, people are not all the same, if people were all equal, then we wouldn't have been on the street, my brother would not have been arrested." It is one of the more poignant lines in the film. The girl's words hint that because of all the things they have seen, lived through, and suffered, all the beauty they have taken in, the love they have lost, or not got, or suffered from, and the pain and the poverty they have known, they are brimming over with an excess of being. This excess needed to find shape somewhere. For these girls, that outlet was Al-Banat Dol. The word " dol " is best translated in English as "these", but there are many insinuations in this small Arabic word. It is a specifier and a pointer. When you distinguish and set apart, you say " dol ", "those". And when you emphasise you say " dol." The connotations of this small word and of the choice of title are many; suffice it to say that the film gave these girls their moment in the limelight. Rached proceeds to explain her complicity with the girls. "I first introduced a camera to take still shots and the girls liked the idea. I would take pictures and print them out. The girls would see them. Any picture Mariam and Tata did not like I would destroy. And it sort of became our game... Then when it was time for us to shoot the film they already trusted me... they knew that I would never betray their trust. Tata and Mariam saw the film before it was released. They viewed it as a kind of family video; they had no hesitations or reticence about what was shot. They just laughed at certain scenes, commented that they liked how they looked in other scenes and so on. "No two films have the same path. With Al-Banat Dol we filmed for six weeks with over 50 hours of material. The street is chaos and shooting on the street is chaotic. Even though Tata had agreed to cooperate on the film she was difficult to work with. We gave her a mobile phone three times so that we could contact her. She lost it or it was stolen or broken...I don't know. At one point I got really angry and I was going to stop the shooting. You see, she was depressed on some days, totally drugged on others, or missing Ragab, her boyfriend who was arrested. We went on the designated shooting days. Sometimes we found the girls, sometimes they came late. And some days they did not come at all and so we shot whatever we found. Other days we found nothing to shoot and had to pack our equipment and leave. "My favourite parts of the film are when they talk about love. They confidently make statements like 'I can love and be loved' and 'when I love someone, I really love them.' They are capable of real solidarity. I watch them with admiration because I think if I were in their place, maybe I would have been broken much sooner, much easier." Rached watches herself for even the faintest traces of judgment when dealing with the girls. "Shock comes when you don't love people. If you like them you just want to understand. The girls do not shock me, but I was shocked at what life does to these girls, I still feel shocked whenever I learn they are in pain or when they face stressful situations. Taking time to truly know and see people can only cause us to enter a dialogue with ourselves. There are many preconceptions and pre-judgments. Abeer, the girl who was pregnant, was sniffing ' kolla ' [glue] every day. One day, she had some problems and we thought she was going to have a miscarriage. I must confess that I thought to myself that it would be better for this child not to be born. But that was my bias. In fact, when she gave birth, the baby was very big and very healthy... What can I say? Our notions are just that -- ours. The only real issue with the baby is that he does not have a birth certificate or any official papers." Rached is almost completely absent from her film -- she does not appear in any of its shots and all but one of her questions are muted. Only once does she allow herself a voice. An adolescent boy is shown talking about the sexual experiences of the girls. He explains that men make deals to sleep with the same girl, who has to comply because she needs the money. Rached asks the boy: "Have you ever done that?" "Yes," he responds, "I can't lie." She then asks him assertively, "How and why did you do this?" The question is repeated twice. Watching Al-Banat Dol can be a life-changing experience, and the decision to make room for it to be seen in wider circles speaks of much more than appreciation of the arts. By italicising the lives of these girls to a shocked and astounded audience the film testifies that most of us are indeed people "with eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear". To screen such a film bespeaks a commitment and willingness to take people as they are, bearing in mind that "the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference and that the opposite of life is not death, but indifference". Al-Banat Dol will be screened at the Press Syndicate, Abdel-Khaleq Tharwat St, Cairo, on 17 July at 7pm.
