Mohamed El-Assyouti drags himself from the television and out into the night Soap operas and advertisements may be a perennial feature of life but in Ramadan they appear at times in danger of becoming all- encompassing. Ramadan soaps, shrouded in secrecy before their release, suddenly become the topic of conversation, particularly during the first days of the Holy Month. And the names on everyone's lips this year? Well, there's Hanan Turk, Ahmed Rizq and El-Sayed Radi in Sarah, a soap opera about a girl who has been in a coma for 10 years, and whose doctor insists on talking to her -- a superficial rehash of Pedro Almódovar's Hable con ella (Talk to Her, 2002). Then there is Youssra, in Ahlam 'Adiya (Ordinary Dreams), for once playing an "evil" character. Screenwriter Mohamed Ashraf and director Magdi Abou Emira go to great lengths to explain just why she has gone to the bad and the reasons are suitably melodramatic: her father is in prison, her husband is a thief -- or, rather, was a thief before he is killed in front of his wife, together with their child. Such tragic twists will be familiar to anyone who has followed the career of veteran actress Nadia El-Guindi -- just think of the finale of her 1980 hit Al-Batniya. It may well be no coincidence that the Youssra character is called Nadia. And then there's belly-dancer Fifi Abdou, playing yet another iron lady. The soap operas are interspersed with light programmes -- talk shows and the inevitable candid camera spin-offs produced by advertising agencies and used as vehicles for advertising clips -- which are themselves punctuated every ten minutes or so by commercial breaks. Three actors drink Pepsi. Users of mobile phones sprout antennae. If anything, it's a harder sell than usual throughout the Holy Month. But what happens if you drag yourself away from the TV screen and venture into the outside world? Does another face of Ramadan show itself? On Wednesday, the second of Ramadan, I dutifully attended the opening of advertisement tycoon Tarek Nour's Ramadan tent. Nour's agency used to be called Americana: his tent Ramadana. For years it was erected in the grounds of the Opera House, though now it has relocated to Al-Azhar Park, where on Wednesday Ramadan was clearly in the air. Eastern Asian Azharites, boys seated in the front row, veiled girls behind, chanted religious songs as visitors headed for the Ramadana, concluding with Asma'u Allahu Al-Husna (the 99 names of God). From a distance the lights of the tent were clearly visible. To get there you follow an uphill path, passing between two lines of flags emblazoned with the names and logos of the sponsors. At the entrance well-dressed young men peruse your invitation. Beyond the entrance shiny new cars -- a little bit of product placement, this -- compete for your attention. They are up against the billboards -- it's those three actors with the unquenchable thirst for Pepsi again, and yes, there they are, the mobile network subscribers sprouting antenna. Pepsi, American Furniture, Raya communications, internet service providers, they're everywhere, on the cushions behind your back, on the little cloth bags full of nuts, the complimentary soft drink cans, the flyers offering discounts, the napkins... On stage a singer with a Cleopatra hairstyle sings, her performance punctuated by announcements that someone else will be singing "for the first time in Egypt" next weekend. Later the band Wist Al-Balad arrives. They chant a religious song accompanied by Gipsy King-style guitars for starters. Then they go on to sing their Arabic lyrics to Reggae and Spanish music. Some of the tables are occupied by yet more singers on display to fans who prowl around in search of autographs or photographs taken furtively with cell phones. Young women go from table to table extolling the virtues of a mobile phone with a powerful Zeiss lens that produces excellent, digital quality photographs and is a snip at LE6,000. Everyone, it seems, is someone. Ramadana is a veritable hive of minor celebrity. But not, says one friend helpfully, that it can compare to Al-Suhbagiyya tent next door. That had opened with a performance by Lebanese singer Nawal Al-Zoghbi just one night before. The young men and women, having exerted their sartorial best, mill around the entrance of Ramadana joined in common purpose -- to see and be seen, to eat and perhaps be eaten, to meet the stars or become a star. Whatever austerity remains of the day's fast is quickly drowned in the extravagance and razzmatazz of breakfasting. On the way home, passing Al-Sayeda Aisha square, Al-Rifai and Sultan Hassan mosques and on down Mohamed Ali Street at least two missaharatis bang their palm-sized drums to announce that it is time for suhur. They go about their centuries-old trade though the inhabitants of these somewhat more authentic Egyptian neighbourhoods are not only fully awake but, with the hustle and bustle of their nocturnal affairs, drown any sounds the misaharatis make. Sunday 9 October, 6 Ramadan, saw me headed for Beit Al-Sehemi, to attend the opening night of the Sira al-Hilaliya oral epic recitation -- a cultural staple of Ramadan -- which will continue until 18 October. Every night vernacular poet Abdel-Rahman El-Abnoudi, who has transcribed the epic and published it in book form, presents, and provides occasional commentary on, the recitation of the sira. The epic is recited by Sayyed El-Daoui, the last survivor of a long line of oral story-tellers who knew the sira by rote. The Sehemi house -- located in Harit Al-Darb Al-Asfar, some 10 minutes on foot from the Hussein mosque, in the heart of Fatimid Cairo -- is a most appropriate context for a saga that involves the wars and conquests of the tribe of Beni Hilal in the fifth century of the Hijra. The tribe had travelled from the Arabian Peninsula all the way to Tunisia to establish their dominion. As for the Fatimids, who built Cairo and ruled Egypt, they also originated in the Arabian Peninsula, being descendants of the Prophet Mohamed through his daughter Fatima, although it was in Tunisia that they established their kingdom. El-Abnoudi arrives first in a Western-style casual blue suit, then El-Daoui and his band, all in traditional Upper Egyptian galabiyas and turbans, turn up, an hour before the show is due to start, and sit outside the house. The long wait provides El-Abnoudi with ample occasion to display his wit, and many an opportunity for impromptu repartee. A street vendor in galabiya tries to sell any of the company four pieces of cloth, at any price. The vendor first says he's willing to sell for "only" LE150; minutes later, he is asking for "only" LE100; finally he lowers the price to LE50. He wants to go home, he replies to El-Abnoudi, who has said LE20 is all he is willing to offer. "What kind of material is this anyway?" asks the poet. "Balama", answers the vendor. "Where I come from this means 'dumb,'" retorts El-Abnoudi. "I apologise for the 'retrograde' notions," comments El-Abnoudi when the singer Mubarak, who opens the show with some light non- sira songs, uses stock phrases that carry sexist connotations. But then the havoc that women, especially femme fatales like Gaziya, the sister of Abu Zeid the hero of the epic, can wreak is the subject of both the prologue and the few lines of the sira that El-Daoui sings. Tens of virgins, in the company of Gaziya, descended over Tunis when the tribe of Beni Hilal first arrived to fan the flames of war with Zanati Khalifa's tribe, which ruled over the country. In another politically correct interjection, El-Abnoudi interrupts -- when El-Daoui asks the audience to praise Prophet Mohamed -- with "And what are the Christians here to do?" To this El-Daoui promptly replies, in song, that those who follow Jesus should praise "God the Most Beneficent." On this, the first night of the serialised sira recitation, tedious introductions that lasted for a whole hour preceded the show, with only 30 minutes devoted to the epic itself. Then again, the lively interaction between the veteran poet and the singer almost made for two simultaneous, and equally exciting, accounts of the sira.
