The celebrated scriptwriter Wahid Hamed tells Salonaz Sami about the characters in Alaa El-Aswani's immensely popular novel, The Yaqoubian Building Downtown Cairo is an endlessly evocative, multi-dimensional place -- the spiritual property as much of grassroots Egyptians as of foreign communities and expatriates. In literature and art the neighbourhood has assumed a range of guises from the historically significant to the culturally vibrant. But it is downtown Cairo as the site of innumerable, nationally oriented struggles -- the young and poor fighting to establish themselves against the odds; the ordinary working against oppression, exploitation and power abuse; the normal, in short, asserting itself in the face of the relentless forward march of the abnormal -- that forms the subject of Alaa El-Aswani's Imarat Ya'qoubian (The Yaqoubian Building), arguably the most popular novel to have appeared in Arabic in the last five years. A dentist by profession, El-Aswani writes in an uncomplicated way, drawing on both his direct observations of life and his often critical attitude towards social developments. Although film was very far from his mind when he thought of tracing the development of modern Egypt through a close reading of the lives of the residents of one typical downtown apartment building, the Yaqoubian Building of the title, this mixture of profound familiarity with the ins and outs of the social fabric of Egyptian life and lack of (literary) pretension was bound to make for viable film material. Different readers enjoyed different aspects of the book, which managed to transcend the literary milieu to which the majority of Arabic creative writing is confined. It has been translated into English and very widely sold and discussed. But not until Wahid Hamed laid hands on a copy was its dramatic potential spotted. "I first found out about the novel from a student of mine at the film institute," the seasoned scriptwriter- cum-producer recalls, "who said it was a great book and urged me to read it. I was on my way to France when this happened, but I thought I'd buy it anyway to leaf through on the plane. I started reading -- and instantly I fell in love." To Hamed the novel tackles a very important theme: "the discrepancy between the way people pretend to live their lives and the reality of how they live them". Almost immediately, after reading it, he decided to make it into a film, the shooting of which is now complete. With an estimate budget of LE20 million, and the unstinting support of such government agencies as the Ministry of Interior (who provided enough amn markazi forces to portray a demonstration convincingly), it is a large-scale project. Directed by Hamed's up-and-coming son Marwan (his directorial debut) and featuring young and veteran stars alike -- Adel Imam, Nour El-Sherif, Youssra and Hind Sabri, to mention but four -- it promises to be a major box- office hit. Many have taken issue with some of the topics touched on in the book. Homosexuality and the way it is presented, for example, solicited the wrath of prudes while driving others to accuse El-Aswani of chauvinism and homophobia. But Hamed's admiration is unrelenting. "This is no way to think about literature," he insists. "I would never impose an ideological standpoint on a story, whether social or political. I either like something or I don't. And in this case I really loved the book, so I'm not going to excise or change it -- because so many others who like it as much would be shocked and dismayed if I did so, if for no other reason..." The book is particularly rich in characterisation -- an art at which, so Hamed argues, El-Aswani excels; it presents a panorama of social types: the dispossessed, the Westernised, the uneducated. "There is corruption, urban isolation, many things besides homosexuality -- why would I want to alter the characters who embody these themes," Hamed goes on. "There are characters that I particularly like: Zaki Bey, the aristocratic, Western-educated womaniser; Buthaina, the poor young woman obliged to support her family, whose financial need eventually drives her into the arms of her boss; Hagg Azzam, the fabulously rich traditional patriarch whose wealth seduces him into acts of tyranny against the downtrodden, particularly his second wife, Souad..." Other characters -- Taha, for example, a bawwab 's son working his way up the social ladder, constantly pushed down by his father's profession -- did not appeal to Hamed as much: "I had the exact same character for a hero in the television drama Al-A'ila (The Family, 1993). That's why I was afraid of portraying him yet again. If you look at my work," Hamed elaborates, "you'll see that I try not to do the same thing twice, to work as many genres as I can, so it wasn't easy to write the character of Taha, because though a rich and stimulating character, and one of the most important to the movie as a whole, I wanted to present him in a different way, so as not to be repeating myself." Other characters were similarly hard to put on paper: Hamed mentions Hatem Rashed, a homosexual journalist and a member of the city's Westernised elite. "Aside from his profession, he has a personality that's unappealing in the context of Egyptian society," he explains. "I had to be extremely careful to avoid the audience hating him, especially since he is admirable in professional terms. But many Egyptians are hostile to homosexuals because of our culture and religion and I had to be very careful. After all," Hamed adds as an afterthought, "we can't deny that the likes of Hatem Rashed exist..." Homosexuality aside, the book reflects social and economic changes that have transformed the nation through the last 30 years -- the main reason "I haven't changed a thing". Hamed started, he says, "the way Alaa did, with a flashback; and we did our best to shoot in the original real-life locations of the book though it's hard because, as you know, downtown is always busy". This particular difficulty has resulted in numerous complications, some of which yield amusing anecdotes: "We thought the streets would be less crowded on Fridays so that's when we decided to shoot in Mamar Behlar, only to find out, after making all the necessary preparations, that the whole lane is closed off for Friday prayers..." By way of conclusion, Hamed insists that this is not just another comedy but a respectable film with a point. And perhaps its mixture of entertainment and historical depth will deliver something comparable to Al-Irhab wal-Kabab (Terrorism and Kebab), Hamed's phenomenally successful collaboration with Adel Imam and Youssra.
