It may have annoyed many, but Ramadan's most-talked about TV series attracted viewers in their millions. Tarek Atia examines the pulling power of Auntie Nour "It's funny!" If any show from the dozens of TV dramas on Arab screens this Ramadan had a catch phrase that caught on it was this, courtesy of the much talked about series Al-Amma Nour (Auntie Nour). After playing a particularly unpleasant prank on a family member or friend, Atwa, the troubled rich kid played by Ahmed El-Fishawi, always gives the same excuse. He did it because it's funny. It is a sense of humour apparently shared by millions of viewers who tuned in nightly during Ramadan to catch the latest antics of their favorite agony aunt, Auntie Nour. Veteran actress Nabila Ebeid played the role of the middle-aged Egyptian- American who returns to Sayeda Zeinab with rather more baggage than any one person can reasonably be expected to carry. Her every sentence is punctuated with an English phrase, most completely gratuitous. Her often overbearing performance grabbed headlines, the majority unkind, as Auntie Nour became the nation's favourite punch bag. "Auntie Sam" screamed a cover headline in the weekly magazine Rose El- Youssef which, like many others saw in Nour a blatant symbol of American hegemony, of the triumph of the US way of thinking over the Egyptian mindset. But anyone who labels the show as pro-American is being "schizophrenic", says scriptwriter Mahmoud Abu Zeid, who has "never even set eyes on the States". Consciously or subconsciously, he continues, "everything in people's lives stems from the US -- their computers and mobile phones for instance -- and yet they complain about it. What about people who live in Egypt and have never been to the US but insist on using an English word or two in every phrase? What about the young people in Ataba wearing t-shirts with American flags on them?" Nour, insists her creator, has returned to Egypt after living in the States with something to offer. "She is here to bring back values that we as Arabs once had for centuries." A typical post-iftar gathering in a Cairo suburb, and the conversation almost inevitably shifts to Al-Amma Nour. "The parts Nabila Ebeid has played during her career have hardly been role models," says Neveen Abdel-Gelil. "She usually plays belly-dancers or errant women. It doesn't make sense for her to be suddenly cast in the role of someone who is teaching us all important lessons." But everybody now knows how Auntie Nour helped her hopeless nephew, an unemployed, bango-smoking agricultural engineering graduate, set up a successful plant shop. And how she encouraged her brother's family to do up the roof of their Sayeda Zeinab building, turning wasted space into an attractive garden where the family nightly gathers. "We need more of that. The good thing is she actually gets people to do things," says Nagla El-Gazzar, an Egyptian- American financial analyst. The message propagated by Nour is, argues Soheir Mursi, an Egyptian- American professor, no more than "a sign of the times", revealing "a tendency to privatise social problems". Nour's solutions are, she points out, rooted in the kind of behaviour modification international development circles now dismiss because "it doesn't look at root causes." But the whole point of Auntie Nour, says Abu Zeid, is to tell people that they should stop "waiting for someone to solve their problems for them". "Maybe the government isn't doing all it can, but that doesn't mean young people should just sit around doing drugs or hanging out in coffeehouses." Which is exactly the kind of thinking that Mursi finds problematic in Nour. "Is the answer to all our problems selling house plants and making perfume? That hardly reflects the reality, that the government has weakened people's ability to be productive." Al-Amma Nour's cast claim that they were totally unprepared for the barrage of accusations that the show is too pro- American, or even -- as suggested in the press -- that it was funded by the US. "If this was funded by the US," joked Abu Zeid, "would it have such low production values? I mean, you'd think it would have a scene or two shot in America. Would it encourage people to pray, to follow the tenets of Islam?" Abu Zeid told the Weekly that he and Sawt Al-Qahira, the production company behind Nour, intended to file libel suits against any journalist claiming the show had US backing. "What if she had come back from Canada?" asks Ebeid, the show's star. "Would people still have made such a big deal of it?" Ebeid argues that a character like Nour -- "somebody who cares to speak up when she sees something wrong" -- is personality, not country, specific. "More power to her," says Egyptian- American El-Gazzar. "We need more of that. Everybody is upset about the state the country is in and we're not coming from the outside. We're part of society. Even if she is just talking about the problems it's okay -- it's better than ignoring them." Other Egyptian-Americans, according to longtime US resident Maha El- Shazly, have more prosaic concerns. She is upset about a scene early in the series, when Nour returns from the States and gives each of her male relatives an expensive gold watch. "Now, when we come back from the States and give our relatives nice but ordinary gifts, they're going to think we're cheap," laments El- Shazly.
