Look back in anger? Never in Ramadan, writes Nehad Selaiha Why must Ramadan always be marked by a sharp rise in the consumption of folklore and other products of the cultural heritage side by side with nuts, sweets and syrups? The connection seemed puzzling until it was pointed out to me that most of the festive aspects which characterise this month in Egypt and lend it its distinctive warm glow and convivial atmosphere date back to the rule of the Fatimids in Egypt, in the 10th and 11th centuries. As newcomers, and followers of the Isma'ili branch of the Shi'a sect they were anxious to make themselves popular with their new subjects who were predominantly Sunni and had long acknowledged the political and religious authority of the Sunni Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. The policy of "bread and the circus" was astutely adopted and, as usual, proved the shortest cut to the hearts of the masses. Fatimid rulers assiduously cultivated it with public banquets, pageants and holidays on every possible occasion, often creating new occasions for more feasting and merriment. Egyptians were quick to respond; the new policy suited their expansive, gregarious, fun-loving temperament and though they never converted to Shi'ism, they embraced and revelled in its relative tolerance of colourful ritual, representation and the mimetic arts. It is to the Fatimids that we owe the celebrations which mark the birth of the Prophet, including the ornate candy dolls and knights, the sesame and peanut sweets and the religious chanting and dancing, as well as many other religious holidays and traditional festivities. The Fatimids' adoration of their ancestors, the family of the Prophet Mohamed, particularly his daughter, Fatma Al-Zahra' (the resplendent), after whom (rather than her husband, Ali, the cousin of the Prophet) they named their dynasty, as well as Al- Azhar mosque built in their new capital, Cairo, was another source of attraction. The Egyptian collective memory had a long tradition of female goddesses and sacred figures, dating back from Pharaonic times, and the adoration of Fatma soon spread to other female members of the Prophet's family, such as Sayeda Aisha (his wife) and Sayeda Zeinab and Sayeda Nafisa (his direct descendants) -- all of whom have shrines and mosques in Cairo. It is almost irresistible not to think of this new cult as a continuation of the older cults of the goddess Isis and the Virgin Mary before Egypt's official conversion to Islam. Even today, in the age of science and technology, you find people, mostly women, visiting these shrines whenever they need help or someone to put in a good word for them with God. More often than not the Virgin joins these saintly Muslim females in their supplications. An old nursery rhyme, which probably dates back to the Fatimid period and still survives in some villages where children sing it on cloudy days, testifies to the connection in the popular mind between religion and the pleasures of the senses -- a connection actively fostered by the Fatimids. It goes: "Come out sun, come out,/ Like Mohamed and Ali,/ And Fatma, the daughter of the Prophet,/ Her hair is long, very long,/ I wound it round my horse,/ And my horse is in town,/ Lapping up treacle and tahina." Kunafa, Qatayef and other sweets may have replaced the more traditional treacle and tahina in Ramadan but we in Egypt, Muslims and Christians alike, still heed the lesson of the rhyme and combine religious observation with all kinds of legitimate pleasures. That these pleasures, in the realms of food or entertainment, invariably hark back to the past is, perhaps, a hangover from the Fatimids who sanctioned and blessed this combination and made a virtue of remembering and celebrating one's ancestors. And so, every Ramadan, the city is dressed up in coloured bulbs, kids are given their lanterns and sing their traditional Ramadan songs, and the folk heritage, oral and written, is dredged for heroes and exciting tales and we are surfeited with folk music, singing and dancing, religious and otherwise. This Ramadan was no exception. After the usual first 10 days of no live performances, a pause tacitly agreed upon by theatre makers to allow the public to sample (and hopefully get tired of) the rich, seasonal TV fare, religious singing and dancing were in plentiful supply at youth centres and cultural palaces everywhere and Mahmoud El-Dawi could be seen every night in the garden of El-Tali'a theatre, performing the tannoura dance and whirling like mad to the accompaniment of a traditional folk-music band. At the Nile floating theatre in Giza, Ahmed Ismail built his Ahl Al-Amana (Honest People) round a familiar Ramadan figure, using Fouad Hadad's famous poetry volume Al-Misahharati, punctuating the poems with traditional religious chanting. On the Nile too, a little further down, at the Balloon Theatre, you could watch a musical on the life of Rabi'a Al-'Adawwiyah (713/14-801), the mystic from Basra, who first formulated the ideal of pure divine love, without hope of paradise or fear of hell, and enjoy the pristine voice and limpid singing of Riham Abdel-Hakim as the young Rabi'a and stare your fill at Afaf Shu'eeb, in her first stage role after taking the veil some years ago, as she plays the older one; and, at several venues up and down the country the grand heroes of the popular oral epic, Al-Sira Al-Hilaliya, could be also encountered. Al- Warsha company performed parts of it in different places in Cairo and travelled with it to Minya and Alexandria; in Beit El-Harawi selections from its many books were recited by Abdel-Rahman El- Abnoudi, the poet who collected it from the few surviving Sira-singers and put it down in print, together with the greatest of folk bards and story-tellers, Sayed El-Dawi, on the rababa; and at El-Tali'a theatre a new production of a play inspired by its "Book of Orphans" was in full swing. As a narrative which chronicles the quasi- mythical birth of Abu Zeid, the hero of the tribe of Bani Helal, his estrangement from and eventual reunion with his father, and the forced migration of the tribe from Najd, in the Arabian Peninsula, to North Africa, driven by drought and famine, and their conquest of the mighty kingdom of El-Zanati Khalifa in Tunis, led by Abu Zeid and his cousin Diab, together with all the lethal passions, rivalries and internecine feuds which erupt on the way, has vast dramatic possibilities and has inspired several modern works. The best known are Aziza and Younis, an operetta by Bayram El-Tunsi, some old movies, a political play by Yusri El-Guindi, Al- Hilaleya, in 1978, followed by two television series shown during Ramadan in recent years, a play by Abdel-Ghani Dawoud, Al-Gazia, in 1999, and of course Al-Warsha's unforgettable dramatisation of the early books in Spinning Lives. A new production of Al-Gazia was El-Tali'a's contribution to this Ramadan's folklore feast. Instead of concentrating on the male heroes of the epic Dawoud's text foregrounds two Hilaleya heroines from different generations: Al-Gazia, on whose wisdom and sagacity the whole tribe depends and who is therefore asked to leave her husband and two children and accompany the defeated Abu Zeid back to Tunis in order to accomplish with her intelligence what his military prowess failed to achieve, and Reed, who becomes a prisoner of her uncle, the treacherous Diab, who kills her father and usurps the throne of conquered Tunis. Both are shrewd, resourceful and have plenty of courage and determination to begin with; but as the play unfolds in short scenes, quickly spanning scores of years, all feminist expectations are shattered, and by the end of the play they are reduced to grotesque, monstrous creatures, like the old Greek furies, howling for revenge and wading in blood, with not so much as a single drop of the milk of human kindness to share between them. Using the Sira didactically to warn against the dangers of inter-Arab feuds and conflicts and impress the need for unity in the face of the Zionist enemy, Dawoud sacrificed the Hilaliya women in his play to his political message, laying the blame for the continued internal strife and vendettas squarely and arbitrarily on their shoulders, with no attempt at reflection or explanation. The males, on the other hand, are either exonerated or have their motives elucidated, and if they are harshly criticised it is for listening to the women. Curiously, the irritating gender-prejudice of the text is hardly noticeable in El-Tali'a production. For this we have to thank director Musa El-Nahrawi's lighthearted treatment and adoption of open theatricality and burlesque and Intisar Abdel-Fattah's musical conception which introduced into the performance the famous Sira-singer Aref El-Qinawi with his powerful, captivating presence and infectious energy. As he sang the relevant parts of the original Sira, with the audience joining in or keeping time by clapping, and the young, lively actors farcically parodied the violent passions and bloody deeds of the old heroes and heroines, treating us to some delightful stick and belly dancing every now and then, I felt that distinctive, heart-warming glow of a typical Egyptian Ramadan suffusing the whole auditorium; the faults of the text seemed to melt away and its starkly didactic (and pathetically redundant since we all preach it day and night) message was softened, humanised and expanded by the general mirth, becoming a plea for life and celebration and against death and devastation.
