Sister to the moon

By Safynaz Kazem
Soad Hosni's death last week shocked her millions of admirers throughout the Arab world. As details of her tragic end appear in the press and images of her lost beauty dominate the media, I find myself pondering the journey of this gifted artist, from the day she shot to stardom until her chilling death as a stranger under strange skies. That end was, if anything, made more tragic by the fact that for the whole of her life Hosni had battled with an often overwhelming sense of estrangement. It haunted her even at the peak of her fame, an ever present shadow to which, in the past few years, she seemed finally to succumb, voluntarily exiling herself to London, the city in which she died, away from friends and relations.
I first heard Soad Hosni's voice when she sang on the Baba Sharo children's radio programme in 1946. She was then a three-year old. I was only a few years older, yet until today I can recall her voice chanting "I am Soad, sister to the moon, my beauty recognised by all."
As children we would wait anxiously for this item on the programme which featured the Hosni troupe -- Nagat, the star of the troupe, her sister Samira, whose husband Ahmed Khairat wrote the lyrics and composed the music, her brother Ezzeddin, and the youngest sister Soad -- and always thought the song by Soad the jewel in the crown. And then she disappeared.
When I was living in the US between 1960 and 1966 I attended a screening organised by the Arab Students in America of an Egyptian film, Al-Safira Aziza (Aziza the Beautiful). And there was Soad Hosni, no longer the small child I used to hear on the radio but a remarkably pretty young woman. One line in that film, spoken by Soad, remained with me for a long time. I would often use it half-jokingly whenever I encountered a disappointing situation: "Woe be it to you Aziza, born under an unlucky star."
A personal introduction to Soad Hosni came in the year 1966 when the late writer and journalist Ahmed Bahaaeddin said that he was going to pass by the house of Soad Hosni to pick her up on our way to a party held at the house of the then Syrian ambassador to Cairo, Sami El-Drobi, where the guests of honour were the Rahbani brothers and Fairouz, the legendary Lebanese singer, visiting Cairo for the first time on the occasion of the screening of her film Biya' Al-Khawatim. Soad got into the car and immediately apologised because she was few minutes late. To ease any sense of awkwardness I began to say how happy I was to meet her and how, ever since the radio programme, I had thought of her as a younger sister. As we entered the party I was surprised to find her suddenly holding onto my hand saying. "Please don't leave me alone," she pleaded. I laughed in disbelief that such a star should experience so much shyness at meeting a few people. Yet as soon as we entered guests clustered around, asking Soad the truth behind rumours of her marriage to another celebrity. The expression on her face, I still remember, was a mixture of fear and annoyance. "Not true, not true," she repeated.
This timidity, even fear, though it surprised me at the time, is probably the key to understanding Soad Hosni, whose brilliance, incandescent beneath the limelight, before the cameras, would fade once the lights were turned off. It was not in real life, but only before the cameras that she could allow herself to act without inhibitions. Only when hiding behind the mask of another persona was she able to release her elemental energy, singing, dancing, weeping, playing the mischievous girl that endeared her to the hearts of millions.
In 1967 she asked for advice about what I thought might be suitable roles. She had been concerned for some time about the direction her career should take as she engineered the change from show girl to serious actress. I do not think I was of much help, muttering a few sentences about following her natural instincts in distinguishing between real art and the commercial abuse of her dancing and singing talents and looks. I told her then that I felt she was on the right track with roles such as Ihsan, which she played brilliantly in Al-Qahira Thalathin (Cairo 1930), directed by Salah Abu Seif.
This search for guidance was a constant feature of Soad Hosni's career. The first person to play such a role in her life was probably Abdel- Rahman El-Khamissi, who introduced her to cinema; the last was poet Salah Jahin, whose death in 1986 left her devastated. In between came the poet Salah Abdel-Sabour.
In 1969 Abdel-Sabour told me that he had been madly in love with Soad and that she had also fallen in love with him. He spoke very fondly of her, and of her thirst for education and culture. When I asked him why, if they had loved each other, they never got married, he told me that he had become frightened of playing an Arthur Miller role opposite Marilyn Monroe.
I met Soad Hosni again in the early 1970s. Because of the friendship between our husbands -- she was married to director Ali Badrakhan, I was married to poet Ahmed Fouad Negm -- we saw each other frequently. Never had she appeared happier than during her relationship with Badrakhan. She enjoyed a simple lifestyle, far from the hullabaloo that usually surrounds movie stars and celebrities. She seemed to be in her element, quiet and composed amid the writers, poets and militant students that formed Badrakhan's social circle. It was during this period that she performed two songs from the repertoire of the duo Imam/Negm. She frequented parties of political activists where she would sit on the floor and join in singing songs popular among the student movement of the 1970s. In my house she would enter the kitchen and insist on helping with the preparation of the food, serving it to guests with a genuine simplicity and generosity of spirit. The students among us were made to feel they were all professors and she the only student; the unknown were made to feel like stars while she was the simple girl looking on in fascination.
Her most famous film up till then -- probably the most famous film she made -- was Zouzou. I have never liked the film, which parodied the student movement of the 1970s, and remember telling Hosni so. She did not seem to mind. On the contrary, she showed such understanding of my views that I felt obliged to come up with something reassuring, and found myself telling her that the film was a mistake erased by the great role she had played in Al-Karnak.
In the mid-1970s our paths again diverged, though I continued to follow any news about Hosni with eagerness. The last story I heard from a first hand source, a story that shocked me deeply, was when Ahmed Bahaaeddin told me of how hurt she had been when, during some Egyptian TV celebrations, she had wanted to sing in one of the galas marking the occasion. Samia Sadeq, then head of Egyptian TV, did not want her to do so. Soad insisted, and got up on the stage. Soad was still singing, enjoying herself and the warmth with which she was received, when Sadeq ordered the curtains to be drawn.
In 1986 Jahin died, and Hosni gradually withdrew from life. She distanced herself more and more, pretending to be ill until she became really ill, succumbing to the depression that had always dogged her. She had always carried the seeds of this psychological malaise, and eventually it would drown her.
Last week, a broken woman suffering isolation and disease, she bid the world farewell. For me, though, she will always remain the young Soad, sister to the moon.
Recommend this page
See In the present tense
Before the public gaze
Blue-eyed boy 9 -15 November 2000
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor