One of this year's most-watched Ramadan television series, Al-Rayyan is marked out by a clever script, competent direction and generally lively performances, says Osama Kamal Dramatists love to pick a controversial public figure as the topic of their work, and the producers of Al-Rayyan, one of this year's most-successful Ramadan television series, are no exception to this rule. Right after Egyptian businessman Ahmad al-Rayyan was released from prison in August 2010, following 21 years behind bars, they approached him with a request to dramatise his life. He accepted. One of the country's top businessmen in the 1980s, al-Rayyan once handled nearly 5.2 billion EGP in investment funds, and nearly 200,000 people trusted him with their life savings. However, al-Rayyan's business empire, which had branched out into every sector of the Egyptian economy, came crashing down when the government passed a law in 1988 aiming to regulate fund-management companies. Claiming that al-Rayyan and others were actually running pyramid schemes, the government ordered all investment fund managers to pay back the money that had been deposited with them by clients. Within months, al-Rayyan was serving a long prison sentence. Al-Rayyan's first job, starting as a child, had been to paint automobile headlights and house windows blue, a government requirement during the 1967 War. Then he and a friend came up with the idea of making wooden key chains, which became quite popular in the 1970s. He started a retail business in poultry and then got into currency exchange, a business which soon reportedly earned him 50,000 EGP per day. In 1982, al-Rayyan started an investment concern that grew exponentially over time, though within seven years it had all ended. The high-rolling life, the multiple wives, the political connections all ended as a result of one government edict. Yet, while it lasted al-Rayyan's rise to fame had been meteoric, and not only was he for a time one of the 30 or so richest men in Egypt before his imprisonment, but his story was not just about business. Closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Rayyan cultivated an image of piety, complete with white robes and untrimmed beard. Posing as a rising star of Islamic finance, which does not charge interest and deals in profit-sharing, al-Rayyan managed to run a business that gave his clients dividends exceeding anything the banks could match. Ministers, artists, and businessmen began to take him very seriously, some befriending and others demonising him. Top religious preachers of the time, including Mohammad Motawalli al-Shaarawi and Abdel-Sabour Shahin, were also among his fans. In the first 13 episodes of the series about al-Rayyan's life so far aired on television, the show's two scriptwriters, Hazem al-Hadidi and Mahmoud al-Bizzawi, have depicted the economic and social situation in Egypt during al-Rayyan's early years. In a disclaimer issued with the show they have said that some of the details of the story are fictional and that they have added some characters and omitted others for artistic reasons. The writers seem to have taken a neutral stance regarding al-Rayyan's life, not taking sides about a character who remains controversial to this day. However, their handling of the story has drawn criticism from al-Rayyan and his daughter Maha, both of whom claim that al-Rayyan's character in the series comes across as being greedy and interested solely in financial gain. In some scenes in the series, al-Rayyan is shown as apparently having had close ties with the al-Gamaa al-Islamia. In others, he appears to be friendly with the State Security. Al-Rayyan and his daughter have recently threatened to take the producers of the show to court over their depiction of his character, though the writers say that their intention was not to offer an accurate account of al-Rayyan's life. The script portrays al-Rayyan as being a man obsessed with money, women and religion. He appears as an ambitious businessman driven by an insatiable urge to amass power and money. Married 13 times, the real al-Rayyan made a point of being seen as a model of piety, an image that helped him to get thousands of Egyptians to trust him with their life savings. His critics, on the other hand, always denounced him as a confidence man, someone who simply used religion in order to promote his business. The script for this series was the first that al-Hadidi and al-Bizzawi have worked on together, though both have had successful series in the past. Al-Hadidi wrote Harb Italia (Italy's War), for example, which appeared in 2005, as well as Arabi Taarifa (Arab Tarif) and Al-Zawahiri, which are currently in production. He also wrote Hala wa al-Mestakhabbi (Hala and the Unknown), which was shown on television two Ramadans ago. For his part, al-Bizzawi, who has acted in nearly 40 films, only started writing scripts in recent years, completing the script for Kalashnikov in 2008 and the television drama Al-Adham in 2009, together with the three-part drama Lahazat Harega (Critical Moments). The director of the al-Rayyan series, Sherine Adel, has also been making a name for herself in television drama, and she has already directed several successful shows, including Awlad al-Shaware (Street Children), Sara, Al-Amil 1001 (Agent 1001), and Al-Ar (Shame). Sherine and the show's leading man, Khaled Saleh, have also worked together on three Ramadan soaps: Sultan al-Gharam (Love Sultan) in 2007, Baad al-Foraq (After the Break) in 2008, and Tager al-Saadah (Merchant of Happiness) in 2009. The present show, entitled simply Al-Rayyan, may turn out to be the most successful of all Saleh's television dramas. The character he plays is multi-faceted, conflicted and intense, just the kind of role he craves. In his performance in the series, Saleh brings out the two main traits in the character he portrays: ambition and greed. In one scene, for example, we see al-Rayyan's character talking to his nephew after buying him a bicycle. When he gets into describing his dreams for the future, he ends up having an accident. The only scenes in which Saleh has been rather less convincing thus far are those depicting al-Rayyan's college years. Saleh, who is now 47, looked almost as old as his professors. Also in the show, Salah Abdallah gives a light-hearted and easygoing performance in his role as al-Rayyan's father, though Basem al-Samra, playing al-Rayyan's older brother, fails to summon up the energy and talent he usually brings to the small screen. In her role as al-Rayyan's dominant wife Badria, Riham Abdel-Ghafour gives a riveting performance, a far cry from the tame roles she has played in her career thus far. The Tunisian actress Dorra, playing the role of al-Rayyan's first wife, seems to be caught up in last year's mannerisms from the show Al-Ar, where she also played a loyal, but helpless, spouse. Other actors also seemed to be replaying their former roles. Haggag Abdel-Azim, who plays al-Rayyan's brother-in-law, gives a performance mirroring his first appearance in Layali al-Helmiya (Nights of Helmiya) in the early 1990s. Gamal Ismail as al-Rayyan's elderly relative gives a stock performance of a kind and caring uncle, a role in which we have often seen him before. In Ramadan soaps, many actors are typecast in roles they have played before simply because this is safer and easier for the producers. Yet, of all the series currently being aired on television, Al-Rayyan stands out for its clever script, competent direction and lively performances.
