Osama Kamal reviews Ramadan riddles is an established television personality, popular among viewers of his many talk shows because of the intensity he brings to the screen. With his uncanny capacity to encapsulate the public mood, Saad is one of the most popular television presenters this country has known. Having quit the written media for a television career, Saad started out at Dream, an Egyptian satellite channel, where he had a talk show to which he invited the country's top entertainers. What made his show different was that he turned celebrities back into ordinary people through his now trademark witty banter. Like a wizard, he maintains the ability to inform and astonish, to educate and enthral. His success on Dream led him to a stream of successful shows on Egyptian and regional television. Wherever you are, whenever a television remote control was at hand, a Saad show was never more than a few clicks away. He did not dwell in the land of the art celebrities for long. With a keen interest in the problems of the underprivileged, Saad began inviting government officials to grill them on what needed to be done. His style may have been abrasive at times, but the outcome was laudable. Often, his show received charitable donations from listeners. Often, he got things done. Recently Saad has done the unthinkable. He presented the Ramadan riddles. And he did it with style. His puzzles, written by the poet Mohamed Abdel-Qader, focussed on the men and women who affected the lives of Egyptians in 2009. Politicians and businessmen, sportsmen and entertainers, were all turned into rhymes for Ramadan entertainment. Abdel-Qader was born in 1948 in the Manakh neighbourhood of Port Said, not far from the shores of Lake Manzala. The sea was only a few steps from his home, and endless blue horizons brought mystery to his young life. The chants he heard from the sellers of discarded items who roamed the neighbourhood with pushcarts captured his imagination. Even as a three-year-old he would run out of the house and follow the merchants. He was once lost for two days as a result, and was given a thorough thrashing when his family finally found him. A few months later he did it again. The merchants he followed round town doubled as artists, singers and songwriters of that very Port Said type of singing known as semsemiya. The semsemiya is a harp-like instrument, and its singers usually improvise their songs on site -- often accompanying them with a Greek-style dance. Abdel-Qader has published two collections of poems: Tarh Al-Bahr (Cast Ashore) and Weshoush (Faces). The first earned him praise for its portrayal of Port Said and its unique character. The second won him a state award in 2004. He wrote the songs for two feature films, Al-Tofan (The Deluge) and Sekket Safar (Travelled Path). He also contributed lyrics to the television show Welad Al-Ard (Sons of Earth), and he also wrote the song Ya Talea Al-Shagara (O Tree Climber) for Ali El-Haggar, a song that took years to overcome the disapproval of the official censors. For several years Abdel-Qader has been writing rhymed riddled for the radio and Egypt's Channel 4. His puzzles often draw on nautical themes, the Suez Canal, and seafood too. Both Abdel-Qader and Saad came from working class neighbourhoods: Manakh in Abdel-Qader's case and Cairo's Sayeda Zeinab in Saad's. The two met for the first time in the 1980s, long before became a household name. The Ramadan riddles written by Abdel-Qader started out with a four-line poem, otherwise known as a quatrain. This was followed by a chat with the guest, the main puzzle, and then input from the audience. Saad took a big chance with the riddles. This is because the Ramadan puzzles are a part of Egyptian history. They started out on radio decades ago, and as of the 1970s became big on television with big names designing the shows. Many of us still remember the excitement and glamour Nelli brought to the screen, and the fun that Samir Ghanim invoked, and, of course, the lovely Sherihan. The talented Fahmi Abdel-Hamid was the first director to pack the show with special effects and animation, and all subsequent shows followed the same pattern. It had to be rhymed, a tradition that goes back a generation or two, and the best poets in the country, such as Salah Jaheen and Abdel-Salam Amin, wrote for the show. The dances were impeccable, with choreography by the best in the business -- including Hassan Afifi. Things changed when took over. His puzzles did not dazzle, but they made people think. Saad and Abdel-Qader gave the public a chance to think of the men and women who affected their lives. Among the names they chose were Barack Obama, Hisham Talaat Mustafa, Mortada Mansour, Hassan Shehata, Adel Imam, Suzanne Tamim, Mamdouh Ismail and El-Mohammedi Qonssowa. There may be little in common among the chosen men, but all have been significant to the public in some way or another in 2009. Here is just a taste of how it went. The riddle about Adel Imam starts with the lines: My friend, love from the thousands Is a gift from God, Not a pat on the back or a stab Or a nuclear bang. The stanza was deliberately ambiguous. Its aim was to hint at the personage in question, to get the ball rolling so to speak. Then the real fun began. Each riddle gave the audience a choice of four public figures among which to select. In the Adel Imam puzzle, the other three were Amr Moussa, Amr Diab and Mohamed El-Baradei. The lines of the stanza were ambiguous enough to apply to any of those four people. From then on it became a game of elimination as Saad dropped more clues to the audience. The Adel Imam puzzle contains another rhymed clue: The diplomatic stint Or the popularity Or is it man, you think That matters most? Frankly, it's all there People love you Their hearts unchanged And for high position you don't care. It could be Amr Moussa, of course, but this is exactly what made it brilliant. The audience loved it. It was a risk, and one that in retrospect was worth taking.
