Susan Boyle haunts Nehad Selaiha at An Evening with Salwa Bakr staged by the English department at Cairo University In the 1980s, Salwa Bakr published a short story called Kul Haza Al-Sawt Al-Gamil Allazi Ya'ti Min Dakhiliha (Such a Beautiful Voice that Comes out from Within Her), in which Sayeda, an illiterate, lower-class housewife and mother in her forties discovers one day while taking a bath that her usual voice has miraculously changed into a "beautiful... bewitching, heavenly" one that gushes out "with strength and serenity ...like a voice from heaven." Feeling "like someone who had stumbled upon a wondrous treasure and did not know what to do with it," she finally comes to the conclusion that "a beautiful voice was meant for singing." That she is no longer young and pretty does not discourage her. "Age has nothing to do with singing," she muses: "Why shouldn't people enjoy the voice of a human being regardless of age and gender?" The rest of the story consists of Sayeda's desperate efforts to get people to listen to her and to hang on to her dream. Her Husband's response is firmly negative and dismissive; he reminds her that she is "over forty and a mother of four" and warns her that this "kind of nonsense" would make her the "laughing stock" not only of her children but also of every "sensible human being." And even if what she says is true, he concludes, there is nothing she can do about it; it's unthinkable that she can ever sing in public or become a professional singer. Both the grocer in whom she confides her secret and the psychiatrist she is persuaded to visit to cure her of this "psychological disease" share the husband's sentiments. As a kind of punishment for agreeing to be 'cured', for not resisting and hanging on to her treasure, Sayeda loses her newly found voice and recovers her old one -- a "weak and hoarse" voice, "totally devoid of any beauty, clarity or serenity." (All the quotations are from Such a Beautiful Voice, translated by Huda El-Sadda, GEBO, 1992.) Sayeda's final act of flushing the tranquillizers prescribed by the psychiatrist down the toilet was optimistically interpreted by El-Sadda (in her introduction) as a sign 'of rebellion against the strategies of oppression used by institutions of authority (the psychiatrist and the husband) which stigmatize any individual who threatens to question or dislocate the status quo with the label "mad".' This optimistic and reassuring reading of Sayeda's final act was also embraced and visually and verbally emphasized in a dramatization of the story by Egyptian-American playwright Yusef El-Guindi entitled Such a Beautiful Voice is Sayeda's. At its end, Sayeda not only gets rid of the pills but also hears her beautiful voice calling her name and telling her "I'm here....I'm here" while "the shadow of Sayeda 2 (her other, suppressed self) is thrown on the sheets" hanging on the laundry line, according to the stage directions. The story's original end, however, is controversial and lends itself to another, equally (if not more) plausible interpretation: one could argue that by submitting to the view that her beautiful voice was a 'disease' and agreeing to see a doctor to 'cure' her of it (an act of betrayal and blatant capitulation), Sayeda forfeits all rights to it and therefore loses it even before she takes any of the prescribed medication. 'Cured', she no longer needs the pills and, therefore, down the toilet they go. To my mind, such an interpretation is more credible, given Sayeda's situation and mentality, and far from giving the story a defeatist message, it sees it as a cautionary tale that carries a strong warning to women never to doubt themselves or surrender to persuasion or "the strategies of oppression used by institutions of authority," in the words of El-Sadda. Ironically, in staging this dramatization by El-Guindi as part of a triple bill entitled An Evening with Salwa Bakr and presented by the English Department Cultural Society at Cairo University on 29 April to mark the end of the academic year, director Dina Amin, who chose the stories for the Evening in consultation with Bakr and helped the students adapt two of them while providing herself El-Guindi's text, opted for a downright pessimistic interpretation. Prompted no doubt by the current prevalence of reactionary ideas among Egyptians and the increasing pressure put on women by conservatives and Islamic fundamentalists, she felt she had to change the end. Though she kept the spoken parts intact, in the performance we watched on 29 April at the Students Hostel's theatre, many of the stage directions were ignored and, more significantly, Sayeda's final act of flushing the pills down the toilet was cut out, together with the words of 'Sayeda 2' and her shadow on the sheets. The play ends on a note of utter defeat, with Sayeda meekly swallowing a pill that her husband hands to her with a glass of water and being patted on the shoulder like a child and comforted with an inane "I love you." Such a Beautiful Voice was simply and smoothly staged with no sets or props except a table and a few chairs and the acting was generally more than competent, alternately poignant and hilarious. While Dawlat Magdy as Sayeda and Nancy Awny as her doppelganger acted realistically, sensitively, making us often forget that they were speaking in English, the rest of the characters -- Fady Mohamed as the husband, Salma El-Naqqash as the grocer, Miriam El-Naggar as the doctor and Reem Hatem and Zainab Magdy as Sayeda's mother and sister -- injected into their performances a substantial dose of caricature and triggered a lot of hilarity by adopting the rhythms and intonations of Egyptian colloquial Arabic in delivering their English lines and accompanying them with fitting gestural patterns in an exaggerated form. And since the story centres on a beautiful voice, the performance would have been incomplete without Fatma Sabit who personified Sayeda's strong, clear and serene voice and treated us to some heavenly singing. But enjoyable and absorbing as this performance was, it would not have made such a strong impression on me had I seen it before 11 April when 48-year old Susan Boyle appeared as a contestant on the third series of Britain's Got Talent and sang "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables. Indeed, if I didn't know for sure that work on Such a Beautiful Voice started four months ago, I could have sworn that Amin chose this particular story of Bakr to contrast the fates of Sayeda and Boyle and corroborate the point made by both about age and looks having nothing to do with singing. Watching videos of Boyle's audition on the net and seeing how the audience and judges first sniggered and rolled up their eyes at her homely, unpolished appearance and the mention of her age and how a minute later they were swept off their feet by her voice, giving her a standing ovation at the end is an inspiring experience. Those videos and what I had read about Boyle's humble life and schooling, how she was diagnosed as having learning difficulties as a child and was mocked and nicknamed "Susie Simple" at school, how she had cared for her aging mother until she died in 2007 at the age of 91 kept running through my mind during the performance. I found myself thinking how wonderful it was that the fictional Sayeda was vindicated by the real Boyle and how Bakr's metaphor for women's potential for achievement, regardless of age, looks or circumstances, has come true in real life. But then, Boyle was lucky to have been born in Scotland where women are less oppressed and to have remained single, unsaddled by a husband and kids. If Dina Amin decides to present Such a Beautiful Voice once more, as I hope she would, I suggest that she ends it with the video of Boyle's staggering audition as an inspiration to all the Sayedas in the Arab world. The second play in this triple bill was Zeinat fi Ganazat Al-Ra'ees (Zeinat at the President's Funeral), adapted from Hoda El-Sadda's English translation of the story and cast in the form of a one- woman show by Zeinab Magdy who also performed it. The original story (about a poor, middle aged woman who lives on the streets in an improvised shack, corresponds with president Nasser whom she regards as her only support and sole protector, plans to improve her life and even get married when she is granted 3 pounds a month as social security and is shattered by the president's death but stoically decides to go on) is narrated in Bakr's unique and remarkable mixture of colloquial and classical Arabic which, as the translator of the story herself admits in her introduction, is impossible to reproduce in English. Unfortunately, the dramatization stuck closely to the translation, keeping its formal English untouched and simply replacing the third person with the first and delivering the narrative as a monologue. This created a glaring, disconcerting contradiction between the language and the character speaking it, which Zeinab Magdy tried to cover up by enunciating the English text with the inflections of vulgar colloquial speech and supporting it with a matching body language. Though the incongruities between the linguistic and performance styles were consistently comic, generating a lot of laughter, they played havoc with the character of Zeinat, robbing her of credibility and human warmth and reducing her to a silly caricature. That Magdy was too young and too inexperienced to take on a taxing and exacting form like monodrama did not help either. Though she made a brave effort, it felt all the time as if she was mimicking Zeinat rather than trying to portray her and bring her as a character to life. The third play in the evening, a adaptation of a story called Li'b Al-Waraq (A Game of Cards) by Amin and the cast, was done in Arabic and featured three 'weird' and hilariously funny sisters in search of husbands. The monologic narrative, which is given in the original text solely from the point of view of one of the sisters, was rewritten as a lively, hilarious dialogue bubbling with wit and self-mockery. The action is extremely simple and consists of the sisters' attempt to write a collective letter to an agony column in to air their frustration and suppressed desires and beg for husbands. Though they are keen to list their virtues and assets, they have no illusions about themselves and good-humoredly admit they have a blessed few. As the letter-writing proceeds, through funny squabbles and arguments, the sisters reveal a warm, affectionate nature and an innate human kindness. Their simple honesty and candour, their genuine affection towards each other and willingness to laugh at themselves while forgiving those who have hurt or disappointed them are quite disarming and deeply endear them to us. Though Dina Amin made her three actresses (Reem Hatem as Susu, Salma El-Naqqash as Fifi and Nancy Awny as Mimi) wear grotesque wigs and make up to demonstrate their supposed ugliness and even supplied one of them with thick pads for the bosom and derriere to exaggerate their size, the characters they represented were never lifeless caricatures. Rather, they were consistently loveable and never lost our sympathy even as we uproariously laughed at them. A Game of Cards was a joy to watch and a fitting end to a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Hopefully, the English department at Cairo university, its Cultural Society, dedicated, wonderful staff and lively, gifted students will continue to champion all the silent voices in the world and, with the expert help of director Dina Amin, keep on treating us to such memorable end-of-year student performances as their 'Evening with Salwa Bakr'. An Evening with Salwa Bakr , The English Department Cultural Society, directed by Dina Amin, Cairo University Theatre, Students Hostel, 29 April, 2009.
