Nehad Selaiha watches a new stage adaptation of two books by Tawfiq El-Hakim floundering at Al-Salam Theatre In 1965, at the height of Nasser's 'socialist' era, and only two years before the crushing defeat of the Egyptian army in Sinai totally destroyed the credibility of the 'Nasserite national project', reducing the nation's morale to well below degree zero, the Modern Theatre Company staged a successful dramatisation of Tawfiq El-Hakim's quasi- autobiographical novel, 'Awdat Al-Ruh (Return of the Spirit), adapted by Khayri Shalabi and directed by Galal El-Sharqawi. It is possible that the production was prompted by a desire to counteract the negative effects of the failure of the union with Syria and the disastrous, and quite costly, war in Yemen. Nasser had always professed a great fondness for this masterpiece, describing it as one of the seminal, formative influences on the thought of his generation. When he presented a copy of his own book Falsafat Al-Thawra (The Philosophy of the Revolution) to El-Hakim on 28 May, 1954, he wrote on the front page: "To Mr. Tawfiq El-Hakim who has resurrected literature, asking him for another Return of the Spirit after the revolution." What Nasser probably wanted was a novel glorifying his coup d'etat as the fulfillment of the dream and prophecy the novel contained. The two parts of ' Awdat Al-Ruh were prefaced by two captions lifted from the ancient Egyptian text called Going Out into the Light of Day and generally known as The Book of the Dead. In both, the god Osiris is called upon to rise from the underworld in a new form to lead the nation, revive its past glories and merge all its people into one spiritual entity and one will. Think how this must have fired the imagination and ambitions of the young and passionate Nasser. "All in One", the novel's ardent cry and proverbial slogan, became Nasser's guiding light and noble justification for his autocratic rule and police state. Quite an irony, isn't it? But how could the young, romantic writer who finished his novel in Gambetta, Paris, in 1927, as he dates the work, know then where his fervent nationalism would lead? Though flattered by Nasser's admiration, El-Hakim did not gratify his wish at once. His response to Nasser's request came 6 years later and was quite different from anything the leader might have expected. During those years, a lot had happened to dampen El-Hakim's earlier enthusiasm for the new regime and force him to revise his past ideas. Al-Sultan Al-Ha'er (The Sultan's Dilemma), a play published in 1960, offered a different prescription for the 'return' of the nation's spirit. Rather than the earlier call for a godlike pharaoh, The Sultan's Dilemma preached that a return to democracy and free elections was the only way to confer legitimacy on Nasser's regime and transform his military coup d'etat into a proper revolution similar in spirit to the nationwide, popular uprising triggered by Saad Zaghloul in 1919 which had inspired 'Awdat Al-Ruh. Though the message must have rankled, the play was not banned, indeed was performed at the National the following year, and the reason was probably the great respect and admiration Nasser still harboured for the author. This admiration proved a great asset in later years, protecting El-Hakim from being dragged before the state-intelligence apparatus to answer for a personal letter he confidentially sent the president (through the president's own son-in-law) on 26 April, 1970. Though the letter was quite innocuous, contained nothing but sincere, sound advice, and was penned in good faith, it sent four of the people who knew about it -- all friends of El-Hakim -- to jail for more than 6 months without trial. While the regime could swallow The Sultan's Dilemma with good grace in 1960 when it still felt confident, it could not tolerate a simple letter of advice to the president in 1970 when it felt quite jittery and threatened after the 1967 defeat. On both occasions, however, El-Hakim himself escaped unscathed. Was it personal honesty, a care for historical accuracy, a respect for his responsibility as writer and thinker, or simply a sense of guilt and a desire to set the records straight that led El-Hakim in 1974 to publish his 'Awdat Al-Wa'i: Political Memoirs -- a bombshell of a book which ironically draws attention in its title to Nasser's favourite novel? The book, which amounted to an outright denunciation of the totalitarian nature of Nasser's police state, emphasising its many glaring mistakes, stupid miscalculations and barbaric abuses of human rights, was finished on Sunday, 23 July, 1972, on the 20th anniversary of the military coup d'etat and months after Nasser's death. Originally, as El-Hakim himself asserts, he never intended it to be published in his lifetime. He was simply prompted by the occasion to revise a period of his life and of the life of his country. Nevertheless, this internal monologue was published two years later and caused quite a furore. It infuriated Nasser's supporters and the Left and has since remained a highly controversial document. Now, imagine knocking these two historical documents together, 'Awdat Al-Ruh and 'Awdat At- Wa'i ? Reading the two together, in succession, feels like an awakening from moonshine romanticism into the harsh sunlight of reason. While the former is sweet and comforting, the latter is clear and troubling. When I heard that poet Gamal Bekheit was undertaking such a horrendous feat -- a dramatisation of 'Awdat Al-Ruh and its revision, 'Awdat Al-Wa'i -- I felt excited and looked forward to the performance. His choice of the opening verse of Dawood Husni's popular 1920s' song, (A White Dove), as a title seemed calculatedly ironical -- a nostalgic throwback to initially suggest the atmosphere of The Return of the Soul and generate a set of expectations only to dash them later on and shock the spectator into rethinking the rosy, romantic vision presented in the novel in the cold, harsh light of present-day reality. The earlier stage version by Khayri Shalabi, the radio serial, directed by Islam Faris, with a distinguished team of actors, and the subsequent television serialisation too, both broadcast in the 1960s, had been honest, straightforward, and unwavering in their truth to the text, however romantically misguided. But what Bekheit was proposing was an intellectual debate, a true dialogic enterprise, and what a difference this seemed. What I saw at Al-Salam, however, was quite a different affair, and quite frustrating. Of El-Hakim's novel, Bekheit kept the plot, rendering the most part of it in narration, interspersed with simulated re-enactment of certain scenes. Rather than a serious inquiry into the consciousness of a nation or the conscience of a writer, into what really happened to make us all believe that Nasser was really the reincarnation of Osiris and go along with his atrocities thinking they were for the common good, the show was simply designed as a vehicle for popular singer Ali El-Haggar and all the hopeful comedians in the Modern Theatre Troupe. Each one of them, and they were many, seemed to need Nasser's coercive intelligence men to force them off the stage and stop them ad-libbing ad infinitum. It was clear none of them had read either book and they used El-Hakim far worse than he would have used his famous donkey. But even El-Hakim's donkey had better sense and better dignity than any of them. Throughout you felt that every performer had his or her eye on something other than the publicised project -- a critique of 'Awdat Al-Ruh -- and that both the adaptor and director were encouraging them to do so. In this new adaptation, the singer/dancer Labiba, or 'Al-Usta (Mistress) Shakhla', who first introduced El-Hakim to the delights and magic of live performance and who makes her appearance in the novel in chapter 9, is reduced to a common, vulgar cabaret belly dancer, clumsily and garishly performed by Iman El-Sharqawi. Rather than the 6-year old Mohsen who ardently follows her troupe, thinking himself one of the band, we see here a dissolute, grownup by the name of Mustafa, a minor character in the novel who takes the lead in this adaptation as the bearer of the consciousness of Egypt and Saniyya's favoured lover, in a cheap nightclub, smoking hash and flirting with all and sundry. Some of Labiba's comical adventures, which captured the imagination of the young Mohsen/El-Hakim in the novel, like her invitation to entertain the guests at a Jewish wedding, were given an ugly ideological twist and their sunny, good-natured humour was clouded over by clumsy political propaganda. That 'Awdat Al-Ruh provides plenty of opportunities for comedy, despite its serious intent, is a source of pleasure in the novel and was cleverly capitalised on in the 1965 adaptation. In Bekheit's dramatisation, however, since it presumed in the billing to view the novel from the critical perspective of 'Awdat Al-Wa'i, there was a marked loss of purpose and directives. With so many songs and dances, beautifully put to music by the redoubtable Ammar El-Shere'ei, ridiculously and tediously choreographed by Emad Sa'id, and with such attractive singers as E- Haggar and son (Ahmad El-Haggar as Mohsen), and Huda Ammar as Saniyya, and lots of sequences in the style of the one-person comic stand-up show, performed by the uncles and servant in the novel, came across as the nearest thing to a variety show, intent on glamour, song and laughter. I confess I was confused, often bored, by the dizzying avalanche of sights and sounds which bombarded me from the stage and which, though I know both sources, seemed to make no sense. Perhaps I was wrong; perhaps the best thing you could do if you decide to see this musical is to completely forget about any 'returns' and meekly surrender yourself to the inane theatrical pageant that assails you. When, towards the end, Bekheit seemed to suddenly realise how far he had departed from his original project, he conjured up the ghost of El-Hakim, in the figure of an actor with a broken arm, complete with beret, and gave him a long speech in which he attempted to sort out the audio-visual mess the audience had just watched and deliver the message. It was then that I was sure that throughout the project both the adaptor and director, not to mention the performers and artistic crew, had felt as dazed and befuddled as I had been feeling for close on four hours. could have been a good, light show if it had been less intellectually pretentious. As it turned out, it wanted the best of both worlds: to be good, light, popular entertainment, with all the spices thrown in, and to pose as a serious, reflective political play about modern Egyptian history. It did not work either way. Failing to dramatically integrate the content of 'Awdat Al-Wa'i into his adaptation, Bekheit had to resurrect El-Hakim to give credibility to a senseless project. But what could the poor man do? Poor El-Hakim. How he must have turned in his grave.
