Injy El-Naggar meets two of the brighter examples of female achievement in Egypt Nepal Lasheen, 18, has already left her mark on the Egyptian football scene. She was studying theatre at Ain Shams University when she realised she was actually more talented on the field. "I've liked playing since I was a child. Football keeps me alert and gives me an inner peace." Over the last five years Lasheen moved, first, from the Sayeda Zeinab to the Tayaran team, but her career took a decisive turn when she joined Arsenal in the Wadi Degla Club a year ago -- the first professional to be acquired by the team. Training with veteran coaches, her performance has reached new heights. Woman footballers are as yet new to Egyptian society, but the notion of a butch tomboy does not put off Lasheen: "I don't think playing football is so strange considering there are women who do weightlifting." Women's football did not arrive in Egypt until the late 1990s; in 1997 Sahar El-Hawwari, among the most prominent woman footballers in the country, founded the first women's football league, holding a tournament in which six countries were represented. In 1999, El-Hawwari founded the first Egyptian women's football championship, in which 12 teams competed, thereby establishing Egyptian women's football on the world map. There are now some 1,000 woman footballers, including 220 players and eight teams officially represented in official leagues. Lasheen has yet to win an official title but her team, Tayaran, came third and second in the National League and the Egypt Cup, respectively. Her motto is simple: focus, concentration and "boundless self-confidence". This, she says, is why Arsenal selected her. "But my parents were the main driving force behind my success, because they always supported me." Football is about happiness, Lasheen says, because it embodies so much of what cheers her: the collective spirit, the principle of give and take... "I am never bored of playing. You have to stay intelligent throughout the game." The drawback, rather, is when people do not accept defeat. "It's about winning and losing, you can't get around that." What is painful, however, is that women's football has yet to galvanise an audience of its own: "The audience always consists of our families and coaches and very few others." This, she is confident, will change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 'My soul leaps' The downtown Contemporary Image Collective was packed with people who had flocked to listen to the young voice, Fayrouz Karawya. Excited by her unique style of performance, the audience received Karawya's five songs warmly. Singer, lyricist, actress and producer, a physician by training, Karawya has managed to carve out a niche for herself since that concert, named, after one of the songs, "And my soul leaps to flight". Hers is a simple art, direct and moving, always meaningful. Organising the concert and leading the band, she said, she was surprised at the size of the audience: "There was too much tension for us to be at our best, but it made an impression and that's what counts." When she finally graduated from medical school, in 2003, Karawya had already obtained her certificate in singing and oud from the Arabic Music Institute in 1994, but it wasn't until 2001 that she penetrated the industry: director Magdi Ahmed Ali offered her the opportunity to perform the main song in his film hit Asrar Al-Banat (Girls' Secrets). She was executive director and music producer for director Khaled Galal's King Lear. Later in 2005 she joined the Mesaharati, an independent theatre troupe, also helping in the production of a Film Institute documentary on the life of six girls living alone in Cairo directed by Nagui Ismail. "I've loved music ever since I was a child," the 27-year-old Karawya told Al-Ahram Weekly. Finding the right musicians with whom to perform was no mean feat, however. "It was very hard to put together a band with the same ideas and the same style. And given the difficult economic conditions we all have to put up with, most band members have to have other jobs. In the end we make up an amalgam of instruments combining piano with violin and oud, and we're inspired by such young and talented composers as Sherif El-Weseimi, Akram Murad, Mohamed Darwish and Omar El-Rakhawi." Aiming to combine the best of pop with a sincere musical vision, Karawya has managed to produce readily accessible music that is nonetheless unique: a mix of Oriental with jazz and Latin sounds, as she describes it, sustaining an underground notion of rule-breaking freedom. Karawya's motto is to dig deep into real-life emotions, avoiding the clichés while remaining sufficiently in touch for the widest possible audience base to identify. "That's why I like to give my songs a dramatic dimension too, so that people who like acting can relate at a different level. I owe much to the authors I've worked with as they added a great deal to my experience." Ahmed Haddad was the first of these, and his oft quoted words, "Who do you have coffee with in the morning? Who are you on the phone with till morning?", typify Karawya's fresh, earthy reflections on daily life. She has also worked with Kawthar Mustafa and Omar Taher as she followed through "the experiment", occasionally writing her own lyrics. It was certainly bold to break away from the mainstream but, as Karawya insists, not so difficult to achieve: "Anything new will eventually find an audience, so long as I believe my art is genuine. People are getting bored of music videos, which is why they seek out venues like Al-Sawy Culture Wheel." Indeed, Karawya expects a drastic change in the near future. Being a woman singer in this day and age is quite a challenge, Karawya agrees. "On a personal note, my family was seriously worried when they realised I would give up my medical career and make singing my profession. On the other hand, dealing with mainly male musicians was tricky. Men tend to work with fellow men because they find it more comfortable." Firmness of purpose was necessary. Still, "the best thing about singing is that I do it with a passion, I sing songs that I feel, and this in itself is a blessing. The worst thing is the way it's viewed socially. Since I'm not on the commercial scene as it is known, I don't have a lot of credibility, because I'm different from what people are used to. I'm obliged to explain the motives behind my work, whereas art requires neither motive nor justification. It should be simple and I keep it that way."
