Did she really hate him to death, or love him to death? When it comes to human passions, all boundaries fall one after another. And when it comes to a woman's affection towards a man, these boundaries collapse altogether. Love is blind as Shakespeare put it: "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." There drama is born, and from there many rubs erupts. "Don't hide anything from me. Tell me everything. Why didn't you ever call him Daddy?" a mother asks her daughter in Ghaniah Mustatera (A Siren Concealed), a tragedy written by young Egyptian playwright Youssra el-Sharkawy, and translated into English by Hala Kamal. "Because one has just one father. And this man could never be a father to me, because I've always hated him from the moment he set foot in this house and brought hell along with him," the daughter answers. But when a woman says she hates a man to death, there must be something else simmering in her heart. In her debut play, published by the Creative Forum for Independent Theatre Groups, el-Sharkawy, a journalist with The Egyptian Gazette, dramatises a Phaedra-like theme. In the Greek myth, Phaedra loved her stepson that rejected her love and met his fate because of that. While in el-Sharkawy's play, a man falls in love with his stepdaughter, who despised him for that. El-Sharkawy begins her six-character play by a trial scene, where the girl is grilled by a siren, who accuses her of killing her stepfather. The young dramatist gave abstract names to her characters: Mother, Girl, Man, Siren, Maid and Lame Man, in a bid to make it clear that the play might take place anytime and anywhere. The dramatist uses a traditional symbol of evil, Lame Man, who is ugly and lame, as an outdated allegory of crime. He would take Girl's fiancé only to please Man. El-Sharkawy didn't elaborate on the relationship between a kind-hearted man, as Mother puts it later in the play, and this Lame Man. What kind of a relationship would be between the two characters in a small village? Lame Man is portrayed only to kill the poor fiancé, who dared to ask for the Girl's hand in marriage. This is a dramatic approach only used in melodrama not in tragedies. The play supposedly takes place in a small village, but the writer fails to render her work an Egyptian spirit. If the book's cover was removed, readers would think the play was translated into Arabic from another language. But this argument may be overruled by the fact that the playwright has produced a universal piece of work. But shouldn't this universal piece of work have an identity? A vanguard of Egyptian dramatists like Tawfiq el-Hakim, Abdel Rahman el-Sharkawy and Alfred Farag produced universal drama with a very local identity. A local identity is a must in drama. From the first scene, the reader finds himself before a ghost play where all characters are dead save the Mother and Maid. The writer also hints in her introduction that Siren and Girl are at odds due to some mystery, to be unveiled in the end of the play. Girl: Why are you looking at me this way? Siren: I know that you like me. As memories haunt the set of scenes, we come to realise that Siren and Girl are actually one person in two different characters. It's more than liking. It's Girl's wish to liberate Siren from her cage and unleash all her feelings. But did Mother know about Man seducing her daughter? She also locked herself in by choice. Yes, she felt something was wrong, but concealed it too. Maid: Is it that you don't understand or cannot believe?! Mother: "My husband! I knew it... I felt it." Mother confronts her daughter after her fiancé was killed by a paid killer ��" the Lame Man. Girl's fiance was murdered as Man would never let anyone come near his love. Girl: This Man... That's the only name I have for him. Would you have believed me when you are so blinded in his presence. He used to eat me with his eyes in your presence, and he used to run around chasing me like a madman all the time. Well, I hate him. I hate him. Love has its mysterious ways! Mother would forgive his illicit affection to her own daughter. But the writer doesn't give good grounds for this forgiveness. Maid: Come on inside with me. What are you doing? Mother: Waiting. Maid: For your husband? Mother: What's been going on for years cannot end in a moment. It seems to me as if I'm waiting for him the way I used to in the past days. I'd have liked to think that he wasn't so wrong. In the first part of the play, Girl is torn bewteen two conflicting feelings: love and conscience. Man: You... You attract me so powerfully. Girl: Go away! Siren: (Laughing) Patience... Patience! Man: You're mine. Siren: Yes. Girl: Go away... Go away from me. Siren: He was the one... Yes, he was the one she truly loved. Oscar Wilde said: "A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction." Girl fought it, concealed it, but she couldn't help but admitting it. She fell too in the illicit affection. That's why he was a man to her, not a father. Despite the age gap, she would marry him. But he was her mother's man, whom she should call "daddy"! But Man felt guilty over the murder. "I often ask myself now: "Why did the man die? What was he killed for?" He was sincerely penitent when confessing to his wife, asking her not to cry. "I don't want to see you crying. I don't deserve all these tears... I've told myself that I'm a criminal and a murderer -- more times than you can ever tell me." Mother: Why did you fall in love with my daughter? Man: I don't know it's like a disease that takes one by surprise. All of us are sometimes subjected to sinful thoughts, but this sinful thought soon goes away and one stops thinking about it. Mother: If I knew you were evil, I'd have never forgiven you, but I know that you're kind and I've seen it every day. Another Wilde's quotation would introduce what happened next. "Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat." Man and Mother would sort it out and send Girl away to her uncle's house. Now it's time she fought for her Man too. This predicament is reminscent of a quatrain from opera Carmen by Georges Bizet. Love is a gypsy's child, it has never, ever, recognised the law; if you love me not, then I love you; if I love you, you'd best beware! Siren: And it upset you. Right? Girl: It was killing me. Siren: Did you hold a grudge against them? Girl: Yes. Siren: You wished to see an end to their happiness? Girl: Yes. Siren: You stabbed him? Girl: No... I didn't kill him. She didn't kill him, and she never wanted him to be killed. She wanted him for herself. In the play's last and master scene, the three characters: Girl or Siren, Man and Mother find themselves in a crucible of making choices. Girl: I have to reveal a secret to you. I love you. Let's escape from here and go anywhere else. Don't you want to run away with me? Man: Do you want to ruin this house? Girl: I don't care anymore. Man: Even if I begged you to forgive me and to go to your uncle's house so that we could avoid trouble. Would you agree? Girl: At first I used to chase away these thoughts, and whenever my mother looked into my eyes I would feel like a sinner. But once she'd turned her eyes from me, I'd find myself thinking of you and travelling away with you in my imagination. How I wished to free myself from all the chains and to throw myself into your arms. Mother enters for a final encounter with the one she loved and her own flesh and blood that betrayed her and wanted to elope with her man. Girl: Kill me if you can... This is the truth. He is the only man I've ever loved. Mother: I'll kill you! In what could be called amour courtois, or courtly love, Man would do anything to please Girl. Naturally, he would do anything to defend his love even if he meets his fate. Mother killed her beloved man, for whom she fought her own daughter. Stunned at her Man's death, Girl takes her own life. The writer walks on broken glass in her debut drama, tackling a very sensitive theme resented by society. Although the play lacks an Egyptian spirit, it has a humanitarian aspect.
