Detox | Keeping cool

WHAT’S UP?

How was your week, dear readers? 

You know what, we don’t want to know. We’re sure it was hard, what with the demands of work and the ongoing hysteria over the coronavirus, so no need to relive it in order to tell us. The weekend’s here, which means it’s time to get some well-deserved rest from it all — and that’s what we’re here for. 

They say the warm weather we’ve been witnessing is likely to continue over the next couple of days (before it gets colder again next week), so it might be a good time to leave those couches we’ve been snuggled up on for warmth all winter and enjoy the sunshine. We know these changes in the weather make it more likely to catch the flu, which in times like these takes a whole new dimension in one’s mind, but what’s really important is keeping panic at a distance, not people. So let’s take our precautions but not be overly scared of going out and convening, of being with loved ones or strangers in public spaces. 

Here’s the World Health Organization’s list of protective measures against COVID-19. Having said that, read through the rest of Detox for some tips on where to go this weekend, including film screenings, theatre shows and a book signing. 

READ

-Taking his seminal 2003 State of Exception as a starting point, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben penned a short text titled “The State of Exception as Provoked by an Unmotivated Emergency,” in which he comments on the emergency measures enforced by governments and propagated by the media in response to the Coronavirus outbreak:

“We might say that once terrorism was exhausted as a justification for exceptional measures, the invention of an epidemic could offer the ideal pretext for broadening such measures beyond any limitation. The other factor, no less disquieting, is the state of fear, which in recent years has diffused into individual consciousnesses and which translates into a real need for states of collective panic, for which the epidemic once again offers the ideal pretext.”

-To celebrate Fadwa Tuqan’s birthday (born March 1, 1917), Arab Lit publishes the English translation of seven poems by the late Palestinian poet. Below is an excerpt from one of them, titled “Face Lost in the Wilderness”:

“Do not fill postcards with memories
Between my heart and the luxury of passion
Stretches a desert where ropes of fire
Blaze and smolder, where snakes
Coil and recoil, swallowing blossoms
With poison and flame.”

-Arab Lit also published an English translation of “The Open Door,” a short story by celebrated Saudi author Abdelrahman Munif, as well as excerpts from three of his novels, an interview about his work, a reflection on his multi-layered legacy and a piece by his English translator, Peter Theroux, in which he discusses the reception of Munif’s work in the West: 

“Munif would write sixteen novels, the first in 1973, and nine works of nonfiction, but his success in American publishing would come from documenting what Amitav Ghosh, writing in the New Republic, called ‘The Oil Encounter.’”

-Literary Hub publishes the transcript of a speech by Marcus Mumford, of the popular British folk-rock band Mumford & Sons, in which he speaks about the inherent lessons in the work of iconic American author John Steinbeck, as well as the Nobel Laureate’s influence on the band’s music: 

“From East of Eden to The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flat to The Pearl, the notes change but the song remains the same: our welfare simply is wrapped up in the welfare of the other, and we do not have a choice about it. Isolation and loneliness in communities is the death of them. Truly common life is something worth nurturing, and it demands attention and effort.”

Listen to Mumford & Sons’ “Dust Bowl Dance,” which Mumford says was directly inspired by Steinbeck’s writing:

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-As part of a series in The Guardian chronicling “the disappearance of America’s middle class,” author Lynn Steger describes the precariousness of trying to make a living as a writer. In the piece, titled “A Dirty Secret: You Can Only Be a Writer If You Can Afford it,” she writes: 

“I would argue that there is nothing more sustaining to long-term creative work than time and space – these things cost money – and the fact that some people have access to it for reasons that are often outside of their control continues to create an ecosystem in which the tenor of the voices that we hear from most often remains similar. It is no wonder, I say often to students, that so much of the canon is about rich white people. Who else, after all, has the time and space to finish a book. Who else, after all, as the book is coming out, has the time and space and money to promote and publicize that book?”

-The New York Review of Books recently unlocked one of the many gems in its archives: Hannah Arendt’s “Lying in Politics,” her 1971 meditation on deception and disappointment, written shortly after the release of the Pentagon Papers, and later published in Crises of the Republic, a collection of Arendt’s essays:

“Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings. Whoever reflects on these matters can only be surprised by how little attention has been paid, in our tradition of philosophical and political thought, to their significance, on the one hand for the nature of action and, on the other, for the nature of our ability to deny in thought and word whatever happens to be the case. This active, aggressive capability is clearly different from our passive susceptibility to falling prey to error, illusion, the distortions of memory, and to whatever else can be blamed on the failings of our sensual and mental apparatus.”

-Yesterday, publisher and Tanmia Bookstores founder Khaled Lotfy, who is currently serving a 5-year sentence for distributing an Arabic translation of a book by an Israeli author, turned 39. Here, author Wagdi al-Komy writes about Lotfy, who is currently serving a five-year sentence for publishing the translation of Uri Bar-Joseph’s The Angel, the controversial biography of Egyptian spy Ashraf Marawan. Al-Komy also reflects on the notion of punishment in modern societies: 

“Lotfy’s imprisonment is punishment for a mundane act: like writing an article; publishing a news piece; circulating a paper; having breakfast; throwing a party; getting married; cultivating a piece of land; buying an apartment; filling a car at a gas station; traveling to an island; opting for solitude in an attempt to heal; digging a hole in a wall that blocks the sunlight; planting a flower; donating a piece of your liver; birthing a child; dabbing a wound … It is unthinkable that Lotfy should be pushed to the darkness of prison for publishing a book, just as it is unthinkable for Sisyphus to be made to push a rock up a mountain for divulging Zeus’s secrets.” 

WATCH

The “progressive” films of the Nasserist era: Promoting women’s labor, not their freedom
Beesan Kassab

A married woman in 1960s Cairo lands a top managerial position in a government institution, becoming her husband’s boss in the process. This was the premise of Fateen Abdel Wahab’s 1966 comedy Merati Modeer Aam (My Wife, the Director General), making it seem like a progressive film that pushed time forward, presenting a new reality for women at the time. But to what extent was the film really progressive? In other words, what were the limits of the freedom men allowed women at a point of time some are so nostalgic about?

The film does defend the wife’s right to advance professionally based on merit. But it doesn’t, in no way, shape or form acknowledge women as free beings who are equal to men. Rather, it grants women the right to an “upgraded” status — educated women can dress and act in ways the previous generations couldn’t. It’s the “improvement” in status manifested in referring to a wife by her name instead of one’s “company” as many Egyptians to this day call their female partners. 

In that sense, the movie embodies the reality of women’s freedom in 1960s Egypt. They had the right to work and men had to accept that, but this “freedom” came with responsibilities. That’s why the wife, Esmat Fahmy (played by Shadia) can be the boss at work. At home, however, she’s expected to perform all the duties designated for her gender. She gets angry at her husband (Salah Zulficar) but continues to mend his socks as any good Egyptian wife would do. And that’s why the movie was deemed socially appropriate — a woman is only successful when she strikes the perfect balance between her duties inside and outside of the house. These are the rules and boundaries of freedom that satisfy the state’s goal of boosting economic growth by allowing women to work, but without meddling with the traditional family structure. 

In her piece titled “A Woman of their Own,” researcher Lobna Azzam writes: “In the 1950s, then-president Gamal Abdel Nasser initiated a period of social and political improvement regarding women’s equality ... And while women were given the right to vote in 1956 and were incorporated into the workforce due to these efforts at modernization, Nasser’s integration of women was deficient in the private sphere; there was no attempt to reform family law or to improve women’s position within the family—possibly because it was considered too controversial.”

A few years before My Wife, the General Manager, a director Salah Abu Seif’s Ana Horra (I am Free) was released in 1958. Based on a novel by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and set in pre-1952 Egypt, the film’s creators went to great lengths to condemn women’s right to personal freedom. 

The protagonist, Amina (played by Lobna Abdel Aziz), is condemned by her family and neighbors for trying to break societal constraints on her lifestyle — how she dresses, where, when and with whom she goes out, etc. — but the filmmakers never question whether she has the right to do so. Abbas(played by Shokry Sarhan), one of those neighbors, is presented as an intellectual who’s also part of a secret organization working against the British occupation. But the film distinguishes between national liberation and women’s liberation — the former doesn’t necessarily advance the latter. That means that Abbas, who has feelings for Amina, spends most of the film justifying the abuse she endures by her family, including physical beatings because he believes they mean well. He also blames her for the neighbors’ judgemental gossip.

The film’s messages are spoon-fed to the audience through the “voice of conscience” that reprimands Amina every night before she goes to sleep. It’s telling that the filmmakers chose a male voice to play that role, making Amina — a girl who’s rebelling against men’s authority — listen daily to the wise words of a man exposing her foolishness. 

During this phase of Amina’s life, she’s forced to get engaged to an engineer who’s well educated, at least compared to other men in the neighborhood and the family. Throughout their short-lived engagement, the “voice of conscience” naturally sides with the engineer as Amina challenges his “right” to call the shots in their relationship and in her life, including forbidding her to work or finish her education. (At this point in the film, it becomes clear how progressive My Wife, the Director General is in comparison.)

Once the engineer is out of the picture, Abbas somehow reemerges to take his turn in managing Amina’s life. Here the film takes an absurd turn as Abbas, who, unlike Amina, is never bullied by the neighbors or slapped for misbehaving, lectures her on the real meaning of freedom and criticizes her vain struggle for rights.

Amina sits before Abbas like a student listening to her teacher in a typical portrayal of male-female dynamics in Egyptian cinema. Amina starts to question her ideas as Abbas explains that freedom is a means rather than an end — in his case, for instance, he views freedom as a means to express his anti-colonial opinions. 

Amina joins Abbas’s secret organization and the two are in love and are set to be married. She starts to believe in Abbas’s view that freedom is not “dancing and staying out late” and gives-in to his characterization of her struggle as “vain.” We’re left with the conclusion that Abbas is the mentor who taught Amina the difference between “real” and “false” freedom.

But why does the conversation about the “real” nature of freedom only emerge when it comes to women? That’s what comes to mind when one tries to define freedom and its determinants. 

Meanwhile, Mahmoud Zulficar’s 1964 film, Lil Regal Faqat (For Men Only), presents a different mix. The film follows two female work colleagues (Soad Hosni and Nadia Lotfy) seeking a job in the oil sector, which is largely dominated by men. In this context, they decide to disguise themselves as men, pretending to be two resigned engineers. The film paints its female protagonists as pioneers and as competent workers on the drilling site, but still, they fall in love with two of their male colleagues and end up marrying them, as usual. For Men Only clearly sides with women’s equality in the workplace, but doesn’t avoid the trap of conveying marriage as the only possible ending for two smart and attractive young women. The romantic storyline in the film was not intended as a statement on women’s role in society, most probably, and was only viewed by the filmmakers as a necessary ingredient in the formula of traditionally successful movies. Yet it remains that the film still couldn’t find a way to grapple with the inescapable questions of women’s freedom in the private sphere.

-The fourth edition of Cairo Cinema Days, which opened this week, has a smaller lineup than previous years, spread out across the entire month. This means that the programmers have selected only the most remarkable Arab productions from last year. Here, you can read Nahed Nassr’s piece (published on Mada Masr last December) on the most significant questions Arab cinema is struggling with today, where she reflects on many of the films that will be screened in CCD. Among those is Amjad Abu Alala’s You Will Die at Twenty, which screens in Zawya today, and the Oscar-nominated For Sama, directed by Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts, which screens tomorrow, in addition to Oualid Mouaness’ 1982. 

[For further information on CCD, you can find the full program here.] 

LISTEN 

This week, Ahmed el-Sabbagh serves up the latest iteration of his monthly playlist of the latest releases for your listening pleasure. Think of it as a soundtrack to your weekend if you will — and remember, you can listen to Tafneeta in any order you wish; shuffle away!

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SALAM

For those of you who have kids, you can catch Samia Jaheen’s performance titled Di El Hekaya (This is the Story) at AUC’s Falaki theater in Downtown, part of the Hakawy International Arts Festival for Children (check out the full program, which runs until March 10, here). 

Also, if you’re in Alexandria or feel like making the trip, don’t miss the book launch and signing of Salma El Tarzi’s An Attempt to Remember My Face at Wekalet Behna.