Ain Shams: Variations on the pains of simple people!

Yesterday I watched an Egyptian movie for the promising Egyptian director Ibrahim El Batout. The film took us slowly, yet deeply, into the lives and experiences of a poor family in a popular area in Cairo, Egypt. There have been numerous films, Egyptian and other, that delved into the lives of simple people and their basic needs and endless sufferings. Yet, there are a number of elements that made "Ain Shams" (a.k.a. The Eye of the Sun) unique, for me at least. Some points grabbed my attention, namely:

To begin with, I liked the fact that the narrator/the director spoke not from a neutral position, although I wouldn't have appreciated this aspect in other movies, however in this one, it was needed. The narrator not only narrated incidents, he also explained them with his own voice and vision.

I liked how the film went around in one circle from beginning to end, beginning with a sad song about a girl who just died, and ending with the same song (after the reasons for her death are explained).

Something important too in the sequence of the film was a clear communication issue between some of the characters of the film, especially representing different classes and ideals; how the characters almost all stuttered sometimes (with lots of mmms and hmmms)- as if improvising in real life situations or not knowing how to best say what is on their minds; the smooth transitions between the different scenes (and from Iraq to Egypt); as well as seeing the poor from the eyes of the rich and vice versa.

I also appreciated Shams' simple, naive dream of visiting downtown, which is an act that we do on a daily basis if we please, yet for this eleven-year-old child, it was her utmost hope and dream.

The film was overall empathetic with the poor, at a time filled with political hypocrisy and utter lack of freedom. The language is simple and genuine. The vision is clear.

There are clearly a number of shortcomings, like any film, such as the very slow pace of the film, and the fact that some actors needed to work a little bit on their acting skills.

Hats off for a fine artist like Al-Batout, who brought new meanings to old stories.. For more on the director: http://ibrahimelbatout.com/

For more on the film: http://einshams.blogspot.com/

An angry sentiment!

I realized that we no longer see straight. Mediocre people do not know anymore that they are mediocre. Now why is that?

And I am not speaking humanity, I am specifically speaking about Egyptians here, whether we like it or we will keep hiding in our cocoon of denial.

Let's assess our level of cultural sophistication...

• With cinema for instance: Get statistics of which films make the most money, you will know we are a mediocre nation. Limbi, 3okal, karkar, 3al2et moot!! This is what the box office calculations will put in consideration. Not why people went, but how many. (For non-Egyptians, the films mentioned are commercial in nature, with zero story, and zero acting skills).

• Music: Which concerts and singers are the most popular: Either extremely vulgar music such as Ba3roor, and Saad El Soghayar, or on a more "sophisticated level!" Ehab Tawfiq, Tamer Hosny, Amr Diab and the likes.
• I don't want to turn into cleanliness and hygiene, Cause I just went to the countryside to breathe some clean air and relax, and I came back with asthma, headache and further belief in the impossibility of change. This is what I saw on the way there:  
• Pollution (all the cars pump out tremendous amounts of a different kind of black smoke),
• Noise (even people's voices, let alone the endless car horns, weddings on the street from broad day light and until the evening is over, with gun shots and loud tasteless songs), 
• CLEANLINESS (I could write a book here- the water canal was almost not visible because of the trash thrown in it - plastic bags, paper, food remains, dead animals, tins, bottles, boxes, you name it- and then the visible parts included children bathing with their horses and donkeys and women washing everything in it- and then they wonder why they get hepatitis A, B, and C? There should be new types of hepatitis from D to Z just for them), etc... 
• I hated being there and not being able to change anything. I love this country, yet hate one zillion things in it that need decades, if not centuries, to change, as well as strict and firm rulers who actually give a flying fu**!

I work in the field of freedoms, so this is what I believe: People are free to read, eat, listen to, watch and do whatever they choose. But the thing is, sadly, what they do shapes our nation's success and level of civilization and cultural awareness. I can't control them, and even if I could, I wouldn't want to. If people don't feel the responsibility they bear of becoming better to push the whole country up with them (instead of the pig-hole we have turned into), then plain and simple screw them (and this is the politest way i can possibly say it).

Slum-dog Millionaire - A Masterpiece!

Hello peeps :)

In spite of a very tiny minute comments, which I am not even going to mention so as not to tarnish the beauty of that masterpiece, I would like to state out loud that Danny Boyle is one of the greatest directors of our time and his movie (Slum-dog Millionaire) is one of the greatest films in the history of cinema.

There can be hundreds of reasons for my deep appreciation, which comes only rarely with this intensity. I will try to brief them in the coming few points. 

What Danny Boyle had:

1. Very limited financial resources, 
2. Over-crowded shooting locations (which can be a headache to any film crew),
3. Untrained cast (most of the actors were not professional ones),
4. A visible linguistic barrier,
5. Certain thorny issues to deal with (religion, prostitution, national sensitivities, to name a few),
6. A very old plot that was dealt with numerously - so he had to twist it around and tackle it differently for authenticity and novelty, and
7. Had to match between the film being a Western production (the language mostly, as well as the nationalities of most of the film crew) and the Indian print (the country, the actors, the story).

Give this to any director, and he/she will give you a mediocre film, however with good intentions. But no. Danny Boyle gave us 8 OSCARS.

The way he used the flashback tool was phenomenal. There are scenes still lingering in my head as a result of the intensity of the film.
The way he got the best out of the young "actors"- especially the children (amazing kids- especially the kid in the photo here).

The way the story was organized in such a way that keeps you on your toes with anticipation, empathy, disbelief (that there are people that live in such dire conditions) and amazement with the carefully-picked shooting angles and landscape (every single one of them is meaningful). 

Superb cinematography indeed. 

Just a reminder of who Danny Boyle is: His most memorable movies include The Beach and Trainspotting.

Anyway, I just thought Slumdog Millionaire is an intense EXPERIENCE in itself and had to be shared.

Why am I writing?

First of all, I just couldn't wait to share my feelings with you (whoever that is), no matter how bitter or sweet these feelings might just sound. I didn’t really choose my timing, that is, I suddenly felt that the author's block that took a grip of my mind for the past two years has unexpectedly dissolved. And so here I am, bear with me and as you read on you will discover that a part of every single one of you is represented here.

For the past very few decades of my life (Three, as I am turning 30 soon, though I really feel 21), I have been a firm believer that life is a bunch of choices, which consequently makes smart people ultimate winners. I also used to think of myself as one of 'em smart ones that are in control of their destinies. But, and for some reason, I am led to believe that I am not totally in control of everything I choose and that –as they say- the road is my driver, not the other way around.

This epiphany came to me one (guess it was an insignificant Tuesday) evening for many reasons that are hard to enumerate in a single written piece, but you might deduce from the overall content of the Blog Spot. I never really in my life liked to think of myself as a loser, and never knew how to feel "cool" about failure. Everything to me was mathematical equations that were well calculated.

It is the same feeling that you get when you go for a dress that is your style, your color, and your size- it just has got to be the right dress for you. But when you go home and someone just throws a killing remark such as "it just doesn't look right on you", you immediately start thinking "where did I go wrong? Was it the fabric? Was it the brand???" anything but tell yourself that in spite of the fact that "mathematically speaking" it is "your dress", it might simply be a wrong choice for reasons that might just be "beyond your comprehension". ' But no, we don't like to think that anything is beyond our comprehension. We are the ones that choose what is good for us and what is not.

Well, the dress might have been a very silly metaphorical simplification, but really go beyond the dress to a job that is well-paid, in line with your past experience, prestigious, and with decent office hours… but for a, again, "beyond comprehension" reason, it is not as interesting as you thought it would be. Call me crazy but this is how I felt about every single job I ever occupied, including my current one. No matter how excited I am about a new post, and no matter how much I think that this will be "the one", it never satisfies my thirst for achievement. Some people thought that maybe the problem lies in me; I am the one who'd always placed my expectations above "normal standards"… But what are those? Are they written in some manual? "The normal standards and expectations in life" by Mr./Ms. Knows-it-all?

Well, come to think of it, maybe, but I am sick and tired of being the one to blame for the failure of most of my plans. There must be (and there are) other reasons that contribute to this series of unfortunate events in my life that have led me to write whatever I am writing now. Maybe I am too emotional, not-so-emotional, rational, irrational… I don’t know how to think of myself anymore. I am a very changing person as time goes by. Whatever traits were in me 10 years ago are just not here anymore as I am writing this down.

"You grew up that's all" is the recurrent "already-tailored" explanation of my mom who always thought that not facing yourself with your regrets was a good way for moving on. This epiphany, and as you will read over the coming few pages, is not just to reassess where I stand with the love and career matters, but also to see if I can by going through my past rediscover where I stand in life as a whole now and kind of foresee where I am going from hitherto. I wonder if I was the one who set all my priorities in life or was it society (meaning by that my family, friends, school, work colleagues, etc..). Sometimes it is really hard to see the thin red line, isn't it?

The Power of Change from a weird perspective

With some patience, and by the time you finish this piece, you will realize that it is very informative, interesting and will even "change" the way you see things. Trust me on it!!

I always am concerned about definitions and facts. This is how I will start: defining change and transform as abstract words...

Change is defined as (a. To cause to be different; b. To give a completely different form or appearance to; transform, etc...)

Transform is (a. to change markedly the appearance or form of something, someone; b. To change the nature, function, or condition of; convert)

Hence, the definitions here stress the part about causing the form or appearence to be different, not the content; although with "transform", the emphasis is on the possibility of changing the nature of something, or for the purposes of this piece, someone.

I have a point to make, I promise.

Many people believe (at least at a certain point in their lives) in the power of Change, and how they can BE the change, etc...

But what people overlook, most of the time, is that any change process of oneself or of others is five fold: psychologically, socially, culturally, economically, and religiously. Yes, it is that complicated. I will break it down for you..

Let's take a very simple, superficial and common example: Breast Augmentation: Seriously, just changing an aspect in the overall appearence of someone's body. Very small detail that should not involve all these wider aspects, including the involvement of society and history.

Let's see:

Psychologically: a person has to WANT to change this feature of her body, because she feels ugly, or it lowers her self-esteem, or she want to look like someone else. So there is a deep psychological rejection of the first phase and a deep desire to change or transform into this new condition

Socially: The society has to be one that accepts this kind of change, even potentially. A family, the nucleus of society, may prohibit a girl from undergoing such an operation, because they feel she is more concerned with shape rather than content and that she has to accept the way she looks. Family support/disencouragement is this issue is a societal factor that determines whether this change is likely to happen, and if it does, if it will be accepted.

Culturally: Cultures tend to encourage conformity. They fail to see the growth of society and population health is attained through diversity of mind and body. That is why, breast augmentation is felt by younger girls as a necessity. They yearn for acceptance.

Economically: That is easy. She has to afford this kind of change. Breast Augmentation operations cost thousands of dollars.

Religiously: To give you an example, in Islam, changing God's way of creating you is Haram (which literally means unlawful and prohibited in Islamic terms). Religion can be a very important factor that outweighs societal and cultural aspects.

As you saw in the last example, change is not an easy thing to make, even if it is superficial, and more physical than psychological.

Now let's take my preferred example, the one I wanted to make, but had to simplify first.

I used to think that it was easy to bring about societal change about certain ideologies that are deeply embeded in people's minds and souls without having to wait for centuries. All it takes, I used to think, was a strong will from one person (preferably a societal leader), and certain outlets for him/her to disperse their ideas and finally and foremost, the idea itself had to be universal and practical, etc...

For example, to convince Westerners that Arabs do not ride camels to work in the time of BMW, or that Africa is not a country, but rather a continent (that is news for many Westerners by the way) or that trouble in Palestine does not have to mean that tourists would stop visitng Tunisia (miles apart) because the Middle East is not a small region... To convince Westerners that these ideas are not genuine and that they are the result of impartial, directed media that aims at stereotyping Arabs is not as easy a task as it might seem. It needs the five elements I referred to earlier:

Psychologically: Society/Media/Polticians/audience has to WANT to change his ideas. They have to be MOTIVATED. Rather, there has to be a deep psychological rejection of the first set of ideas as a result of the Descartes method of experimenting ideas and realizing their faultiness.

So, bottom line, there has to be a deep desire to change or transform into a new set of ideas.

Socially: The society has to be one that accepts this kind of change, even potentially. This can be measured through reading history books and realizing how long it takes for societies to change their set minds on any issue. It can take centuries, or a miracle. And some times it never happens. No matter how hard we try. History can show us the resilience of certain societies as opposed to others with regards to change.

Culturally: Cultures tend to encourage conformity. They fail to see the growth of society and population health is attained through diversity of mind and body. That is why, it is easier for those feeding the cultures of people (yes there are people who feed us culture by spoon) to leave us all wrong but the same, rather than right but different. It is easier for dominance and soverignty purposes. They are the ones who decides what gets accepted into certain cultures and what does not. They are men of religion. They are the ones that hire men of religion.

Economically: That is easy too. Poor nations are less willing to learn anything original or different as they are concerned about their bread and butter.

However, even within richer communities, like that of the US, people are kept all the time worried about their mortgage installments (as was obvious during this financial crisis) that they could not care less about Gaza or Iraq or anything other than finding a place to sleep in at night after their homes were taken away.

Religiously: Religion has always been a tool in the hands of men of power and politics. This category of people has always, one way or another, included men of religion. They sometimes are the puppeteers, other times they are the puppets, but in all cases, religions have often been used as tools for shaping societal and cultural aspects. If they wanted a certain idea embedded in people's minds, they simply call it "The Word of God" especially in places where God is everything.

Tough relaization for me. Quite bleak and Kafkan in nature. No way out. In order to change an idea or ideology, you have to have access to outlets that can affect the mass pschology of nations, to have access to people of religion, to have access to politicians, to have an abundance of money that would allow you the luxury of seeking the truth, etc..

As hard as this sounds, this is the abstract, non-negotiable truth. You cannot change the hearts and minds of people without reaching out to their puppeteers first and take over. But ouch, you will be a puppeteer too, do u really want that kind of change then?

Unleash your imagination-the Kafka way!!

This is a session that is meant to open your eyes wide shut to possibilities (and impossibilities for that matter) of Life.

"What if" is a concept that was created to push our imaginations to dare to experience new encounters that are otherwise difficult in reality; while "Why Not" is a tool that gives us the guts to try things...

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For instance, what would you do if you woke up one morning and found you were someone else? Or something else?

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This is not small talk. Kafka, one of the biggest writers of our age, imagined it in his "Metamorphosis". Kafka starts the story simply with:

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One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

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Surprisingly, Gregor’s bizarre new state is not the central transformation in the novel. Instead, Kafka uses Gregor’s surreal change as a catalyst for an almost more shocking metamorphosis: that of Gregor’s family, as they move from helplessness and sympathetic fear to emancipation and hostile rejection. In fact, it is Gregor who remains largely unchanged. He struggles to maintain his daily routine during most of the story, until his body finally forces him to surrender and accept that he is no longer fully human.

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Furthermore, even when confronted with proof of his family’s scorn and rejection, Gregor refuses to see them as anything but justified in their disappointment and anger towards him.
It’s a telling detail that neither Gregor nor his family wonder why or how he’s turned into an insect. Once he’s unable to communicate, Gregor becomes a mere observer of the world around him. At the same time, this isolation evokes a series of startling revelations and actions from his parents and sister, triggered by their assumption that he can no longer understand what they say and their belief that he has lost all human traits.

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The reader comes to acknowledge from the first few paragraphs that Gregor has been almost the sole bread winner for his family for years; that their apartment, their everyday sustenance, and their few luxuries (His sister Greta's fancy dresses and violin lessons) come from Gregor’s hard labor as a traveling salesman. This explain’s Gregor’s distress at the prospect that he must “stay in bed being useless”. His first thought at discovering his new state was being concerned that he might be late for work, or take the whole day off!!

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Later on, Gregor overhears his family speaking about the fact that they have been saving money, however, they had decided to keep living off Gregor's earnings for as long as it was possible. Rather than being angry, Gregor feels relieved (in shocking idealism, that Kafka intends so as to show the paradox between the family's ethics and those of Gregor). He feels he has to “help them bear the inconvenience which he simply had to cause them in his present condition”; as they were, Gregor thinks, “suffering enough as it was”. All along, he believes he will be able to work again, that this is a temporary illness, and that life will eventually go back to normal.

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Gregor’s love and devotion towards his family remain unchanged throughout the story, the only constant left in his rapidly deteriorating life. As his physical needs and abilities shift from human to animal, it is his family who forces him to adapt to his new identity: they remove the furniture from his room, begin feeding him leftovers, and gradually help strip away everything that had identified him as a human being. It is no surprise, then, that they’re able to exclude Gregor from their lives, and ultimately cause his death.

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By the end of the story, Gregor’s parents and sister have themselves metamorphosed: they regain a youthful vigor as they begin to work, take trips to the countryside, and eventually sell the apartment they had shared with Gregor. Gregor’s change is superficial, since he resists adapting to his new physical identity. Kafka’s choice to portray Gregor as a “vermin” implies a useless and parasitic nature that clashes with his giving and reliable personality. On the other hand, Gregor’s “disappearance” forces his parents and sister out of their own parasitic existence, leading them to a much deeper transformation at the end.

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OH MY GOD!! DON'T YOU JUST LOVE KAFKA, with his depiction of the dark side of humans!!

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To continue what we were saying, one day, you wake up to realize that a particularly vital assumption about the world is wrong. Everyone who buys into it is wrong. Which is almost everyone in the world. Everything in the world that depends on it is wrong. Which is almost everything in the world. Now what?

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Examples make it easier for you to imagine: In Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise wakes up in the morning, on his way to his firm, he founds no one, nothing moving, utter solitude in this world. Scary thought? That is my worst nightmare, although I sometimes feel like I would love to try what it feels not to have humans around at all. In Vanilla Sky, this turns out to be a dream, or a nightmare would be a more specific depiction of it.

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Another very valid example is if they suddenly prove, with scientific convincing methods, that the earth was created randomly and that there is nothing like a God, religions, or anything with a divine nature. Now, this is just an example, so as not to offend anyone with faith in their hearts. But if this happens, what does that imply? Why do we live? Why do we die? Do we have to live or do we have to die??? Why do we endure pain and suffering waiting for a better tomorrow up there? Accidents are merely accidents? They are not destined or pre-destined?

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Waking up is an apt way to put it; rebooting your system slowly in the morning, thinking: (Who am I? What am I doing today? How did I get here? -Oh yeah..) This final Oh Yeah is what keeps us going, realizing once more the way of the world and our role in this life. But do we all say it and feel it??
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To be continued...

The "Truth" About Life

When I was little, I wanted to change the world.

How fast do years fly by. Things happen beyond your expectations so fast, with a tendency to go out of plan and before you know it, your priorities shift. From wanting to change the world to a mere, childish desire to fit in.

I have a very wide social circle, I do. They say no man is an island, well and no woman too :)

However, communicating with people around me is exactly what Samuel Beckett depicted in his masterpiece "Waiting for Godot", where people speak, (thinking to one another) when in fact they are going around in repetitive circles around their egos and themselves, not knowing for sure what they are aiming at.

While some interpreted Godot as an imaginary creature, others thought it was God- and the book was classified (or at least in my school) as Theatre of the Absurd. But I saw it as starking reality, like nothing before. I felt the resemblance from the first page, to life as a whole (and my life in particular). The utter randomness we live in, which we like to deny through God, customs, traditions and other masks that make it easier for us to imagine that there is more to life than the crap we live through everyday. We can't simply imagine that this crap is actually life. The Good and the Bad. Just as it is.

For instance, coping mechanisms with life include what people "invented" since the pharaohs to make their lives for a purpose, such as heaven, hell, socially accepted patterns (e.g. a virtuous married couple with two children and a small car- can vary a little from one society to the other).

Not accepting these givens might be what pushed Hollywood filmmakers to make movies such as Fight Club or Revolutionary Road (in which I AM Kate Winslett's character in every sense of the word). With the Revolutionary Road, I was one of the very few that cried her heart out in the end because Winslett's unborn child of convention and ordinariness killed her. I was scared for myself. I don't want to end up living a life that is good in other people's eyes. My eyes are what matter.

End result is I thought that Birds of a Feather Flock Together, so I started focusing on finding birds of my feather, so we can express ourselves freely together, to whom I can speak about my dream guy and not hear a word about how his social status, bank account, religion, car, continent, how we meet, nothing. Or if I want to drink some nice cup of coffee in Ramadan, I don't have to hear a word about the fact that fasting is a truth beyond doubts (I wonder how people even think there is anything like a truth beyond doubt in life at all. Did no body else but me hear of Descartes? Everything is rebuttable).

"Ordinary" people can push you to act differently from how you would have in a more liberal society. For instance, if I don't feel like I have to fast, I don't drink or eat outside my house in Ramadan, which is wrong and stupid, because it is hypocritical and because without coffee, I wouldn't have had a personality whatsoever. But my nationality does not allow me to drink coffee for a whole month because people around me don't want me to. I don't wish to delve in the area of what you are allowed to do or not in terms of religion, as this is an extremely thorny topic. However, I just want to emphasize that people should be allowed to act as per their discretion, and in the end they will have their reward/punishment accordingly (if they believe it).

People are the offspring of the environment they were born into, the country, the language, the culture, the religion, the timing in history, and so on- I was born (and still live in) in Egypt, a country that I love with every sense of the word, and I don't have to lie about it (or about anything else in life). But, sadly, it is also a country that can squeeze the blood off your face if you live in it long enough, unless you fit the profile of the "Birds of a Feather" that I talked about earlier (in which I don't fit).

I have spoken a lot and in circles, but I really thought this article is the best introduction of me. It is difficult to engage with people when your concept of God, love, right and wrong, career, ethics, (you name it) is plain unique, unconventional and naively idealistic.

(ps. I don't believe that everyone is unique, I think there are a lot of sheep out there!!!!!!!

In my part of the world, "unconventional" is a bad word that people don't prefer to use to describe themselves, their thoughts, ideologies, (although they are surprisingly more comfortable with words like pragmatic, practical, pro-West, conservative, career-driven, ...). I understand their yearning for acceptance, but it only proves my point.

Don't think that I am done. Not even close.

Rania- from my own personal free platform...