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Flowers Bloom
By Amira Howeidy
For better or worse, Awan Al-Ward breaks all taboos
At last, the mystery of who kidnapped baby Ahmed Bekheet has been solved and we can all relax. But although the three-week long excitement of the TV drama Awan El-Ward (Flowers Bloom) is over, the controversy and hype surrounding it is still a hot topic of debate. Never before has any other Ramadan TV series garnered such national and international attention.
The main reason, of course, is the dialogue concerning Coptic-Muslim relations, which caused at least four Copts to file lawsuits against the Minister of Information to stop broadcasting the series.
But long before the press had caught on to the drama's controversial element, the public was already beginning to relate to other issues brought up in the plot.
Many unmarried viewers in their thirties immediately identified with Amal (played by superstar Youssra), a 33-year-old single career woman. "Awan Al-Ward addresses real social issues, our issues," a friend of mine told me. "At last there's a successful young and attractive woman who hasn't married yet because she simply hasn't found her match! I'm thrilled she's not an ugly stupid spinster," she cooed over the phone.
As it turned out, our state-run TV had something rather unprecedented to tell thirty-something "singletons" (the term is from the Bridget Jones books): 'don't feel pressured into marrying the first man who knocks on your door just because you feel you're growing old'.
After his first date with Amal, police detective Mahmoud (played by Hisham Abdel-Hamid) tells his friend that "it turns out that women over thirty are wonderful, humorous, lovely and very intelligent". And when Ahmed asks Amal why she hasn't yet gotten married, she replies that she simply hasn't yet found her match. The clear message here is that despite the widely popular conception otherwise, it should be normal for thirty-something-year-old woman in our society to be unmarried, regardless of economic or other socially-justified reasons.
Although these particular scenes from Awan El-Ward may now be long forgotten, for thousands, perhaps millions, of unmarried women who face the social pressure of having to find a husband, any husband, it was quite a relief to see a different point-of-view on prime time TV.
As Awan El-Ward progressed, almost everyone, not just the singletons, had something to say about it the next day. At first it was Youssra's "chic" and "extremely sexy" outfits. The scene where Nihal (played by Inas Mekki), Amal's friend, calls Ahmed while taking a bubble bath, had everyone in a tizzy. But it was Youssra's hot bikini that garnered the largest share of comments and criticism, triggering questions such as "Where was the censor?" Similarly, when Mahmoud's parents exchanged a dialogue implying that they were about to have sex, it drew more and more astonished exclamations of "Did you see that?" in homes and offices across the country.
No matter how unrealistic, provocative or offensive some of the scenes or dialogue in Awan El-Ward might have been, the show mirrored our fears, and attempted to break taboos, whether related to sex, religion or politics.
Being a state TV production, however, Awan El-Ward's most prominent message--and the reason for its production in the first place--was ultimately to reflect a definition of 'moderate' Islamic social values on one hand, and how Muslims and Copts should co-exist, on the other.
But as the series introduced an idealistic sense of national unity element into nearly all of the scenes and much of the dialogue, it was clear to everyone, both Muslims and Copts, that the exaggerated scenes of religious unity were both unrealistic and naïve.
The drama's scriptwriter, Wahid Hamid, has always been quite vocal about his role in "enlightening" the minds of Egyptians from what he calls "the thoughts of Islamic fundamentalist" groups. In Awan El-Ward the symbols of such "extremist" thought -- such as the beard and the niqab -- were presented within negative contexts, while symbols of secularism -- such as bikinis, wine and pre-marital sex -- were either presented as positive or simply normal. This resulted in both amazement and confusion as far as the public was concerned, as well as questioning regarding why and how such controversial issues were being addressed on state-run TV.
Information Ministry officials could argue that it's about time Egyptian TV gave its viewers what they want -- and what they already see on Arab and other satellite channels. "Doesn't everyone complain that our TV channels don't have any freedom? Well, it's all there in Awan El-Ward," argued a colleague at work who felt that the drama was just the first step towards "real freedom" in our state-run media.
But although I feel that only the private sector can achieve real freedom as far as TV broadcasting is concerned, we can't ignore the fact that the oft-criticized Arab satellite channels are putting a certain amount of pressure on the Information Ministry to change. And Awan El-Ward is only just the beginning.
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