Bab Al Hara's Um Josef
In its fifth season, Bab Al Hara has been established as a Ramadan tradition. I seem to have inadvertently started a series on the show and reasons people watch it, despite the fact that since the first season I have yet to accomplish the feat of actually watching a full episode. I do however catch the beginning with my post-iftaar coffee and knafa.
This year one of the most popular characters introduced is El Nimes, a comical flea-ridden trickster figure whose greetings have been turned into ringtones throughout the Arab world.
But as far as I am concerned, if there was any reason to watch Bab al Hara this year, it was Um Josef, another new character who has gone some way towards overturning criticism that the show only features vapid women in limited roles. A strong-willed, strong-minded, outspoken, and occasionally foul-mouthed midwife, she plays an instrumental role in helping the resistance and is clearly intended to represent unity and nationalism. This "avatar" element of her role is underscored by her Christian faith (she wears a big cross), and her fiery rallying words.
She is only just rescued from being too much of an avatar by a couple of wry sentences, and by the fact that she is played by Mona Wasef, one of a very limited number of Arab actresses who can actually act.
Um Josef is irreverent, she smokes, and she makes disparaging remarks about several of "the Men" - the same Men whose exploits carry the plot forward while the women are left to fill in the scenes with petty cat fights and picturesque housewifely chores of once upon a time.
Unfortunately, her presence (and her character's) couldn't quite keep Bab el Hara 4 from descending into a mire of cliches and melodrama and confusion. So much of Bab el Hara 4 was herding the viewer towards Bab el Hara 5, and so much effort was put into cliffhangers and creating new stories, that the current story made little sense.
Three-quarters of it was an improvement on last year, which was criticized for being nothing but a series of births, divorces and marriages. This year the show started off all political - the Hara challenged the French, which resulted in a seige (echoing the Gaza situation). However, after that crisis was resolved, new story lines and new characters multiplied, with no obvious function but to hook the audience for next Ramadan's show.
Not surprisingly, quite a lot of viewers have given up on the series, feeling that it has become little more than a money-making scheme. But for others, Um Josef is enough of an incentive to change their opinion that the Hara doors should close forever.
I just wish I could transplant her character into another story.
