WATANI International
1 August 2010
Cinema gains a lot from cooperating with literature. Films based on literary texts are literally “creation inspired by creation”. It is this buildup of creation that makes the finished product such a pleasure to watch.
Assafeer al-Nil (Birds of the Nile) is one such film. Based on the novel of the same name by Ibrahim Asslan, the events take place in the world of the socially marginalised, seen through the light blue sheen of the Nile, the location of most of the scenes. The story opens among the people of the underprivileged neighbourhood of Fadlallah Osman, among them Sayed al-Bahi (played by Mahmoud al-Guindi in one of his best roles) and his wife Nargis (Dalal Abdel-Aziz).
Bahi works as an employee in the Post Authority. He manages to secure a job for his brother-in-law Abdel-Rehim (Fathi Abdel-Wahab) in the same authority. Abdel-Rehim moves from the country to live with his sister and her husband in the capital. Although he now works in the city, Abdel-Rehim still carries inside himself the simplicity of the countryside and the naivety of an agricultural worker, and this leads him to act spontaneously in any given situation.
Bird on the hook
Abdel-Rehim goes to the banks of the Nile to fish using a very long fishing rod. Instead of catching a fish, a bird is caught as he flings his rod. The symbolic scene expresses the feelings of some of today’s young people who fish for illusion, probably using the wrong tool.
As so many young men who came to the Cairo from the countryside before him, Abdel-Rehim is drawn by the magic mix of the capital’s chaotic life and quick rhythm. He becomes captivated by a charming young woman, Basima (Abeer Sabri), but she leaves him when she finds out he does not intend to marry her because of her reputation as an indecent woman. He embarks on several relationships with women, loses his job, and altogether succumbs to the chaos around him. Finally, he settles down to life in his old job with the Postal Authority and marries, in the traditional way, someone he has met before.
All these scenes are flashbacks to incidents that Abdel-Rehim remembers much later in life, when he meets Basima by pure chance in a hospital. She has cancer, while he is there to be treated for a serious kidney infection. They decide to marry and, in one of the most poignant scenes in the film, Abdel-Rehim insists on giving her a wig because she lost her beautiful black hair.
One scene particularly illustrates the bitterness of poverty; when Abdel-Rehim greedily eats part of an apple that had accidentally fallen in some gasoline. When he offers his sister half of it, she immediately stops after the first bite and, aghast, tells him it tastes of gasoline, “how can you eat it?” she asks. He simply replies: “This is the first time I eat an apple; I thought it tasted that way!” Apples are more or less a delicacy in Egypt.
Writing complaints
Many sub-plots come together, as when Bahi first draws his pension and finds he is not getting his full rights. He struggles on, but keeps writing useless complaints. His son joins demonstrations by the political opposition and the police detain him more than once.
These stories about people who are weak and poor bring to the viewer’s mind the bird seen hanging from the hook at the beginning of the film. These are young people who suffer from poverty and need; unemployed, they hang on any ‘hook’ or ‘illusion’ because their painful reality makes them unable to fly to the future.
The film touches on numerous social indicators and an in-depth analysis of it may take pages and pages. A major drawback to the film, however, is that there were too many sexually explicit shots, perhaps because sex is the only ‘freedom’ accessible to the young. Overall, however, director Magdi Ahmed Ali must be applauded for such a rich film.