Alfred Mikhail:

Holding the secrets

People say the puppet is just an image. He says it is a movement. That is the difference

Profile by Fatemah Farag

His family came from the small town of Manfalout in the southern governorate of Assiut. Alfred himself was born in Cairo and brought up in the then middle-class suburb of Helwan. As a young boy, he stood out as a good sportsman. "I liked swimming and body building, then, when I entered the Faculty of Commerce in 1956, I joined the rowing team, and the next year I won the national championship." He points out the dock where his team kept their boats. His athletic past has left its mark. Despite partial paralysis, Alfred will not accept assistance up and down difficult stairs and cuts a slim and dashing figure.

As for the puppets, they came along later, by chance. "As a student I worked part time at the Ministry of Interior on the national project to issue personal IDs. My boss knew of my interest in acting and, when he saw an ad in the paper for an exam to choose actors for the Egyptian puppet theatre that was about to be established, he encouraged me to go and apply. I had never even seen a puppet." In a frenzy to catch up on the subject, Alfred tried to read texts about popular puppet theatre written by Ibn Daniel in the twelfth century -- during the two days before the exam. "I could not understand a thing and decided to play it by ear."

On the day that was to change his life, Alfred turned up at the Opera House where auditions were to be held and watched those who were called in before him in an attempt to figure out what to do. "The first thing we had to do was a pantomime and then a small sketch. Everyone clapped when I was finished," he chuckles, adding: "I always liked and excelled in things that I was not formally studying or working on."

Excel he did. Alfred was at the top of the list of those chosen to be the first students of modern puppetry in Egypt. He remembers his pioneer colleagues fondly. "There was Na'ima Mustafa, who died recently, and Salah El-Saqqa, Ibrahim Ali Salem, Ahmed Abdou, Ibrahim Ragab, Antar Hafez, and Salah Abdel-Hayy. Have you got all those names straight?" he asks as he bends over my notebook to make sure himself.

At the time, the Ministry of Culture had commissioned two Romanian puppeteers who were part of the famous Sandrika troupe to stay on in Egypt after their tour and train this new group of Egyptian artists. One in particular was to have a great influence on Alfred: Dorina Tanasescu. "She told me I was meant to be a puppet artist. She made it clear that, if I was to become a true artist, I must concentrate on the puppet. That is when I gave up rowing."

The first day Alfred held the puppet is etched clearly on his memory. "The four main strings which hold the body of the puppet are attached to a wooden cross which you control. I watched others hold it and get all sweaty and worried, fumbling with the apparatus. I thought to myself: Why let it control me? It is my hand, and I will do as I will." The slender fingers are up in the air again, moving the imaginary wooden cross. He looks at them thoughtfully and muses: "I was always good with my hands. You know, sewing and carpentry. We were a middle-class family and we did a lot for ourselves." The hands make scissors and hammer movements to drive the point home.

After that, puppets were to become his passion -- one to which he has given much thought. The late entry of modern puppetry into Egypt created a problem of definition. "There is a problem with the language," points out Alfred heatedly, "the puppet is called arousa -- a doll. But a doll is just something you play with. A puppet is an actor. Aragoz (the traditional puppet of popular street theatre) is probably the best equivalent, but is not used." This is not small talk as far as Alfred is concerned. "I am the only one who talks about the definition of the puppet. People say the puppet is just an image. I say it is a movement, and that is the difference between it and other art forms."

It is a theory he put to the test early on in his career. "For our first project after completing the initial training session, I was requested to act Abdel-Motteleb in a separate sketch and the donkey of El-Shater Hassan in another. I added movable eyebrows to Abdel-Motteleb and made the donkey scratch the cardboard grass. It was these movements which gave life to the characters -- which left the audience in stitches." After this debut Alfred was chosen as one of three to go on for further directing courses. When these were over, it seemed the whole puppetry phase was finished.

"In 1960, I had graduated and been assigned to the Ministry of Industry through the Bureau of Manpower. They turned me into an electricity bill collector and my beat extended from here up to the Imbaba Bridge." He points the distance out to me, but smog is in the way. "One day I was taking the metro from my house to work and I met Soliman Fayyad [a prominent writer of adult and children's fiction]. He said to me, 'Alfred, where have you been? The television is looking for you!'. I never went back to the Ministry of Electricity. Not that day. Not ever."

Alfred was called in to establish the Department of Puppetry at the newly established Maspero building. To get the project started, he contacted friends such as poet Salah Jahin and puppet artist Rahmi. The department was soon to employ 18 members and the first programme to be aired was Kalila Wa Dimna. "We had a children's programme and three specialised programmes for adults. A lot of what we did was social criticism. For example, there was a sketch about Charlie Chaplin who is hungry and searching for something to eat. Then a woman in a fancy house throws her garbage out the door and Chaplin runs after the can and throws himself into it with his feet sticking out over the top. There was an acceptance of material which criticised social injustice -- it was the '60s."

Alfred's feelings towards the Free Officers' take-over and the populist regime of the '50s and '60s resembles the progressive view common to many of his generation. On the one hand, there is admiration and enthusiasm, on the other bitterness -- almost a feeling of betrayal. "I went to visit my friends at the Qanater prison. They would stamp people who came for visits with a red stamp. At that time, they had just started stamping carcasses at the slaughter house with red. I got angry and said to them: Are we dead meat?"

He looks at me intently, dissatisfied with his comments. "You know... I dreamt it would bring freedom, and justice, and democracy." Again, words seem to fail him. Instead he recounts his one face-to-face encounter with Nasser. "He came to the theatre and, after the show, he insisted on shaking hands with the artists. When I stepped out he extended his arms and came towards me. I was transfixed by his eyes. I will never forget them... so alive."

Alfred's success in establishing the puppet department prompted the Kuwaiti government to ask him to do the same in 1967. He only stayed on for three months, however, and, when he came back, it was time to move on and start something else -- making documentary movies. In 1968, he was made head of the documentary film department at Maspero. "My first was a movie called the Small Magician, where the stars came out to tell stories. Then I did one called Egypt: The Canal, which was awarded best film by the Film Association in 1975."

Alfred's last movie -- Opera Aida -- was completed in 1988 and won the State Incentive Award for direction.

Before retiring from state television in December 1993, Alfred was the general director of the documentary movies division in the production sector.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. In 1977, Alfred went to Paris to study for a PhD at the Sorbonne. By then, he had begun intensive study of the history of puppet theatre in Egypt. "I remember I bought Ali El-Ra'i's book, Al-Comedia Al-Murtagala (Improvisation Comedy), published by Dar Al-Hilal, for 10 piastres. I owe this man a lot of what I know. Then there was Ibn Daniel, who came to Egypt from Iraq and started the art of shadow puppetry. The first Egyptian scripts, however, were written by Ya'qoub Sannou'. Sannou' developed characters which have remained the mainstay not only of puppetry, but of theatre and cinema as well. I chose five of these for my PhD thesis."

He completed his degree in 1981. Alfred's stay in Europe was not all academic, however. He took his puppets and ideas and toured all over Europe. "I had this routine in which I would explain to people about the puppet first and how it all worked and then go behind the screen and do the show. It started with the Chopin Serenade and ended with a belly dancer sketch," he recalls. There was also a political message about the Arab-Israeli conflict and resistance to Camp David. Alfred prefers not to dwell on that.

It was in Paris, too, that he became partially paralysed, making even his puppetry a painful ordeal. "When I am behind the puppet, I can forget myself. Even the pain of the paralysis."

Perhaps it was this experience that led Alfred to adopt the idea of the mentally ill using puppets to express their problems and ideas. The idea was first tested in Paris. "I remember a man who refused to talk and then, with just a few scraps of material which I showed him how to turn into a doll, he started to express himself. His doll was that of a coffee-shop owner who talked all the time. There was a woman who was from a very conservative background and very uptight herself. She always turned her doll into an extremely lewd prostitute. You see, puppets are direct and honest and have the ability to go deep into the human soul. Remember the original doll to which you gave all your secrets. The puppet is not only that holder of secrets, but the one capable of pulling them up to the surface."

When he came back to Egypt, Alfred approached psychiatrists with his ideas and actually started helping patients at a private hospital. "It did not last long," is all he will say.

A young doctor at the same hospital confirmed the positive effects of the therapy. "It is a good idea but it takes time and patience. That goes against the logic by which most hospitals are run," shrugs the doctor, however.

Undaunted, Alfred then began to promote the idea of the use of puppets in community development. He worked in Upper Egypt, where he gave training courses through CARITAS, a Catholic NGO, to young villagers on how to make puppets and use them to convey ideas regarding health and social awareness.

As to the state of the art in which he is a pioneer, Alfred is hesitant. Good developments are taking place, of course, but then the "music and script sometimes detract attention from the action of the puppets. Maybe it is because there is no one to instil ideas regarding the importance of the puppet itself."

But then, why is no one listening to the old master? Where has that limelight gone? These are questions which Alfred answers with silence. Does the silence signify bitterness? "Disappointment -- not bitterness. Everything I have touched has turned into success, and then turned against me," he says and a shadow is cast across his solemn face.

There are many words that cannot be said, yet hang in the air between us. His hands lie quietly on the table. Maybe a puppet would be able to fill the void.