Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 March 1999 Issue No. 422
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Libliba: A smile on every face

Profile by Fayza Hassan

Little Miss Motormouth is all grown up at last, but beautiful things still come in small packages

It is no easy matter to approach Libliba. She is a cautious lady. She never answers the telephone; nor, as a rule, does she return calls. It took a ruse and much cajoling to convince her to agree to an interview. She does not like journalists who pry into her life; personal matters are simply not for public consumption. "You will come alone," she told me finally. "I usually record what I say, and I want no photographers, please. You have to promise." Seeing that she would not relent, I had to agree, but, expecting an acute case of star-itis, it was with some trepidation that I rode the elevator to the eleventh floor of the large building in Giza where she lives with her mother. There were two names on the door of the apartment -- Nunia, which I guessed was her own real name, and then Libliba, her stage name, known to millions of Egyptians. The door handle was further decorated with a large bow of light pink satin.

She answered the door herself at once and, in the dark foyer, I was confronted with an impishly vivacious young woman who greeted me with such a bright smile that for a second I doubted that the prudent voice on the telephone had really been hers. She led me inside by the hand and proceeded to fuss as if I had been an old family friend come to visit. Where did I want to sit? Was this chair to my liking, or did I prefer the sofa? Would I like a chocolate? How did I drink my coffee? She virtually skipped toward the kitchen to prepare it herself. I heard her humming as soon as she had left the room. There were no tape recorders in sight and later she admitted that she was only fearful of people she did not like at first sight.

While she was gone, I took in the large living room, which overlooks one of the busiest streets in Cairo. Through the closed windows, the noise of the traffic was still audible, and the curtains were drawn in an attempt to stifle it as well as fight the polluting fumes. Comfortable, unpretentious family furniture belied the cute bow on the door. A wall unit displayed the television, a VCR, several books on music, cinema and theatre, and a few framed photos of Libliba as a child. More photos of her hung on the walls, some featuring her in various roles in cinema and television, others probably taken in a studio, and one, absolutely gorgeous, in which she was lying on the floor, wearing ballet tights and pink ballet shoes. She looked incredibly girlish in all her photos, almost a teenager, although one could tell that they had been taken fairly recently.

"I want to make people smile," says Libliba, but whether in jest or in earnest she has always managed to captivate

"You look so young," I couldn't help blurting as soon as she returned with the tray. She smiled gently at my indiscretion, fully aware that, as is the case with every Egyptian star, her approximate age is constantly being guessed at by the public. "Early nights, exercise and a regular diet does it," she giggled. "I walk six kilometres every day," she added. "Like this." Putting the tray down, she walked briskly around the living room, moving her arms like a child playing at being a soldier. "You have to pull on your stomach muscles all the time while you walk, otherwise the exercise is worthless," she instructed me. She exercises seven days a week. Mainly aerobics and ballet, as well as the walking, of course. She studied classical ballet as a child and never gave it up. She eats little, "usually standing up, and in small quantities". It sounds like torture. "I'm lucky," she admits. "I don't like sweet or spicy foods." She neither drinks nor smokes, is up and about at the crack of dawn, and goes to bed early. She lives -- and looks -- exactly like a little girl, I thought in amazement. But then, why should one be surprised? Libliba was one of the most famous child-stars of the Egyptian cinema. For most of her fans, that is what she will always be; they cannot imagine she ever grew up.

"My parents already had three children and wanted no more. My mother was definitely not overjoyed at the prospect of my birth," she told me, carefully pouring the coffee. "She was the artist in the family, she loved music and songs and the cinema." Actually, her mother was watching a movie when she went into labour. "Maybe this is why I became an actress," Libliba commented with a laugh, but hastened to add that she does not believe talent to be hereditary. Her eyes lit up as she recounted her early childhood, with a mother engrossed in music and obsessed with the songs of Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, whose records she played constantly. At the age of three, Libliba had memorised the words of all the popular songs of the day and could adapt steps of her own invention to any music. She was also prompt to mimic all her parents' friends. "Did you crave attention?" I wondered, bemused. "Let us say I was more than pleased to get it," she reflected. But it was more than simply wanting to find her place among her older siblings. As far as she can remember, all her attention -- her entire being, in fact -- was directed toward dance, music and the cinema. It never occurred to her that there could be a life in which they would not occupy pride of place.

"When I was three, my parents took me to see a sad movie. They were convinced that I would not understand a thing and my father, who was holding me in his lap, was extremely surprised to feel my tears on his hands." Her parents never left her at home alone and, at five, she accompanied them to an amateur gala at the Auberge des Pyramides. When she saw the lights and heard the music, she promptly climbed onto the table and began to perform. The members of the jury were so impressed, they gave her the first prize, although the other competitors were all adults. Cinema director Niazi Mustafa, who was on the jury, approached her parents. "I want this child," he said. A puzzled look appeared on her father's face, but Libliba's mother was ecstatic. "When do you want to see her?" she asked Niazi eagerly.

On the appointed day, her mother dressed her appropriately, tied a large bow in her hair and took her to Studio Nahhas. She immediately dazzled her audience with the clarity of her diction and the alacrity of her speech. "I could rattle off any number of words at top speed without ever making a mistake," she recalled. "Someone wanted to know my name and, when I told him it was Nunia, he said that it wasn't, that my name was Libliba [from labib: quick and intelligent]." The name stuck although, at the time, no one suspected that the day at Nahhas Studio would change the little girl's life.

"My mother was happy to see me feature in a film because she liked the cinema so much and would be able to boast to her friends about it, but never for a moment did she think that she was launching me on an artistic career. I would have my moment of glory and things would soon return to normal -- that was the way she saw it then." Libliba obviously thought differently. With that first film, she became famous overnight. For many years to come, she remained unchallenged in her role as the sassy little girl of the Egyptian stage and screen. Children and adults alike could never get enough of her impish look, her quips and the clever way she delivered each of her lines.

By the time she was 23, she had had enough. She no longer wanted to remain the enfant terrible of entertainment. She craved other roles which would call upon the reserves of talent she felt were welling up inside her. She could sing and dance; more importantly, she knew that she could act, yet directors were adamant in typecasting her. Libliba playing a tragic or even serious role was a contradiction in terms, they kept telling her; as both the movies and the plays in which she featured were always instant box office successes, they really had no desire to experiment. Without telling anyone, she began to shorten her encores at the theatre in the mistaken belief that the public would begin to forget her. She confided in her father: "I am becoming a little too old to play these childish roles." Her father's advice was to listen to her feelings, but her physical appearance proved unhelpful to her new endeavours. She still had the baby face and innocent eyes of a very young child. One cannot aspire to be a great tragedienne when one looks like a mischievous elf.

Her dreams did come true, of course, although when they finally did, Libliba was well into maturity. "For years I stubbornly refused little girl's roles, and just hoped and waited. I was sure that my day would come and I was preparing myself for it. Some day, I told myself, a director will take a second look and discover that beneath the juvenile appearance lies a full-fledged actress." The chance she was waiting for came in the guise of the director Atef El-Tayeb. "Whenever we met, I could feel his eyes following me, but he did not approach me for a long time. He just looked. I felt that he was weighing the possibilities." When he eventually made his move, it was to offer her the leading role in his film Layla Sakhena (One Hot Night). At first, Libliba was scared. "Are you sure?" she asked him, her thoughts in turmoil. When she read the script, she could not sleep. This was all she had hoped for, and more.

In Layla Sakhena, Libliba plays the part of a poor woman living with her younger sister in a populous part of Cairo. The landlord of the derelict building in which they live wants a large sum to make repairs, and the threat of eviction hangs over their heads. To raise her share of the money, Libliba accepts a one-night waitressing job in one of the Kit Kat houseboats, traditionally considered lairs of vice. This one is no different, and the young woman narrowly escapes harm. She turns to a harried taxi driver with problems of his own, played by Nour El-Sherif. Many adventures follow, in which Libliba is given ample opportunity to display her talent as a serious actress.

"You have to watch the film before really knowing me," she had told as I was leaving, presenting me with the video tape. "You know, when Atef El-Tayeb died, I cried for him as much as I had for my father. For the first time in my life I had doubts about my career. I have so much to give still, and he was the only one to know it. There were more films to come, he had promised, but after he died, I felt abandoned." She only regained confidence when Youssef Chahine gave her an important part in his latest film, Al-Akhar (The Other).

Later, I became completely engrossed as the events of that "hot night" unravelled. Clad in the clothes of the poor women of Cairo, or slipping into a cheap evening dress and blond wig to serve then dance for the drug dealers, Libliba was completely convincing, her performance compelling. The little darling of the screen had finally grown up. Her talent, glossed over for years by the sweet-but-sassy wunderkind audiences loved so much, bloomed. The film won 28 awards, of which she can claim four. "You know," she had told me, "in Cape Town, where I won the award for best actress, the members of the jury did not know who Libliba is in Egypt. They were seeing me for the very first time. The fact that they selected me unanimously convinced me that I have to go on."

Main photo: Mohamed Hegazi

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