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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Doreid Laham:
The tragedy of laughter
Profile by Nadia Abou El-Magd
This comedian made his name by addressing very serious issues. He is a vocal critic of Arab regimes and their shortcomings -- but insists this is not politics
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters For over 30 years, Doreid Laham has been addressing the Arabs' problems and concerns through comic films and plays. Why is comedy his medium of choice when it comes to addressing such serious issues as Arab disunity, alienation, repression or bureaucracy? "I believe comedy conveys ideas to the brain through the heart. Comedy makes the audience psychologically ready to accept messages, it creates an atmosphere of intimacy," says Laham in his measured, deep tones. Is he a bit shy? "A lot." He does not look up. "I fear meeting people, especially journalists. It is a big responsibility, I care about my image and my relations with people, so I'm always filled with trepidation."
For such a funny man, he certainly is serious. Seriousness dominates his personality and his daily life, except at home, with his grandchildren. Only then is he closer to the character audiences across the Arab world know and love.
A cigarette in his hand, Laham is ready to talk about 40 years of acting. Only then will I hear about his new role, as UNICEF's ambassador for children in the Middle East and North Africa. He starts, typically, by talking about the unsuccessful parts, like that of a girl (this was a university production) confronted with the news that her father has been wounded in the war. Laham shrieked dutifully; the audience burst out laughing. "I guess I did well, but the role didn't," he smiles.
Many years later, someone said that when Doreid Laham laughs, he makes you cry; and when he cries, you laugh. Laham himself believes that happiness and sadness are two sides of a single coin. "Laughing is like crying; they are one emotion," he was once quoted as saying.
After his tragi-comic debut, Laham knew he had fallen in love with acting. He left his job teaching chemistry at the Syrian University and became a professional actor in 1960, although he still considers himself "an amateur". His first role on Syrian TV was also a bit of a flop: it was about a Spanish musician, and it taught him that people identify with their indigenous heritage.
His first popular role, especially among children, was Ghawar, a stock character from Damascene folklore. "It was not a profound character, but it developed depth with time. It reached maturity in the play Ka'sak Ya Watan (Cheers to the Nation) in 1979.
The turning point in Laham's life, and consequently in his career, came in 1967, however. "I was 33 then. Just four hours on 5 June: this was enough for me to discover that I had spent 33 years living a lie." Arab soldiers returned from the war with the defeat they had carried with them to the battlefield, he believes. Since then, Laham began to believe that art should play a role in national causes, should provoke people. This does not mean, however, that art "should call for a coup d'état, because art is not the police or the army".
Still, art can generate drastic changes in the long run. "The change may take centuries, though. The children of the Intifada in Palestine were not the generation who experienced the 1948 War or the 1967 defeat, but the fourth of fifth generation. I like to believe that my art is contributing to that change." In 1967, he staged a play called Ghorba (Alienation), which portrays the journey from feudalism, socialism and totalitarianism, to emigration and alienation without anything changing at all. In 1969, Laham established the Theatre of Thorns, which presented his most famous plays: notably, Day'at Teshreen (October's Village) and Ka'sak Ya Watan. The latter, he says, is about "the death of the relation between citizens and their country".
A serious child: Doreid Laham is honoured in March 1999 at the Festival for Children's Film in Cairo. Above, with Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni; bottom, a moment of triumph
Who is responsible for the murder? It could be anything, Laham believes: "A man, a leader, an attitude... I'm not going to elaborate". In Shaqa'iq Al-No'man (Anemones, 1987), the past is mixed with the future and the living with the dead. No sooner are anemones uprooted from the ground than they die -- much like the Arabs, according to him, when they are uprooted from their land.
Laham insists, however, that those are national, not political plays. "I don't understand, talk, practice or like politics. In fact, I hate politics; but I love Syria and the Arab world. Is that politics? Loving my country is like loving God, or my mother." In Laham's work, however, Al-Watan -- the nation or homeland -- is also death. "No matter how you try to escape from your country, it will follow you. It is part of you, like death."
The nation is also both a storehouse of memories and a relationship. Even when the relationship breaks down, and the physical link is severed, even then, the memories remain. Laham, the chemistry professor, believes that a nation is not geography but history, past and future.
"I am not so naive as to claim that Israel does not exist. But in the absence of equilibrium -- not only a strategic balance, but also one of civilisations -- neither war nor peace is possible." When will equilibrium be reached? "When every Arab citizen can accuse an official of corruption, when officials start respecting the traffic signs..." Still, Laham says he will never visit Israel, even if the Golan Heights are returned to Syria. "I'm not against peace, but I'm not prepared to forget just because a few papers are signed. My generation has been through a lot of pain and suffering. Maybe things will be different for my grandchildren."
Syrian nationalist thought has influenced Laham, but "it would seem that freedom of thought in the Arab world means the absence of thought," he says with a flash of the biting sarcasm for which he is known. Nor is Laham a Nasserist: he believes in principles, not people, he insists.
Egyptian audiences became more familiar with Laham's work when his famous film Al-Hudoud (The Borders, 1984) opened the Cairo International Film Festival that year. The response was so overwhelming he broke down and cried, telling viewers: "I came to Cairo calling for the elimination of borders from people's minds and hearts. The borders inside us are more problematic than those on the ground and, when they are eradicated, those on the ground will start to disappear". Al-Hudoud is the account of a personal experience; Laham, who was once stuck in the no-man's land between Syria and Lebanon, addresses the "artificial" borders that separate the Arab countries. This, his 18th movie, is his most successful, besides being his first experience directing.
When the film was screened, the late Ahmed Bahaaeddin wrote in his daily column: "Doreid Laham is the most important comedian in the Arab world, with all due respect to all Egyptian actors. He is both very skilled and very cultured".
In Al-Taqrir (The Report, 1986), Laham took on other titans: social justice, values and bureaucracy in the Arab countries. Here as elsewhere, he used symbolism to escape the censor's steely eye. Some critics saw this as a way out, a means of avoiding a direct confrontation they would have considered more honourable. "This is my nature" he says, shrugging. "I guess this is our problem as Arabs: we collide physically instead of intellectually."
Laham has said more than once that the Arab media is committing a grave mistake by dealing with children "as somehow inferior beings, without taking their intelligence into account". He produced nothing for children until the end of the '80s: with Kafroun, he re-lived and revealed his childhood. Then he made Al-Abaa' Al-Sighar (Young Parents), about his struggle as a young boy to support his family. Laham was the seventh of 10 children, all of whom slept in one room. He first slept in a bed as an adult. All the children had to work every day after school to help their father, a coal vendor. Laham worked as a carpenter, a blacksmith, an ironing man, a tailor, a clothes vendor and carrier. It is to this harsh existence that he attributes his stature: "I'm only 165 cms tall," he explains earnestly.
Despite the poverty he has experienced, however, Laham believes that the children of his generation were happier than those of today. "At least we used to dream, we looked forward to tomorrow. I think today's children are not eager for tomorrow to come because, we, the grownups, are afraid of the future." Laham recounts the smallest details of his childhood without bitterness: there is only satisfaction and pride in his voice. "My illiterate mother didn't teach us envy. She said life is not a stroke of luck, she told us we could make our own luck by working hard, and we did." He considers her "the most cultured woman in the world".
Culture and civilisation are essential themes in Laham's conversation. He believes a real artist must have ethics and principles, culture, and talent, in that order. He considers himself not so much a cultured man as one engaged in an endless process of learning. Modesty, like timidity, is a characteristic. "Civilisation means morals, not telephones, fax machines, cars, and computers," he says angrily.
At the peak of his success, in 1993, Laham suddenly announced he would be leaving the theatre. One of the reasons: "The big issues had collapsed. They had become a mirage. Addressing them on-stage no longer elicits applause but cynicism. It is considered pathetic". Still, he remains a staunch believer in Arab unity; after all, he is still the child who recited every morning at school: "All the Arab countries are my nation, and all the Arabs are my brothers". Even if Arab unity is a dream, he insists, it should not be eliminated for all that.
Laham the dreamer has been married three times. He has three children and seven grandchildren, with whom he spends his happiest times. "I keep telling my children and grandchildren to invent a dream and dream it," he smiles. Perhaps it is his talent with children that motivated UNICEF to take him on. "I think they chose me to help Arab children dream," he agrees. "I have a crazy desire to mobilise children to become an active force in the issues that concern them. The question is how."
Laham is preparing a movie and TV series about children's rights. He is also willing to return to theatre, if earnings from his plays are used to fund children's projects. He has been UNICEF's representative in Damascus since 1972 and its ambassador for children's affairs in the Middle East and North Africa since May 1999.
Doreid Laham: actor, director, ambassador. He is also called "the Gandhi of Arab cinema", and "the philosopher of laughter", but he squirms in dismay: those titles, he protests, are bigger than he is. He identifies with Woody Allen, "even in the way we look. He acts out what he believes in, and searches in himself".
Perhaps Doreid Laham is also a child himself. "Sometimes, yes," he says almost grimly: "A five-year-old child, a serious, a revolutionary child".
photo: Randa Shaath
