The talented Mr Sobhi

Money and happiness don't always go together, Salonaz Sami finds

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Sobhi (centre) in Mama America

Through the years the ustaz, as fans like refer to Mohamed Sobhi - actor, director and writer - has managed to carve himself a special niche in Egyptian hearts. He is more than your average talent, you see: a man with a message, he has always had something to say to society, a rule to establish, a point to make. And his work resonates in ever wider socio-political spheres. He is reported to have taken an oath early on in his career never to be part of anything without substance. The oath has repeatedly got him into trouble, with his messages, though implicit, frequently generating controversy.

Mama America, a play; Ayesh fel ghaybouba (Living in a coma), a televised serial; Faris Bila Gawad (Horseless knight), another: these make up only a very small portion of his work but taken together, following the release of the latter, which reportedly if not obviously dealt with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they were sufficient rouse the US administration -- probably under the influence of the Zionist lobby -- to issue a formal request, through the Secretary of State, for the two million pound production to be taken off air while still running. The Egyptian government did not comply, but Sobhi was formally blacklisted as an anti-Semitic danger to global security and Holocaust denier - perhaps the weirdest crime in the history of humanity, and officially banned from entry to the United State. "It's an honour," he said in response, "to be an opponent of Zionism. It makes me proud to have defended not only 67 million Egyptians but 240 million Arabs. It honours me to have revealed the conspiracy against us all in this production." And proud he should be: he has not stopped producing art with a message.

Last year -- perhaps the authorities thought enough was enough, or feared a popular response - Ayesh fel ghaybouba was denied Ramadan air time, apparently because it tackled America in Iraq head on. This year Ragol Ghani Faqir Giddan (A very poor rich man) made it to the screen, but rumour had it that it would be his last; Sobhi has since denied any intention of retiring, however, explaining that he was indeed retiring but only from Egyptian TV, which he said mistreats his serials, interrupting them with two many advertisements and airing them at unpopular hours. This happened with Ayesh fel ghaybouba and other, previous works; it is unacceptable. The situation on satellite television was rather more encouraging, he said, and he would stick with them. And Ragol Ghani Faqir Giddan is worth worrying about - a very pleasant surprise by any standards. An eight million pound production, it is the story of Mahrous Mahfouz, a rich businessman who built his own industrial kingdom from scratch only to be conned into losing it to his rival Labib El Sehlwy, played by Ezzat Abu Ouf, who is barely recognisable as he appears for the first time without his usual toupe.

Mahfouz then moves out of his palace by the Nile to a small room on the roof of a building in a poor neighbourhood called El-Wadi El-Barrani, the outer valley, also overlooking the river, which he had bought with a view to turning into a five-star resort and so evacuating the residents. There too lives his secretary Raw'a, played by Wafa' Sadek, to whose name he has just transferred the land to avoid having it too confiscated when he is declared bankrupt. Raw'a is head over heals in love with Mahfouz, and as he beings to spend time with her and the neighbours the tycoon feels bad about having wanted to make them homeless for his own profit. Helping them would be a far greater reward, in fact. Mahfouz doesn't give up, and even though it turns out El-Wadi El-Barrani has subterranean water and is unfit for construction - it is worth not a penny of the LE15 million he paid for it, and there is nothing Raw'a can do to retrieve the money for him - he decides to write his autobiography in the belief that it will sell for millions of pounds, especially when it is made into a movie. The delusions of a millionaire without a penny in his pocket? Well, Mahfouz begins to dictate his life story to Raw'a and Barakat, his business manger and loyal friend, played brilliantly by Mohamed Abu Dawoud, a regular in Sobhi's productions. And as he narrates his life, the viewers are taken by surprise as one fascinating episode follows another, and another.

Sobhi described the serial as a connect-the-dots exercise in which viewers are expected to use their minds to make sense of the whole. "And that is exactly what makes th ustaz so special," one 25-year-old viewer, Rasha Abdel-Kerim, declares, adding that she always takes notes during his serials, revising them and arriving at new conclusions at the end of each episode. "Because it's never immediately obvious what's going on - there is always something deeper, something beyond." Issues tackled in the course of Ragol Ghani Faqir Giddan - all current - include the drowning of the Sallam 98 ship, bird's flu, mad cow disease and train accidents. In time Raw'a is engaged to Mahfouz, in time she discovers - to her amazement as well as his - that as well as his Egyptian son and daughter he has a Russian son and a Japanese daughter; Mahfouz was married three times. They are fast turning into arrogant, money-seeking, self-centred little tycoons while Mahfouz himself becomes a gentle, caring human being. As Raw'a says of him, Mahfouz is a bundle of contradictions, a man with every good quality and its opposite in equal proportions. He is as kind as he is cruel and as honest as he is a liar. According to Sobhi, the story is social, political and economic commentary presented in a comic guise.

And perhaps its main point, ultimately, is the disappearance of the Egyptian middle class, which according to Sobhi was squashed between the upper and lower classes. "We only have those who are filthy rich and those who are terribly poor. If we learned to give, our society will be heaven on earth." The serial was produced by the Production Sector of the Egyptian Television after Sobhi against the Media Production City, where art, he says, is treated as a commodity. The shooting of the episodes, which mostly took place in Sobhi's Sonbol City on the Alexandria desert highway, was interrupted first by the death of Sobhi's brother Magdy in a car crash on his way home from the set, and then by the sudden illness and death of his mother. Ragol Ghani Faqir Giddan is not broadcast on national television but on the Mihwar satellite channel, because the former prioritises advertising. A sad fact, Sobhi added, because it is good shows that bring in the greatest number of ads and hence more money, in spite of everything.