The art of dodging
Nehad Selaiha joins the khalabees at the gallery of Al-Hanager
The word Al-Khalabees (plural of khalbous) which gives the current show at Al-Hanager its name may sound thoroughly colloquial and suggest an Ancient Egyptian line of descent. But dictionaries like Lisan Al-Arab and Al-Mu'jam Al-Waseet assure us that as a noun of the verb khalbasa (meaning to escape or fly away), it is pedigree classical Arabic. The word is used by El-Gabarti in his history of Egypt, which covers the period from 1775 to 1821, to refer to troupes of itinerant entertainers, similar to Al- Mehabazeen or Mehabazateyah (from the verb tahbee', of unknown origin since neither of the two dictionaries mentioned above list it), who are hired to perform on festive occasions, both private and public. The difference between el- khalabees and el-mehabazeen, according to folklore specialists, is that the former mix acting with singing in their shows while the latter combine it with acrobatic feats. This makes sense since the noun khalbous, according to Al-Waseet, refers to a bird "smaller than a sparrow or a warbler and of the same colour". One, however, is tempted to think of the implications of the verb khalbasa and assume that the name khalabees carried with it the stigma of social marginalisation and always having to dodge the authorities and fly away. Indeed, in current colloquial usage, khalbous as an epithet is used to describe a crafty, slippery dodger, regardless of the quality of 'his' voice. Curiously, it is never applied to women or used with a feminine declension; the reason, perhaps, is that acts which are rated as khalbasa, whether in acting or real life, were restricted to the public sphere and, therefore, performed or committed by men.
In the course of his research into indigenous forms of popular entertainment and theatrical phenomena in Egypt, playwright Sayed Mohamed Ali (who by the way is the nephew of the writer and dramatist Youssef Idris) stumbled upon el- khalabees and was intrigued by descriptions of their performances. As an experiment, he decided to revive their art and enlisted the help of Abdel- Rahman El-Shaf'i, a talented and seasoned theatre director who has dedicated his whole life to the folk performing arts and a master craftsman with a wonderful knack for infusing his work, however complex and sophisticated, with a disarming feel of spontaneity and raw, even crude vitality.
For material Ali scoured the countryside in the company of his twin brother, composer Shukry Mursi, in search of stories, tunes and lyrics. In Kafr Al-Shurafa, a small village near the Mohamed Ali barrages, he found two old legends which captured his imagination. The first tells how once upon a time all the males in the village performed the Friday prayers on a Wednesday for some mysterious reason. Like that other famous story which tells how the population of the town of Zaqaziq upon hearing that the train was going to pass though their town for the first time decided to invite "him" to lunch, the Kafr Al- Shurafa legend is generally regarded by the locals as a bad, offensive joke and a slur on their reputation. By questioning the village elders, Ali discovered that the reason behind those untimely Friday prayers long ago was to elude the tax collector by deluding him into thinking they had already paid.
The other legend Ali found tells of a long feud between the two biggest families in the village triggered by a dispute over burial ground. Eventually, the two families ended up with more bodies than they could find enough land to bury them in. Out of this material and the many lyrics and tunes he and his brother collected, Ali created a meta-theatrical text which features a troupe of khalabees entertaining the guests at the wedding of the son of a village omda with a string of comic sketches interspersed with solo and choral songs and dances.
The scenes follow each other like music hall numbers and are linked by the three khalabees (the richly endowed Aida Fahmi, the tall and wiry Zein Nassar and short and burly Sami Maghawri) with lots of costume-changing, done on stage, in full view of everybody, and plenty of improvisation and boisterous verbal exchanges with the audience who are encouraged to join in the singing and clap in tune with the live folk band and singers. The tenuous narrative line which is supposed to link the two Kafr Al-Shurafa stories consists of a prophecy of the imminence of doomsday spread through the village, which explains the feverish rush to secure graves and the quarrels and hard bargaining over them. It becomes increasingly flimsier as it gets frequently interrupted by the objections of the gullible and officious omda's guard and head watchman (Magdi El-Seba'i) who often takes what is acted for real or, in his zeal to display his loyalty to his master, suspects the khalabees of making subversive political allusions and veiled ironical remarks directed at his boss.
Though the imaginary setting is always Kafr Al- Shurafa and the attempt to merge the two original stories is limply pursued, they remain ultimately separate, with the scenes bouncing from one to the other in a seemingly haphazard manner. In the process the temporal order becomes utterly jumbled with sudden leaps between the imaginary past and present of Kafr Al-Shurafa and between those fictional times and real time -- the actual present time of the performance.
This sloppy handling of the play's temporal order and messing up of linear narrative progression is deliberate and part of the experiment since, according to folklore expert Rushdi Saleh, folk narration usually disposes of plot in the modern realistic sense, ie, as an orderly temporal progression of causally linked events, and is constituted by two alternating processes: accumulation and digression. Indeed, at one point, the khalabees themselves become confused by the constant leaping between the two stories, are at a loss how to end them and curse their luck for having no author to consult or take to task.
In print, Al-Khalabees would make little sense dramatically or as a logical narrative and it isn't meant as either. Like any commedia dell'arte, it was written as a provisional script to be developed and filled in later by the director and actors. Which is what happened. Abdel-Rahman El-Shaf'i told me that he worked on the script with Ali, removing over 30 pages, adding bits of dialogue here and there and a few scenes, arranging the musical interludes and creating calculated gaps for the actors to bring their imagination into play and force them to adlib on the spur of the moment. It was hard work, he confesses, much harder than working with a straightforward text. But it is what he prefers to do and would opt for at any time. And it worked. The experiment has proved a roaring success, drawing big audiences even on evenings when important football matches were broadcast live on television.
Though the stage of Al-Hanager was free and available, El-Shaf'i decided to use the art gallery and pitch a tent there where the actors could be in close proximity with the audience and on the same level as them. Ideally, he would have liked to seat his audience around the performance space on all sides, as is the case in all the popular performances which come under the loose rubric of al-samar al-sha'bi -- his primary source of inspiration as well as that of the author, composer (Shukri Mursi), set and costume designers (Ibrahim El-Fao and Wisam Adel), actors and folk musicians and singers. But since the gallery is rectangular in shape he had to give up this plan and, to make up for the loss of intimacy which the arena stage guarantees, he planted his omda -- a ridiculous scarecrow bedecked with ribbons, medals and an enormous straw hat -- and his guard among the audience and virtually annulled the space separating the actors from the first row. Sitting there, you could easily touch the actors if you stretched your hand and at moments feel their breath on your face.
For this kind of show performers, in the past, had to undergo long and arduous training which started in childhood. The sense of security enjoyed by actors in regular stage pieces where plot and dialogue are eternally fixed and every movement and gesture, every pitch and inflection of the voice are decided by a meticulously detailed directorial design and carefully rehearsed beforehand, is a luxury those old, wandering performers never knew. The choice of actors here, even in the minor parts, was, therefore, of crucial importance. In this type of performance they are the ones who ultimately decide if it will sink or float. They had to be inventive, resourceful, quick-witted, with a talent for improvisation at a moment's notice and enough versatility to slip in and out of as many as more than a dozen parts in the space of an hour and a half. In other words, they had to be real dodgers with plenty of presence and the capacity to engage the audience into active participation.
The trio of khalabees who led and orchestrated the show had all of this and brought to the show an extra bonus; their vitality and joie de vivre were overpowering and seemed to spread through the tent like a dazzling, roaring flame. They flitted around, infecting everybody with their irrepressible energy, mingling with the singers, musicians and audience in a breath-taking kaleidoscope of images, colours and sounds, hopping blithely across vast temporal spaces without ever losing sight of the present, its sorrows and impending disasters, but all the time sharpening our appetite for life, joy and laughter and, above all, giving us hope and solace.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 19 - 25 December 2002 (Issue No. 617)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/617/cu4.htm