In progress:
Healthy scenes
On graduating from the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Mohamed Refaat, now 31 years of age, found employment as a physician in the Radio and Television Union, where he still practises. His interest in the media growing, the connections he forged eventually allowed him to present popular health shows, while an early penchant for literature found expression in script writing for television and, more recently, film. Refaat has also performed minor roles in several TV productions.
Now that I have completed the film script I've been working on, I've been as busy as ever with the programme, Yom Wara Yom (Day After Day). There is a tremendous sense of relief, and a newfound joy in doing my TV work, which is deeply satisfying in that it combines my interest in medicine with the conversational and social entanglements of hosting a television talk show. Script writing is a much more complicated task, and not only from the intellectual standpoint. For one thing the people you are committed to are famous and exacting. It's been an extremely exhausting process, but perhaps even more rewarding. I think if not for the success of the programme, though, I wouldn't have had the courage to resume and expand my script writing activities.
One particularly positive aspect of the programme is that the moral reward is very tangible, with an unexpectedly large number of people benefiting from the medical information with which Yom Wara Yom provides them. It had never occurred to me that a health show could plunge somebody into relative fame, but people would stop me on the streets to comment the programme. And the only reason I can think of is that they found it genuinely useful. It is interesting that I ended up doing this kind of work, because despite thinking of medicine as my vocation I had always entertained an interest in the arts.
I started writing very early on, and some of my earliest pieces reflect this drive to translate otherwise dry and abstract scientific information into something straightforward and easily understood. Nor did I ever think of medicine as entirely dry, it is rather an aspect of everyday life that everyone should be familiar with. The programme, you could say, is my own contribution to realising the aim of simplifying and popularising essential medical facts.
The story goes back to my days as a medical student when I first encountered Al-Ilm wal-Iman (Science and Belief), the famous programme presented by Mustafa Mahmoud, who explored the wonders of science from an enlightened religious perspective. It was my first encounter with science presented in popular, compelling form. And it was then that I began to think that medicine too could be presented in the same way -- and perhaps to more practical ends.
Writing, on the other hand, goes even further back. When they realised I enjoyed creative writing, my mother and father were encouraging. I started learning the Qur'an by heart at the age of seven, and my memory of primary school is infused with the constant compulsion to read -- and write. Even my initial choice of career reflected this: before I discovered medicine, I wanted to be a journalist. I think it wasn't merely writing but interaction with people that informed this desire -- and it's a desire that's been realised in my current professional life.
At university I started producing plays and short stories. I even published a collection of poetry. I had made a group of like-minded friends who were pleased with my work and they were the first to encourage me to write scripts. On graduating I thought of enrolling at the cinema institute but the pressures of medical studies combined with all my literary activities had taken its toll and I was obliged to think about money. More importantly, though, I thought I could learn independently. Unlike science, artistic disciplines rely to far greater extent on personal drive and creative initiative. Eventually I produced a televised serial of 30 episodes, which I set about marketing single-handedly. I can't deny that my television connections helped, but if not for determination and perseverance it wouldn't have been produced.
My encounter with the world of movie- making was probably, in some sense, anticlimactic, because there turned out to be far less dissipation and far more hard-edged discipline than I had thought. Fortunately I did not enter the film arena until I was already, in my own way, a media figure. And my connection with the media is different to that of full-time script writers. Script writing is something that I do irrespective of my position in the media. Yom Wara Yom, by contrast, is a step on the way to applying my philosophy as a physician, which is, in a nutshell, that it is desirable, even necessary to create a medical-social arena in which medical knowledge can be enhanced, spread and circulated. And media discourse plays an important role in the creation of that arena.
Because, of course, I continue to think of myself as, first and foremost, a doctor. And I continue to dream of founding my own practice, something I will undertake as soon as I can. My idea of a medical practice is not conventional, however, and the means to realise my dream may not be very forthcoming just yet. Because what I dream of is not simply a clinic in which people seek medical advice on what ails them, but a comprehensive medical and information centre in which even the healthiest members of society can engage with compelling activities like lectures, presentations and discussions. I had dreamt of Yom Wara Yom in the same way and it had seemed as far away and unlikely as this centre. And some day, I am sure, the present dream too will come true.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 19 - 25 June 2003 (Issue No. 643)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/643/cu2.htm