HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Egyptians look foward to their weekly Saturday morning visits to Kafr El-Hanadwa, a village that exists only in the pages of Akhbar Al-Yom, the Saturday edition of Al-Akhbar, and in the minds of its creators. In fact, it’s not unknown for even loyal Al-Ahram readers to make Al-Akhbar their Saturday newspaper of choice for the sole purpose of feasting on this political cartoon —to the point that many collect each masterpiece of political sarcasm, filing them safely away in chronological order.

Occasionally, a cartoon from the series gets such exceptional feedback that it’s republished only weeks later as a bonus to fans of the Falah Kafr El-Hanadwa strip not just in Egypt, but throughout the Arab world.

Originally created by legendary Al-Akhbar satirist Ahmed Ragab and cartoonist Mostafa Hussein, El-Falah has been drawn for nearly two and a half years now by Amr Fahmy. Ragab remains the strip’s humorist, as he has been since its inception, and, together with Fahmy, ensures that El-Falah continues to push the boundaries of political expression in Egypt.

Why do people seem so intent on measuring their IQs during the Holy Month?

The concept is simple: Each week, El-Falah, the idiot savant of his village, speaks with the prime minister of the day, offering a rundown on what’s happening in El-Falah’s home village of Kafr El-Hanadwa and what the Henadwites think about the political topics of the day. El-Falah always speaks, and the PM must be content with listening. Over the years, the strip has taken on Prime Ministers Atef Ebeid and Ahmed Nazif until, just recently, Ragab and Fahmy broke through the final wall of Egyptian politics and had El-Falah speak with President Hosni Mubarak himself.

Over a year and a half ago, the Cairo Opera House hosted an art exhibition featuring none other than a certain witty Falah. Among the VIPs who stopped by for opening night were the then-ministers of culture and foreign affairs (neither of whom had anything to fear from El-Falah) and, surprising many, Ebeid himself. Despite being regularly savaged in the column, the PM was a class act, asking Fahmy that he consider granting his cartoon alter ego the opportunity to talk — “If even only once” — to El-Falah instead of having to listen, week in and week out.

Sure enough, the same week saw Ragab and Fahmy running the very first cartoon where Ebeid actually speaks as opposed to just listening.

Khaled Habib Amr Fahmy poses with a portrait of Muhammed Ali.

So when Ahmed Nazif took on the role of Prime Minister in summer 2004, he must have known that the job description included a weekly appearance in Falah Kafr El-Hanadwa. For nearly a year, Nazif — always towering over the diminutive falah, who regularly brought a ladder so he could speak eye-to-eye with the PM — was forced to listen until, on July 2 of this year, he was given the chance to talk back. That Saturday, the ingenious strip pictured an extra tall Nazif standing far above El-Falah, telling him, “I can’t see you. I can’t hear you.”

Unprecedented valor. It was as far as they could go right? Think again.

After this fall’s first-ever presidential election, Ragab and Fahmy pushed the limits of creative freedom once more.

“As part of his campaign, President Mubarak was photographed and taped sitting down on the dekka [bench] of a simple falah, chatting with him over a cup of tea,” Fahmy recalls. “We took this as an unspoken invitation to incorporate the President into our cartoon. How could we not have him sit and listen to the most famous falah in Egypt? By the way, we didn’t seek specific permission for any of this.”

Since late September, it has been customary that the reader sees the President’s face in the strip each Saturday. The Falah speaks, with all due respect to His Excellency, about current topics including wheat imports, subsidization and jobs. This is done in an honest and candid manner. Of course, the Falah babbles on and on, but will the President ever talk?

Karim Ezzeldin

“Let’s not look too far ahead — time will tell ” Fahmy chuckles, “but I’ve heard that the President is happy with what we’ve been doing so far.”

On another note, Fahmy was cast in a totally different role this past Ramadan as he took on the task of co-hosting a daily TV program for Egyptian Channel 1 with the self-explanatory title Erssim Helmak Ma’a Amr Fahmy (Draw your Dream with Amr Fahmy).

The basic notion is that celebrities from all walks of life come in for an informal one-on-one talk during which they’re psychoanalyzed and a childhood career dream is revealed. Fahmy then proceeds to draw his guests doing their dream job.

“I never imagined myself doing this but I have been getting rave reviews people tell me I was born to do this,” he boasts of the show, co-hosted by Abir Abdel Wahab. “When I had Mostafa El-Fiqqi [chairman of the People’s Assembly’s foreign affairs committee] on the show, he told me that I must have a touch of genius to be able to do all of this [hold a conversation with a guest, analyze and draw him] at once, and do it well.”

Among his guests: ex-Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher pictured as a journalist and Supreme Council of Antiquities chief Dr. Zahi Hawass as a lawyer. One of the more interesting episodes saw the famous screenwriter Ossama Anwar Okasha ending up as the owner of an ahwa balady — complete with galabeyya and surrounded with shishas.

Karim Ezzeldin

Fahmy, it seems, has also found his dream job, though fans of El-Falah can only hope he doesn’t tire of the villager who helped him make his name. No worries, says Fahmy: “I like to juggle.”

How much money do you make? A very personal question? Sure. Especially if the figure you make (from a government desk job) hovers near the LE 1 million mark — per month.

A number of satellite talk shows recently set off a mini-storm by bringing a much-talked-about (though seldom in public) topic into the spotlight: How much, exactly, do the editors-in-chief of the biggest state-owned dailies earn? How much gold is in the sacks they get in return for their indispensable (and often infrequent) columns? What are the supposedly astronomical figures (totally above-board, by the way) that go straight into their pockets from their cuts of monthly ad revenues?

Persistent rumors put the monthly income of one of the EiC’s as being somewhere in the neighborhood of LE 300,000, while claiming that another earns a salary as high as LE 900,000 (yes, we’re still referring to a monthly salary).

Karim Ezzeldin

On the acclaimed talk show Al-’Ashera Massa’an (Ten in the Evening) broadcast on Dream TV 2, host Mona El-Shazly chose to resurrect the issue. El-Shazly, formerly an anchor at ART, joined Dream after the rebirth of its two channels following the introduction of powerful production houses El-Adl Group and Ehab Talaat as the new partners of former sole-owner Ahmed Bahgat. Her show is a hit just a few months after being launched — and remains talked about despite being on Ramadan hiatus.

El-Shazly prompted legendary ammiyya (colloquial) poet Farouk Goweida to comment — from the perspective of a longtime employee at Al-Ahram — on the sensitive issue. He politely declined to answer, then dodged her questions before later making an obscure comment on the tradition of ‘exchanging gifts’ between the government and public press. El-Shazly put her customary audacity on display when she asked Goweida about how much money he personally makes. He seemed genuinely embarrassed but, eventually, and somewhat reluctantly, responded with a meek smile and said that it was below, way below her expectations.

This issue, together with the recent press shake up and residual election fever from September’s presidential race may have all contributed to the relative excitement surrounding the late September Press Syndicate elections.

There were 11 candidates in all, including Al-Akhbar’s Galal Aref; Al-Siyassa Al-Dawliyah chief Osama El-Ghazali Harb; and Al-Ahram Al-Riyadhi chief Ibrahim Hegazi. None of the candidates got the required 50 percent plus one of the total votes to be announced new chairman of the influential body. Hegazi and Aref emerged from the shambles to go head-to-head in a runoff. Turnout was 77 percent of 4,332 eligible voters, and 53.6 percent chose Aref in the runoff, making this his second term in office.

Many critics claim that the outcome was somewhat expected, the only odd thing being the relatively low number of votes that the increasingly influential and popular El-Ghazali Harb won. In fact, the scribe (and upstart NDP policies secretariat member) has been so high-profile of late that some of us even expected his next appearance would be in one of the Ramadan mosalsalat!

Karim Ezzeldin

Here is a riddle worthy of Ramadan for you: Why do people seem so intent on measuring their IQs during the Holy Month?

It’s not a recent phenomenon, we’ve always had the tradition of fawazeer or riddles, which used to be a staple of Ramadan. Over the years, certain performers have been associated with presenting this ever-evolving tradition, and they did it well. Nelly, Sherihan and Samir Ghanem were probably the three biggest names to have done the fawazeer honors — multiple times each.

As the Big Three faded from the fawazeer scene, a number of stars took turns performing them each year, among them Yehia El-Fakharany, Hala Fouad, Sabrine, Medhat Saleh, Shereen Reda, Wael Nour and Nadine. The production costs were extremely high and risk of failure equally so. Some years, the fawazeer were a success, others they were a flop and it seems that producers and audiences alike eventually lost interest altogether.

The fawazeer, however, continue to haunt us subliminally through all available forms of media, except that today’s versions, in the shape of competitions, also promise a ‘rags to riches’ ending. Most are telephone based: you have to make the call or send an SMS to enter. One competition’s calling costs as high as 10 Saudi Riyals per minute. You do the math.

It goes without saying that your ‘calculated’ call will never clock in under a couple of minutes. The competitions are promoted on TV, either through a certain program or independently through advertisements. In the best tradition of investigative journalism, I tried calling one of the numbers that appeared on my living room TV screen. It was Tarek Allam’s new game show Al-Afdhal (The Best), and here is what happened:

First, you are welcomed by the customary friendly jingle and a quick introduction that congratulates you for being a potential millionaire or the future owner of a BMW coupe, meanwhile reminding you that the more frequently you call, the more your chances of winning.

Second, you are given a long list of choices — a list so long that by the time you get to the last choice you may have forgotten why you are making the call to start with. Luckily, the last of these choices was “Question for viewers at home” so I punched in the specified digit and wished for the best.

After that, you get dictated the question: in my case a disappointingly (to the point of suspicion) simple one: What is the name of the Egyptian comedian commonly known as El-Za’eem (The Boss)? The question was followed by three unnecessary choices: Adel Imam, Sa’eed Saleh or Younes Shalaby. At this point I understood that it was purely symbolic like buying a raffle ticket; no effort needed. El-Za’eem was originally the title of one of Imam’s stage performances which began in the 1990s and has been going strong since. The epithet later evolved into a rightfully earned title for Imam as the ‘boss’ of Egyptian comedians.

After you choose your — 110 percent correct — answer, and the friendly animated voice comes to life again to wish you the best of luck, you are then required to record your personal information. Wait for the beep and enter your name and number. Of course you are asked to listen to a replay of your personal information just in case. You are asked to rerecord if you blew it the first time; there is no need to rush. My personal experiment clocked in at four minutes and 20 seconds. At LE 1.5 per minute, it cost me a total of LE 7.5. How many calls do these people get per day? Don’t ask.

I’ve always found it inexplicable that some people are readily willing to make fools of themselves in public. Accordingly, some TV hosts, who cavalierly toss out competition questions on the air, are more than willing to make their callers the objects of ridicule.

Foremost among them is TV personality Tarek Allam, who hosted the infamous street game show Kalam min Dahab (Words of Gold) in the 1990s. Over the years Allam has developed a foolproof technique that he predictably utilized in his game show Al-Afdhal (the subject of the experiment mentioned earlier) aired this Ramadan on state Channel 2. He simply throws a question at the competitors, and then proceeds to assault them — to the point of distraction — with meaningless nonstop comments.

“What will you do with the gold, if you win?” he would blurt out, for example.

“So, what do you do for a living?”

Anything to keep your mind off the question, because it all boils down to your ability to shutting out his irritating babble and calculate the — usually purely mathematical — answer to the trivia question.

Meanwhile, the less fortunate who cannot isolate themselves from his verbal harassment are eventually forced to give an often absurd answer. Allam usually reacts with a slap to his forehead or an irritated massaging of his temples. A second chance is given and the response is another absurd answer, Allam shakes his head in dismay and rolls his eyes way back into his skull. By now it’s like shooting in the dark, a third unintelligent answer, yields a merciless whip of a comment from the star presenter. He delivers it with a sense of humor similar to that of an undertaker.

Next up is Ibrahim Nasr, who in the past few years has almost single-handedly conquered the practical joke genre on the Egyptian small screen. He achieved groundbreaking success by pulling off some of the funniest pranks ever to be caught on tape through El-Camera El-Khafeyya (The Concealed Camera). In the process, Nasr and his team created a series of the screen’s most memorable characters, among them the now legendary Zakiyya Zakaria.

From practical jokes and gag shows to comic sketches, Nasr made a transition in his annual Ramadan show this year with Zooba Sat, aired on Channel 1. The show included a complete slot dedicated to exposing the sheer stupidity of the man on the street.

In one of the episodes, a reporter took to the streets to ask people what B.O.T stood for. The best answer, by far, was a poor man who confidently claimed, “It’s a very large computer.” He then noticed the reporter’s reaction and quickly said that he wasn’t absolutely certain.

(For the record: B.O.T. is the “build-operate-transfer” scheme for financing public works projects, not to be confused with B.O.O.T. or “build-own-operate-transfer”)

Cairo’s Nogoom FM (100.6 FM) also toed the line and took up the ‘he who fasts knows nothing’ approach. On my way to a family iftar, I tuned in to one of the programs comprising these catch ‘em out quizzes. I listened to question after question until the program reached its high point when the ‘well-educated’ host — who probably knew as much about economics and foreign policy as you’d expect Genghis Khan to know about the Linux operating system — asked the caller a question about foreign investment.

The question was followed by the options: “Is the maximum financing period 3 years, 6 years or 9 years?” after which the caller paused for a couple of seconds and then responded by saying: “Don’t I get any choices?” Like a tiger, the host pounced for the kill.

One of the catchiest radio competitions was that of Galaxy chocolate company to promote their Galaxy Flutes brand. Their two-minute radio blurb explained the simple rules, directions on sending your answer, the prizes you may win and so on. They then gave you the answer to a certain question after which you are required — and I am not making this up — to go out and buy the chocolate bars and look for the right question for that answer underneath the wrappers.

I didn’t mind the idea of buying a couple of chocolates in exchange for a chance to win a fully paid trip for two to Paris. I admit, however, that I am currently ashamed of the eight chocolate bars I consumed later that night.

Galaxy probably saved some money on advertising by boosting their sales through the innovative campaign. But most other companies preferred to look for unconventional methods within their usual — and most powerful — weapon of choice: the TV ad.

One of the funniest TV ad campaigns revolved about a similar ‘Money for Nothing’ theme. MobiNil probably thought that if a competition was worth doing, then they would do it themselves. There are several versions of the ad, all bearing the same idea.

The ad kicks off with a story of a certain person who has been dreaming of buying a Mercedes since he was a child, it then takes you through the toil of 20 or so years of his professional career after which he eventually gets his Mercedes. Switch to the other scenario: a cool college kid sending an SMS and later leaning against his brand new Mercedes.

Despite the slew of (sometimes creative, but not always) ads punctuating every single episode of the unlimited number of serials on show, the mosalsalat this year were generally — in comparison to the pre-airing hype and installments from previous years — a disappointment.

Hats off to Mohammed Sobhy whose Ramadan serial, Ana wa Ha’olaa (Me and Them) — directed by Essam Sha’ban and written by Sobhy himself — reminded us of the ‘Cosbyesque’ quality comedy he delivered in A’elat Wanis (Wanis Family). His loyal crew of supporting actors was also up to par, most notably the ingenious Gamil Rateb. Sobhy performed several of his trademark monodramatic dialogues with the reciting ability of a college professor. Touché Mr. Sobhy.

Amaken fel Qalb (Places in the Heart) was also impressive. The only major drawbacks were the mistakes made due to cultural ignorance or lack of attention to detail, or both. Take for example the interiors of US government buildings that resemble Egyptian public schools, the American character of Indian origin who wore a strange turban and bowed when greeting anyone and the very Egyptian-looking jury. The American judge may have also been more convincing if he didn’t have a clear zebeeba (prayer mark) on his forehead.

Also unfathomable was the way Hesham Selim’s character was always referred to as ‘beaker’ (also pronounced ‘beekar’). God only knows whether they mean Baker or Becker or maybe Beaker was in fact the name originally in the script. Highly unlikely though, because they usually resort to generic names for the American characters: for example Mr. John Adams (the murdered husband) and Mr. Goldstone (a Jewish tycoon) who, oddly enough, was also referred to as Mr. Goldman every once in a while.

That being said, the story is fast-paced and refreshing, as we rarely witness a full-fledged murder trial through a mosalsal on our local screens. Accordingly, the drama was intriguing and arguably the best and most-followed amongst this Ramadan’s serials.

Khaled Saleh’s performance in Ahlam ’Adeyya (Normal Dreams) was expected to overshadow Youssra after his recent hit roles for cinema. Sadly, he worked too hard to find a unique way of playing the role of the baltagy (thug). Accordingly, his performance appeared to be too artificial, turning into a cartoon-like image of a person who acts as if he’s a drunk, retarded, unclean, unshaven, grotesque mule of a person. He was even called Farag Khanzeera (pig) of all the names in the world. Youssra was Youssra, which was great.

Viewers across the Arab world avidly followed the Rayya we Skeena mosalsal from day one. Many quickly lost interest because the story took off to a rather slow start, having been stretched to fill over 30 episodes. Others found it too offending with more than just casual references to belly dancing, prostitution, drugs, booze, foul language and, of course, a healthy dose of violence. Not exactly Ramadan material. The tempo, however, picked up after the 10th episode and, as the case is with most serials, you wouldn’t find a problem in following the events.

Many were excited about the star-studded El-’Ameel 1001 (Agent 1001) but couldn’t catch it as it was only showed on one private pay channel, not available on your regular satellite decoder or local TV channels. You have to pay to view. Again, it’s all about the money.  et

This is the first of assistant editor Karim Ezzeldin’s monthly media columns.