Page 222 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

Everyone eat, and whoever gets full should thank the Lord
For a loaf of bread and the vichya faba.”

After stating the riddle Ms. Hasan told the audience the terms of the contest:
“We hope the riddle is easy, and we wait for you to send the answers to Egyptian
television, and don’t forget to attach to the answers two coupons for products
from the Nasr Company for Consumer Chemicals. The company wishes you
good luck.”
Something that can easily be inferred from this program is that fawazir put
a premium on localized imagery. Ful, or fava beans (the vichya faba alluded to
in the poem) is the butt of jokes at home, as the cheapest and most humble food
on the market. However, as a “typical Egyptian food,” ful is also potentially an
object of nostalgia abroad—a symbol of identity made effective through its in-
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group associations. The localizing strategy of televised fawazir was character-
istic also of the far more elaborate fazzura that I will describe in a moment,
although in that case it is less obvious. The entire Ramadan complex of hedo-
nistic consumption and entertainment is understood by most Egyptians as local
custom, as opposed to formal religion. But it should also be noted that in this
case, for some, the homely local imagery of this riddle might have seemed a per-
version of sentiments voiced a generation earlier. The “Beans Are My Friend”
fazzura recited by Fayza Hasan echoed a poem composed in the 1970s by the
leftist poet Ahmad Fu#ad Nigm and sung by his frequent artistic collaborator,
the blind singer Sheikh Imam. In Nigm’s “Mawwal al-Ful wa-al-Lahma” (Song
of beans and meat), “Duktur Muhsin al-mas#ul” (Dr. Muhsin, the of¤cial) takes
the place of "Amm Zaghlul al-Zanati’s wife. Dr. Muhsin tries to convince a skep-
tical listener that ful is “vegetarian protein not found at the kabab restaurant
(lahma nabati wa-la ¤ al-hati), and that meat is in fact bad for one’s health”
(Nigm 1986). The listener replies, “Leave us to die with our meat; And you all
live and eat your ful; What do you think, Captain Muhsin? Isn’t that more rea-
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sonable?” (Nigm 1986, 859). Nigm’s 1970s poem protests the lot of the poor,
who must eat “vegetarian protein,” in a direct address to those fortunate enough
to be able to afford meat but too callous to care about those who cannot. By the
1990s “vegetarian protein” had become a quaint device for selling bug spray. The
combativeness of Nigm and Sheikh Imam in the 1970s makes a striking con-
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trast with the 1990s alliance between the state and commercial interests. The
“Beans Are My Friend” caricature program, a minor instance of Ramadan en-
tertainment, expresses no political agenda. But like the whole state-orchestrated
complex of Ramadan festivities, it is a hegemonic articulation that effects a su-
ture of disparate interests.

Advertising and Flow

Before we examine the Fawazir Ramadan program—the lavish “main
event” of Ramadan festivities so to speak—it is important to consider the ad-
vertising interlude that precedes it. Advertisements are part of the “®ow” of tele-

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