دنيا Dunia: Kiss Me Not on the Eyes
This evening we went to see this Egyptian movie, دنيا Dunia, at the DC Muslim Film Festival (followed by a live belly dance performance by Katarina Gala). Directed by Jocelyne Saab and starring beautiful Hanan Turk, Dunia is a major achievement of Arab women's cinema, stunningly visual and carrying a powerful meaning.
Dance.
Poetry.
Sensuality and desire.
The film, very rich in symbolism, explores how these themes come together in a woman's life. Dunia is a university student taking courses in poetry, and also a promising belly dancer, about to enter a dance competition. Her mother had been a star of belly dance, who was referred to in Arabic respectfully as fannān: an artist. She is studying with the same dance teacher who had taught her mother, and while revering the mother's accomplishments in dance, he urges Dunia to release her potential and stop imitating her mother, to find her own self in the dance.
But something is blocking her from dancing fully: she is a stranger to her own body. She lives only in her head, while her body remains unknown to her. She has never even seen herself naked. When she feels threatened, she curls up into a ball as a defense. She needs to overcome the inhibition of her sensuality to be able to dance with her whole being. This problem is tied into the whole issue of eroticism versus puritanical censorship in Arab culture, especially in poetry. Women's bodies are the real battleground between sensuality and the fear of it in the private sphere, while in the public sphere this battle is fought over literature. The film's genius is to intimately unite the two.
Visually, the film is built around the colors red and green. Dunia wears red in every scene of the entire movie. Her red outfits match her mother's scarf of sheer red chiffon, which she keeps wrapped around her wrist whenever she dances. This scarf symbolically ties her to her mother's legacy. The significance of all the red color becomes painfully clear in a bloody, horrifying scene of female genital mutilation, which has been done to 97% of Egyptian women. This is the reason Dunia, as a victim of this crime, has lost touch with her own body. Her defense of closing herself off by sitting with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped tightly around her legs is a reaction to having been genitally mutilated.
Her poetry professor Dr. Beshir, a scholar of eroticism in Arabic literature, is under attack from enemies who are out to destroy all sensuality in Arab culture. First they shout accusations at him on a television program, and then he is violently assaulted on the street and left blinded. In the context of contemporary Egypt, the enemies of sensuality are clearly the Islamic fundamentalists--this is unstated in the film, though every Egyptian viewer will get the reference.
The violent attack on Beshir is based on the real incident when Nobel prizewinner Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed on the street by a fundamentalist. Mahfouz, the most illustrious Egyptian author of the 20th century, was a controversial figure during the rise of militant fundamentalism, because of the eroticism in his writing. The allusion to real events would be clear to Egyptian audiences.
Beshir passionately defends Alf Laylah wa-Laylah (The Thousand and One Nights) from censorship and is determined to see a complete edition of the original text published. This book is one of the great works not only of Arabic literature but of world literature. Its original unexpurgated text is full of sexual stories, and I've heard some Arabs saying they think of it as little more than pornography. In several scenes, Beshir and Dunia recite classical Arabic mystical erotic poetry by some of the most renowned names in Arabic literature and Sufism, expressing the connection between sensuous human love and divine love, with no boundaries between them. He makes the point that eroticism is integral to classical Arabic culture, and compares the censors with madmen who would destroy the Pyramids and dry up the Nile.
Meanwhile Dunia marries her jerk of a boyfriend, but the marriage is quickly in trouble. He tries to control her and stop her from dancing. She is unable to give herself to him sexually, so he labels her "frigid." She often escapes to the roof of her building to write poetry, above it all. From her apartment window she can look down upon an outdoor movie screen, so she stands at the window watching old movies for free-- symbolic of her going through life at a remove from her feelings.
The director skillfully melds together Beshir's problems of censorship and blindness with Dunia's problems of alienation from her body and her sexuality. Saab weaves imagery of the written word into the narrative and the dance in highly creative ways:
When her neighbor's daughter is cruelly subjected to having her clitoris cut off, Dunia hears the poor child's screams, bursts in, and carries her away to the boardinghouse where Beshir lives, to get her away from the grandmother who did this, unfortunately too late to protect the girl from genital mutilation. While there, the boardinghouse manager, who is Beshir's paramour, goes away for the day-- so Dunia wears the other woman's dress, bangles, and deep red lipstick. She goes into Beshir's room to offer herself to him. When he looks at her, his sight is restored and he recognizes her. He tells Dunia not to be anyone else, to be herself. He recites a poem for her: You are Dunia / You are the world / You are Dunia / You are life. (Dunia means 'world'.) Then they make very tender and sensuous love.
The final scene is a stunningly powerful evocation of Dunia's liberation from her inhibitions and alienation from her body. Having truly made love for the first time, she is now fully in touch with her body, shown by her beautiful, thoroughly sensuous dance atop a hill overlooking the city. In the middle of her dance, she unties her mother's red scarf from her wrist and lets it drift away. She is finally free.
Dance.
Poetry.
Sensuality and desire.
The film, very rich in symbolism, explores how these themes come together in a woman's life. Dunia is a university student taking courses in poetry, and also a promising belly dancer, about to enter a dance competition. Her mother had been a star of belly dance, who was referred to in Arabic respectfully as fannān: an artist. She is studying with the same dance teacher who had taught her mother, and while revering the mother's accomplishments in dance, he urges Dunia to release her potential and stop imitating her mother, to find her own self in the dance.
But something is blocking her from dancing fully: she is a stranger to her own body. She lives only in her head, while her body remains unknown to her. She has never even seen herself naked. When she feels threatened, she curls up into a ball as a defense. She needs to overcome the inhibition of her sensuality to be able to dance with her whole being. This problem is tied into the whole issue of eroticism versus puritanical censorship in Arab culture, especially in poetry. Women's bodies are the real battleground between sensuality and the fear of it in the private sphere, while in the public sphere this battle is fought over literature. The film's genius is to intimately unite the two.
Visually, the film is built around the colors red and green. Dunia wears red in every scene of the entire movie. Her red outfits match her mother's scarf of sheer red chiffon, which she keeps wrapped around her wrist whenever she dances. This scarf symbolically ties her to her mother's legacy. The significance of all the red color becomes painfully clear in a bloody, horrifying scene of female genital mutilation, which has been done to 97% of Egyptian women. This is the reason Dunia, as a victim of this crime, has lost touch with her own body. Her defense of closing herself off by sitting with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped tightly around her legs is a reaction to having been genitally mutilated.
Her poetry professor Dr. Beshir, a scholar of eroticism in Arabic literature, is under attack from enemies who are out to destroy all sensuality in Arab culture. First they shout accusations at him on a television program, and then he is violently assaulted on the street and left blinded. In the context of contemporary Egypt, the enemies of sensuality are clearly the Islamic fundamentalists--this is unstated in the film, though every Egyptian viewer will get the reference.
The violent attack on Beshir is based on the real incident when Nobel prizewinner Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed on the street by a fundamentalist. Mahfouz, the most illustrious Egyptian author of the 20th century, was a controversial figure during the rise of militant fundamentalism, because of the eroticism in his writing. The allusion to real events would be clear to Egyptian audiences.
Beshir passionately defends Alf Laylah wa-Laylah (The Thousand and One Nights) from censorship and is determined to see a complete edition of the original text published. This book is one of the great works not only of Arabic literature but of world literature. Its original unexpurgated text is full of sexual stories, and I've heard some Arabs saying they think of it as little more than pornography. In several scenes, Beshir and Dunia recite classical Arabic mystical erotic poetry by some of the most renowned names in Arabic literature and Sufism, expressing the connection between sensuous human love and divine love, with no boundaries between them. He makes the point that eroticism is integral to classical Arabic culture, and compares the censors with madmen who would destroy the Pyramids and dry up the Nile.
Meanwhile Dunia marries her jerk of a boyfriend, but the marriage is quickly in trouble. He tries to control her and stop her from dancing. She is unable to give herself to him sexually, so he labels her "frigid." She often escapes to the roof of her building to write poetry, above it all. From her apartment window she can look down upon an outdoor movie screen, so she stands at the window watching old movies for free-- symbolic of her going through life at a remove from her feelings.
The director skillfully melds together Beshir's problems of censorship and blindness with Dunia's problems of alienation from her body and her sexuality. Saab weaves imagery of the written word into the narrative and the dance in highly creative ways:
- After Beshir is blinded, he sweeps the books from his shelves in despair. Early in the movie he is seen filling in a crossword puzzle. Later, the same crossword is drawn hugely enlarged in the sand, so that by walking barefoot over it he can read each letter by touch. A boy fills in the giant letters with red sand as they're called out, making the words sunrise, light, love. Sand is swept away by wind, or washed away by water; writing in sand brings out the ephemeral fragility of the written word.
- Dunia gets married in a bridal outfit with a long, full, pleated skirt made of white paper. The symbolism of blank paper and virginity is too obvious to need comment. After she has unfulfilling sex with her husband, she begins writing poetry on her wedding skirt, eventually filling it up with text. She also writes a farewell note on it for him when she leaves her marriage.
- Rehearsing her dance, Dunia holds a pencil in her right hand, and uses the graceful wrist curls of belly dancing to write in the air with it. Then her teacher interrupts her for not dancing sensually enough, and she snaps the pencil in two.
When her neighbor's daughter is cruelly subjected to having her clitoris cut off, Dunia hears the poor child's screams, bursts in, and carries her away to the boardinghouse where Beshir lives, to get her away from the grandmother who did this, unfortunately too late to protect the girl from genital mutilation. While there, the boardinghouse manager, who is Beshir's paramour, goes away for the day-- so Dunia wears the other woman's dress, bangles, and deep red lipstick. She goes into Beshir's room to offer herself to him. When he looks at her, his sight is restored and he recognizes her. He tells Dunia not to be anyone else, to be herself. He recites a poem for her: You are Dunia / You are the world / You are Dunia / You are life. (Dunia means 'world'.) Then they make very tender and sensuous love.
The final scene is a stunningly powerful evocation of Dunia's liberation from her inhibitions and alienation from her body. Having truly made love for the first time, she is now fully in touch with her body, shown by her beautiful, thoroughly sensuous dance atop a hill overlooking the city. In the middle of her dance, she unties her mother's red scarf from her wrist and lets it drift away. She is finally free.