The eponymous building-The Yacoubian Building- is an art deco apartment block, and all Egyptians live - from the rich to the poor who live on its top floor. In the recent past, Egypt has been rogue by a series of demonstration and violation of human rights. Contemporary Egypt seems to have regress from its original state to the present torn down state. Egypt therefore, is marred by a myriad number of problems. The realism and the forthrightness of the film captures the frustrations and disappointments of the Egyptian people, illuminates the government injustices and corruption, as well as criticizes the Islamism program and false religious piety. The Yacoubian Building film, which is a metaphor for Egypt, gives us a little insight on what exactly happens—homosexuality, political Islam, terrorism, torture, social inequality, political corruption and religious hypocrisy.
First, political Islam has rogue Egypt and held it down, suffocating the country, not allowing it to stand a chance. President Hosni Mubarak was ousted and people thought that Egypt was getting better. It has not been the case. While Zaki lives in faded luxury and chases women, Bothayna endures sexual harassment while working as a shop assistant to provide for her poor family after the death of her father. Meanwhile her boyfriend, Taha, son of the building's janitor, is rejected by the police and decides to join a radical Islamic group. Egypt is heading towards a bottomless abyss. Everything is controlled by the elite. Jobs are no more; it is preserved for the top. This increases the plight of the people and leads them into committing some of the acts seen in Islam as bad or as a taboo. The political elite are crashing its opponents and ensuring that whoever com...
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...“The people in the bar were drunk, shouting and singing loudly. Aswany continues to paint Hatim as a respectable character when he describes his professionalism, saying that though all of his employees are aware of Hatim’s homosexuality, they do not sense it nor does he make a show out of it at work; rather, he is quite stern and serious with them. Hatim’s homosexuality is identified but does not let it define or confine him intellectually or professionally. In the case of The Yacoubian Building, Aswany’s purpose was not to portray a homosexual in a negative light, but to illustrate Hatim Rasheed: a flawed but likeable character, who also happens to be homosexual. By using heartening flashbacks and positive descriptions, Aswany is able to present Hatim Rasheed as more relatable than his general audience would usually be willing to consider a homosexual character.
What I’ve noticed in the film is that the two main characters fit two standard archetypes of gay men. One who welcomes their sexuallity and one suppresses it. Ennis Del Mar is a man who before the story started was engaged to a woman named Alma. When Ennis and Jack begin their sexual relationship and Ennis tells Jack that he wasn’t queer,
“Araby” tells a story about a little boy’s romance and his disillusionment in the end. While people tend to focus on the ending of the story trying to find some clue from Araby the market alone, I believe there is another site that we should not forget—the room where the priest died. It seems Araby symbolizes the numb, dark adult world while the room is holy, romantic; but as I read more, I find they are quite the same. Comparing the two buildings, one of the hidden reasons for the boy’s anger dawned on me: he is deceived by both sites.
The sub setting of the Araby and it’s characters are shown to be covered from the truth, for an Araby should be a fun and entertaining place, while it’s workers should be energetic and enthusiastic, which neither lived up to it’s truth.
It revolves around the issues of gender oppression, sexual assault, and importance of social status. Alifa Rifaat manages to express her opinions towards these themes by writing about a typical Egyptian marriage. She puts in focus the strong influence that a patriarchal society has. She also manages to prove how important social status is in society. The uses of literally elements such as theme and irony help express this view. It shows that in a typical Egyptian society women are commonly oppressed by all males in society
What was once a great and powerful empire has started to become a civil war zone. They created the Pyramids and one of the first recorded libraries. While Egypt has had hard times in the past, they recovered from them, the civil war that they are in now will be harder to recover from once it’s over. With war and economic problems causing people to die frequently due to either starvation or gunfire, Egypt struggles to survive and bounce back from their issues. Egypt continues to deal with the fighting and their future doesn’t look bright for them.
In his documentary Classified X, Martin Van Peebles describes three areas where African-Americans could be receive some sanctuary from the racism that pervaded almost all Hollywood films. These three places were: the Hollywood version of an all-Black film, the church, and entertainment. Black culture and music is prominent in mainstream society, but the people behind this culture don’t always receive recognition and respect for their creations. Mainstream White pop culture excitedly consumes and appropriates Black culture, but disrespects the source.
The title of the book shed some light on the history of Egypt since we may always see the fall of the kingdom after a big rise and, unfortunately, this circle is closed, so Egypt is doomed to be in a bad state after the demise of the famous Cleopatra.
Ha Jin is a very talented writer. He uses first person narrative, setting, and personal appeal to show his readers that cruelty and judgment against homosexuals is not needed in today’s society. He uses these three things to show that the criticism in this book is taken to an extreme. These aspects along with many others create a story that readers are not only interested in, but can relate to as well.
Mahfouz first presents his theme of change by relating the events in Midaq Alley with the political world outside Egypt. This is demonstrated by the Jewish working girls, which ignited the flame of change and modernization. The theme is best presented in Hamida, wh...
“The Yacoubian Building” by Alaa al-Aswany is a novel set in a ten-story building located in downtown Cairo around 1934. It revolves amongst the lives of several of the residents in the building who are struggling to survive their everyday life and the corrupted government in Egypt. During the course of the novel, I observed that necessity versus dignity seemed to be one of the most obvious and painful recurring subjects. The inadequacy of the government has altered many of the characters’ interpretations of morality. Despite the many despicable actions and crimes “The Yacoubian Building” depicts, its narrator almost never explicitly judges the novel’s characters. Instead, Al Aswany goes to great length to demonstrate how these characters are all victims of their cruel society. As such, Busayna comes to consent her employer's groping in the backroom because she has a family to support; Abduh’s moral hatred to homosexuality, yet he surrender to Hatim seduction in order to escape poverty. Souad pretends to appreciate sex with her elderly husband Hagg Azzam because he provides for her son from another marriage; Taha’s failure to become a policeman because he is the son of a doorman has ultimately leads him to Islamic extremism and violence.
As she said, “we gathered in a circle, our heads together. I saw even Boduur and Fawqiyya with us inside the circle. We stood next to each other, pressed close together, one leaning on the arm of the next” (Saadawi, 184). This moment was a moment of sodality and hope for change to come to the country of Egypt. That maybe one day, their will be equality among all members of the society no matter race, religion, and sex.
Female activists have been at the lead of efforts to change Egypt’s political system from the very beginning. “Despite the prominent role played by women in organizing the popular movements that have overthrown and challenged authoritarian regimes across the region, the early results on the treatment of women raise concerns about the future of democracy and human rights in the Middle East as the region experiences tectonic political change.” (Rape and the Arab Spring.) Women try to participate in the wave of political movements that our sweeping their region, but are often faced with sexual violence as they seek to effect political change. The women want to protest with the men to make differences within their country and their efforts go
J. Brown’s Paradigm for National Development define the Identifiable People Group of a Nationalistic movement based on four main criteria: language, race, history, and location. These characteristics often serve to demonstrate how and why people united. In the case of Egypt’s revolution, the Identifiable People Group lacks any major ethnic or racial divisions, and though historically there have been tensions between Christians and Muslims, both parties orchestrated the revolution, so the IPG lacked Egypt’s traditional religious divisions. Racially, Egypt’s population is 99.6% Egyptian according to the 2006 census, and historically, the majority of the population has been Arabia since the seventh century. Ninety percent of Egyptians practice Islam, and the in Tahrir majority of them are Sunni. All of the people lived in a geographically well defined area, Egypt, and though Cairo was the epicenter of protests, Egyptians traveled from all over the country to take part in Tahrir Square Protests, and protests occurred throughout the country. Also, Arabic is both the official and most common language of Eg...
God Dies by the Nile, Gives the reader and interesting look at a time and place that seems to have no equality between men and women. The Middle east has many very interesting features and aspects about it such as the way their economy is organized, the type of religion that they practice, the various geographical aspects of the land, and the way that society is in general. Because the economy is so poor, many people live in mud huts along rivers, and have very few material possessions. The main source of income comes from working in the fields. What little money they earn from the hard labor goes toward food for the family. Although this is not how everyone in lives. Strong political figures are those who live in luxury. This is the way it is in Kafr El Teen, where the characters of God Dies by the Nile, live.
One of the most crucial benefits that the society gained from the Muslim Brotherhood working was providing social security, and they wished to make some changes in order to remedy the problems such as injustices among the Egyptian people. The Muslim brotherhood demanded that the upper class would not play with the lower class and use them as they want. According to Abed-Kotob, “They ideally would led to the creation of a harmonious Islamic society in which the upper class would not exploit the poor, the manager would not oppress the workers, and the profit would be tempered by piety and good works” (327). This is such a great work that benefited society, and poor people have a chance to live as human beings. The poor people would have optimistic views for their future. What the Muslim Brotherhood did was a subject to increasing social justice in Egyptian society. Another important point is that the Muslim Brotherhood also started to organize the collecting of Zakat, which is the Islam...