Musalsals (TV Shows)

Watching the most popular musalsal in a cafe with other rabid fans while smoking sheesha (after sundown of course)! That is the life!

It's Ramadan which means that there is no shortage of available TV programming for those fasting and the rest of us who are going to hell anyway. During Ramadan, people stay at home with their families (mostly) and the TV is almost constantly on. In the months preceding Ramadan, people are bombarded with advertisements of upcoming shows, much like Americans are bombarded throughout the entire year. Some shows are more popular than others, and some shows make it to "must watch TV" status. The most famous show in the Bilad Al-Sham (the Levant) is most definitely Bab Al-Hara (door of the village/neighborhood). This show follows the lives of people in a small Syrian village during the 1930s when the French occupied Syria and Palestinians were beginning resistance fighting in then-British occupied Palestine. This show includes amazing acting and intense plot-lines. Last year, living with a Jordanian family, I watched nearly every episode. This year I don't get MBC1 on my TV, which has been a great disappointment to me. But everyone has told me that the series was better last year anyway. Last year I developed a special fondness for Moataz, the young man who walked around forcefully with his eyeballs popping out of his head and yelled every one of his lines with a special passion. The big drama was when his dad divorced his mom for arguing with him and saying rude words. Because of that huge disgrace, the daughter's fiance was forced to break up with her even though he didn't want to. He laid around on his bed, refusing food or water and pined away for her until his father relented. Also the blind beggar was not really blind, he was a spy! And at the end of the show (a new episode is shown every day for the entire month) everything ends up great, with everyone getting married off (one guy got 2 girls!) and living happily ever after...until Ramadan next year when new troubles will inevitably plague their little town.

The popularity of this show also paid off big economically. Vendors began selling masks of the characters' faces to little children and making T-shirts of cast photos. Almost every child can boast of a Bab Al-Hara T-shirt or at least a Bab Al-Hara notebook. You know a show has made it big when the actors get put on T-shirts and other paraphernalia, as was the case with another well-known show from Turkey that was dubbed into Syrian Arabic called simply after the name of the main character "Noor".

"Noor" is a very controversial show in the Middle East, mostly because so many women have fallen madly in love with the lead male, Muhannad, a blonde, blue-eyed former model. This was not a Ramadan show so it has been on the air for quite some time already. This show is very complex. Noor and Muhannad are married because their families want them to be. Muhannad just got out of a unhealthy relationship when his fiance fell out of the car window into a valley and died. A tragic accident that millions all over the world can really relate to. But even though Noor and Muhannad start off as a marriage of convenience, two such beautiful people cannot help but fall in love, in spite of the many difficulties that assail them. Both of them go to jail at different times (unjustly of course), Noor is kidnapped by her psycho co-worker, Muhannad's ex turns out to be alive, in a wheelchair with a blonde kid named Muhannad (they meet up accidentally while vacationing at a ski lodge where all people in wheelchairs go for a bit of fun on the slopes). So between marriage troubles where they teeter on the brink of divorce for various reasons at various times and family troubles where members of their family teeter on the brink of divorce for various reasons at various times, their lives are exciting and romantic. Who wouldn't want to be them? They even look good in jail and in comas and while pregnant. They go from flat toned bellies to holding a bouncing baby. If you didn't know they were pregnant from their exceptional acting skills (holding their tummies occasionally and smiling) you would never guess. They are THAT beautiful. I'll put up some photos so you can see why women all over the Middle East are dreaming of leaving their husbands for Muhannad.



Can't you see why any woman would trade in her husband for him? Biting his own hand because even he can't resist how yummy he is!

Here is the happy couple together! It is also an example of the wonders of photoshop as I mentioned in my last literary masterpiece. The only difference between this photo and others I've seen is that sometimes the couple looks happy.

Personally, I like the idea of ending a show after a month. I think that shows in the States last way too long as a way of getting more money and after a few seasons there is nothing really interesting to include in the story so things get crazy or they just repeat themselves. How many people in Alias will we think are dead only to find them resurrected in someone else's body a few months later? How many times will Ross and Rachel break up? Why are there stupid polar bears on the Island? Who thinks up this stuff? There are many things we can learn from the venerated culture of the Arabs, and the art of creating sensational TV is just one of them.