Carnival Court

All of these elements are brought together and interact in the main satirical feature of the magazine’s first year, the “Majlis al-ta’dib.” The majlis, which appears in thirty out of al-Ithnayn’s first fifty-two weeks, is usually composed of three well-known figures, plus al-Misri acting as court recorder. It sits in judgment on Egyptian cabinet ministers or British protectorate officials and is therefore muckraking in its tone. In addition to being composed of famous literary figures and stars of the stage and film, the court sessions take place not in an official courthouse but on a theatrical stage or in a music hall or cinema. Onlookers are portrayed as behaving in a manner that is appropriate to these venues and not to an actual courtroom. This means that the proceedings are frequently interrupted by applause and whistling from the audience.

In fact, nothing happens the way it should. The court recorder, who is identified as al-Ithnayn’s editor in chief, Husayn Shafiq al-Misri, seems to be barely literate. He often protests that he cannot read the docket. Sometimes he is portrayed as misunderstanding and misrecording what has been said in the courtroom. He leaps into the interrogations from time to time while everyone shouts at him to remember he is only the scribe. The panel of judges heap abuse and insults on him for his faults, as for example in the first majlis:

al-ra’isa (umm kulthum):

Iqra’ jadwal al-qada’.

katib al-jalsa:

Istanna amma ad’ak ‘ayni.

al-anisa umm kulthum:

Ma-la’aytush ghayr al-a‘ma dah katib lig-galsah??

president:

Read the docket.

recorder:

Wait ’til I rub my eye.

miss umm kulthum:

Couldn’t you find anyone but this blind guy to be court recorder?? (Al-Ithnayn, June 18, 1934)

In al-Ithnayn’s fifth issue al-Misri again puts himself down:

‘Uqidat al-jalsa tahta ri’asat al-Sayyida Munira al-Mahdiyah, wa-‘udwiyat al-ustadh Fikri Abaza al-muhami muharrir al-Musawwar, wa-al-ustadh Tawfiq Diyab sahib al-Jihad, wa-hadara Husayn Shafiq al-Misri bita‘ al-Ithnayn katiban lil-jalsa.

The session was convened under the presidency of the lady Munira al-Mahdiyah, and the membership of professor Fikri Abazah, the lawyer, editor of al-Musawwar, and professor Tawfiq Diyab, owner of al-Jihad, and Husayn Shafiq al-Misri of al-Ithnayn attended as court recorder. (Al-Ithnayn, July 16, 1934)

In this extract al-Misri has humbled himself by omitting the respectful phrase al-ustadh from before his name and using the term bita‘, a purely colloquial word that sticks out like a sore thumb in the midst of the more formal written language that has preceded it, to indicate in a deprecating way his relationship to his magazine.

For the court’s first six months its president is a woman. This in itself is probably enough for parody, but in addition this female judge is in real life a famous singer, and in the “Majlis al-ta’dib” her every word is greeted by the hysterical acclaim of her fans who shout, “Again! Sing it again!” Her declaration, “Fatahna al-jalsah,” is always followed by “sustained, enthusiastic applause” from her audience. Her judicial pronouncements often metamorphose into quotations from light strophic songs (taqatiq,^[8] sing. taqtuqah) as the pandemonium increases. The court session is further assimilated to a concert by the hour appointed for the session—usually late at night, around 11 o’clock—and the venue—the Opera House stage, or Badi‘a’s cabaret, or another ‘Imad al-Din Street theater. These locations were are all within a short distance of a real courthouse, the Mixed Courts—another favorite target of al-Misri’s satire—near Opera Square (Berque 1972, 88).

Badi‘a Masabni is not the most frequently seen famous personality on the court (that distinction goes to Mahjub Thabit, champion of Egyptian-Sudanese unity). In fact, she appears no more frequently than that other famous female singer of the period, whose star had already begun to eclipse Badi‘a’s—Umm Kulthum. Badi‘a is also on the court as frequently as Taha Husayn, another member of Egypt’s high-culture canon. What is striking, however, is not so much how often she appears as the fact that she appears at all beside these people who have become icons of modern Egyptian culture. The Egyptian cultural pantheon seems to have been rather different in 1934 than it has become since being represented in 1990 in a poster produced by the Ministry of Culture, and it included many more characters now deemed “ephemeral” by the cultural establishment.^[9]

At the time the series of majalis appeared in al-Ithnayn, Badi‘a Masabni was a cabaret artist and impresaria, owner of her own successful music hall (salah) in ‘Imad al-Din Street. A Syrian by birth, she had risen from a poverty-stricken and extremely painful childhood to fame as a singer and dancer in Syria and Lebanon. In the early 1920s she met Najib al-Rihani, still loved in Egypt today. One of the pioneers of Egyptian comedy, he is often referred to as “the Oriental Molière” (Landau 1958, 87).^[10] Masabni joined al-Rihani’s troupe and became famous in Egypt as a comic actress. She and al-Rihani were married in September 1924 but were quickly estranged and separated in February 1926.^[11] In that year she opened her kazinu (casino—in Egypt a nightclub or outdoor café, not a gambling venue) in ‘Imad al-Din Street, where all the successful theaters and cafés of the day were located. Her stage hosted both Oriental and Western acts. She herself continued to perform, either dancing or singing the munulugat (monologues)^[12] for which she was famous. She claimed to have introduced new movements to the traditional raqs Sharqi (Oriental dance, the characteristic female solo dance of Egypt) to make it more interesting to watch, “for the Egyptian danseuses used to dance only by shimmying the belly and buttocks” (Basila 1960, 297). Her other innovations included frequent changes of program (at first she boasted a new one every day) and, beginning in 1928, special shows for women only (Basila 1960, 296, 312). This latter innovation demonstrated her canny business acumen: any show that was decent enough for a wife to see would be unobjectionable for her husband. The press received her new productions with nothing less than abject admiration for her inventiveness and originality. For example, in a review appearing in al-Ithnayn, her summer show in Alexandria is described thus:

Badi‘a appeared to the guests in the most splendid costume and in the slenderness that distinguishes her from everyone else. She sang, danced, and invented entertainments that caused the admiration of all, for she did not confine herself to the Egyptian monologue in which she excels but created new things she had learned from the far Maghreb, which she had recently visited. Thus we heard from her the pleasant Tunisian dialect to the sound of stringed instruments, and we were spellbound by the captivating entertainment that Badi‘a brought to us in this performance. (June 3, 1935)

In 1935 she produced and starred in a feature film, Malikat al-masarih (Queen of Theaters), which was a flop (Basila 1960, 329–31). This caused her to suffer a severe financial setback and very nearly a nervous breakdown as well, but she was known for her ability to make and keep money and soon recovered. Her ‘Imad al-Din Street casino was sold by her feckless, lovestruck son to dancer and former Badi‘a protegée Biba ‘Izz al-Din (Basila 1960, 334). In 1940, after recovering from this shock, Badi‘a moved to larger, more elaborate quarters on Cairo’s Opera Square. During World War II the new casino was so popular that its motto could have been “Everyone goes to Badi‘a’s,” although rampaging British and Australian troops constantly tore it up (Basila 1960, 339–42). In about 1950 Badi‘a began to have problems with local officials over unpaid back taxes, and she decided to flee Egypt rather than stay and be ruined (Basila 1960, 364–68). She negotiated the sale of her casino, once again at what she claimed was a terrible loss, once again to Biba ‘Izz al-Din, who seemed always ready to profit from Badi‘a’s impulses (Basila 1960, 364). Her escape from the country was a cloak-and-dagger affair in which she met an airplane in the middle of the night in the desert outside of Heliopolis, but she managed to escape her creditors and settled down to retirement on a chicken farm outside of Beirut (Basila 1960, 377). When the Opera Casino was burned in the Cairo fire of January 1952, therefore, it was no longer Badi‘a’s place. Her autobiography is filled with bitterness at betrayal and poisoned with a desire for revenge on those who had mocked and hurt her in her life.

Badi‘a is one of forty-two figures from up and down the classes and occupations who appear as members of al-Ithnayn’s majlis al-ta’dib. In its first three months its president is always a woman: the diva Umm Kulthum (3 times), Badi‘a Masabni (3 times), the diva Munira al-Mahdiya (2 times), the singer Fathiya Ahmad (2 times), the pioneer of women’s higher education Nabawiya Musa (once), and the actress and musician Bahija Hafiz (once). Then there is a six-week hiatus while the editor experiments with a “conference of hashish addicts” theme (mu’tamar al-hashshashin), after which the majlis returns. The format continues to vary, with more abstract courts composed of animals, students, and ancient Egyptians. For a while the hashish smokers take over again, and finally by week fifty-two, after some of the magazine’s favorite subjects have taken the majlis for a trip to the beach and in time for al-Ithnayn’s first anniversary, the “court” returns again—apparently for its swan song, for it never reappears in the materials I have been able to examine—with Badi‘a at its head for the last time.

In her first appearance on the court (July 23, 1934), Badi‘a, along with Taha Husayn and the journalist Husayn Haykal, sits in judgment on the hapless minister of the interior, Mahmud Fahmi Pasha al-Qaysi. In a roundabout way the judges try to get the minister to tell them why he refused to allow Prince Shakib Arslan to disembark when he recently visited Egypt, or to allow his friends to visit him on his boat.^[13] Taha Husayn nearly derails the proceedings when he recapitulates the prosecution’s entire argument for the minister in what readers must have understood was a parody of the famous litterateur’s style:

You say that Prince Shakib does not forge money, nor does he smuggle hashish, nor distill alcohol, and Prince Shakib does not distill alcohol or smuggle hashish or forge money, and one like Prince Shakib does not forge money or smuggle hashish or distill alcohol, and this is known and known well and well known, for Prince Shakib is a good man and it is not strange that he should be a good man, and why should he not be a good man as he is a good man, good because he is a good writer, because he is a good poet, because he is prominent and a scholar too, and also a scholar, therefore why did you forbid him to come ashore and how could he be forbidden to come ashore and what is there in his coming ashore?

Then Badi‘a interrupts the proceedings to exclaim that the “monologue” Taha Husayn has just recited is just the thing for her next broadcast and makes sure the court recorder has copied it all down:

al-sayyida badi‘a:

Ya ruhi ‘ala di ’l-munulug, iw‘a tinsah ya katib il-galsah!

katib al-jalsa:

Aruh andah lil-ustaz Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab yilahhinuh?

al-sayyida badi‘a:

Ba‘dima nkhallas min ig-galsa ‘ashan biddi aghannih fi rradiyu.

lady badi‘a:

Oh wow, what a monologue, don’t forget it, recorder!

court recorder:

Shall I go get Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab to set it to music?

lady badi‘a:

After we’ve finished the session, because I want to sing it on the radio.^[14]

The minister finally admits that the reason the prince was forbidden entry into the country is that he is persona non grata because of having written an article critical of the government. Witnesses for the prosecution are called who are incapable of sticking to the subject at hand, and finally Badi‘a adjourns the court “until after the band has played.” When the court is reconvened she then reads the verdict to a tune by “professor al-Qasabgi.”^[15] The playful text of the lines she sings suggests that it consists almost entirely of quotes from taqatiq, with changes in the musical mode indicated in the manner of stage directions, juxtaposed with the formal phraseology of the courtroom:

	Haythu innahu: Ya mahla-d-dalma ya mahla-d-dalmah,
	Wa-haythu: Yuh min ir-rigal,
	Wa-haythu (naghamat turki): Ana Bida‘da‘[16] ya wad inta,
	Wa-haythu (min naghamat al-sikah): Ya mahla shahr il-‘asal bass in tawwal!
	Whereas: How lovely is the dark, how lovely is the dark,
	And whereas: Oy, men!!
	And whereas (turki mode): I am Bida‘da‘, you fellow, you,
	And whereas (sikah mode): How lovely is the honeymoon, if only it lasted![17]

The sentence? The minister’s friends will not be permitted to visit him, and he is to pay the court costs and the fee for the band.

Badi‘a’s second turn as president of the majlis is in judgment of the minister of public security, Badawi Bey Khalifa (July 30, 1934). Badawi Bey has been called for having accused an innocent man of being a radical and imprisoning him for seventy days without any trial. Badawi Bey’s defense: “Well, he did cause a riot when he sued us in court and won damages!” But the minister cannot hide from Badi‘a’s relentless pursuit of justice: “Well then, who paid the damages? You who imprisoned him wrongfully or the national treasury, whose money belongs to the nation?…Better you should arrest real criminals, like quack doctors and the women who wander in Fu’ad al-Awwal Street and ‘Imad al-Din Street and flirt with people.”^[18] She adjourns the court “until after the entr’acte.”

As she begins reading the verdict she cannot help herself from breaking into phrases from famous songs, as the audience applauds and cries, “Again, sing that one again!” She concludes with this line, a parody of a line from one of her own well-known songs:

	Wa-haythu innahu (naghamat hijaz kar): Ya mumallah ya Sudani, haga hilwa wa-‘agbani…[19]
	Whereas (hijaz kar mode): Oh salty, oh peanuts, something sweet and makes me nuts…

This brings fellow judge Mahjub Thabit to his feet with applause, shouting, “Long live Egypt and the Sudan!” Badi‘a’s verdict puns on the word Sudani, meaning both “Sudanese” and “peanut,” and Thabit is presented as being so enthusiastic about the concept of Nile Valley unity that he unreasoningly responds to the issue’s merest suggestion. The verdict is “that the accused was unable to defend himself and he deserves everything he’s going to get, he must pay the court costs and the cost of the buffet.” The report is “signed” with Husayn Shafiq al-Misri’s seal and Badi‘a’s thumbprint.^[20]

In Badi‘a’s third appearance as president of the majlis she is teamed up with ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Bishri—the journalist who in 1939 would define the characteristics of the Egyptian effendi^[21] in his column for al-Thaqafa magazine (El-Messiri 1978, 5)—and Mahjub Thabit once again (al-Ithnayn, August 20, 1934). This time they are sitting in judgment on some big fish: Ahmad Pasha ‘Ali, minister of justice, ‘Abd al-Fattah Pasha Yahya, the extremely unpopular prime minister, and Mahmud Fahmi Pasha al-Qaysi, minister of the interior (his second appearance as defendant).^[22] The court has been called on by “the public” to pass judgment on the three for threatening to institute a new press law that will deprive the press of “what remains” of its rights.^[23] Of course, because of the Capitulations, the new law will muzzle only the Egyptian-owned press and not those periodicals owned by foreigners, and this is the main thrust of the prosecution’s argument.

The court comes to “order,” if that term can be used, in Badi‘a’s own music hall in ‘Imad al-Din Street, and once again Husayn Shafiq al-Misri reluctantly takes pen in hand to struggle through recording the proceedings. Badi‘a declares, “The court is now in session,” and al-Misri responds by muttering, “God preserve us!” She begins by flirting with Thabit, telling him his beard reminds her of Kishkish Bey (the famous vaudeville character created by her estranged husband, Najib al-Rihani), then turns to business. When she confronts the three cabinet members with her accusation, they break into song in the hijaz kar mode and the audience shouts its approval. She reproves them for singing tawashih,^[24] and cries, “Ya-t’ulu munulugat ya balash!” (Either sing monologues or forget it!).

Then she continues, “Instead of a new press law, wouldn’t it be better to make a law for Stanley Bay?” This Alexandria beach often crops up in the summertime issues of al-Ithnayn because of the scandalous goings-on that allegedly took place there. Badi‘a observes, “Well, everyone knows that more is exposed at Stanley Bay than in the cabarets.”^[25] The ministers hedge, claiming they are working on a new law for the beaches. Badi‘a presses them on whether it would be applicable to foreigners as well as to Egyptians and, in a dazzling legal argument that would boggle the mind of Perry Mason himself, declares, after singing, dancing, and getting the audience to sing along with her “I love you” (rendered in transliteration as Ay luf yu), that the Mixed Courts will never endorse any law the prime minister tries to apply to foreigners, whether the new press law or the bogus beach law she has connived him into agreeing to. The verdict is a confusing pastiche of references to popular songs and obscure incidents mixed with doggerel verse, like the following statement:

Wa-haythu anna al-wizarah: “Hazzaru ya gama‘a is-sa‘a kam w-ihna kida huh, rayhin gayin yadub id-dik yi’ul ‘ku-ku-ku-ku,’ tibuss til’ana sahyin.”

Whereas the Ministry: “Guess everyone what time it is, and here we are, going and coming, as soon as the cock says ‘cock-a-doodle-do,’ you’ll find us awake.”

At the end of this Badi‘a declares the ministers innocent of wrongdoing as her own argument has shown that there can be no justice for Egyptians in their own country. The majlis itself is to bear the legal expenses.

By Badi‘a’s fourth court appearance (December 24, 1934) its size has grown to five: Badi‘a (an ordinary panelist this time), Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab, George Abyad, Umm Kulthum, and, at its head, Mahjub Thabit. Their victim is the English soldier who guards the High Commissioner’s residence, and appointed to defend him is none other than Kishkish Bey himself. In language heavy with the letter qaf Mahjub Thabit threatens to hang the soldier in order to force him to speak the truth:

Wa-qarrarana qat‘i qit‘ati qumashin min qamisi l-maqbudi ‘alayhi li-khanqihi bi-taqritiha ‘ala ‘unuqihi thumma taduqqu raqabatuhu idha taqalqulu fi al-nutqi bi-l-haqqi fa-qul ya qalila al-hidhqi ma ismuk?

We have decided to cut a piece from the shirt of the accused in order to hang him with this snippet by his neck, so that his neck will thrum should he strum pronouncement of the truth, so speak, you unclever one, what is your name?

In language marked with Lebanese colloquialisms, George Abyad also demands that the soldier speak:

Yihraq ‘umrak, shu sar fi lasinak? itkallim wa-lak!

May your life be burned, what’s got your tongue? Talk or else!

Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab sensibly points out that since the accused does not speak Arabic he will need a translator. The soldier protests, in pointedly ungrammatical Arabic:

Ana Inglizi yi‘raf ‘Arabi lakin mish ‘Arabi qa qa qa bita‘ ra’is galsa di zayy wahid farkha. Keman ’adi tani di ana mish yifham ‘Arabi bita‘uh “wa-lak lasinak shu?” Nu sir, di mush ‘Arabi!

I am Englishman who knows Arabic but not qa qa qa Arabic like the president of this court like one chicken. Also the second judge, I do not understands his Arabic. No sir, she is not Arabic!

Although al-Misri (the author of the piece by virtue of being “court recorder”) has accurately and humorously indicated the characteristic confused genders and misconjugations of the non-native speaker’s broken Arabic, he has taken equal care in his representation of the language of the other two speakers. Thus not only is the soldier aware that the formal style of Thabit is incomprehensible to him in a way that is different from the colloquial Lebanese dialect used by Abyad, but the reader would be aware of this as well.

The soldier’s crime was that he did not prevent Egyptian ministers from going to see High Commissioner Peterson (which, had he been a good nationalist, he would have done, to prevent Britain’s meddling in Egypt’s internal affairs). Even with his broken Arabic, however, he acquits himself well and captures the court’s heart. Badi‘a flirts with him, and ‘Abd al-Wahhab sings him a snatch of song from the 1927 Sayyid Darwish opera Antuniyu wa-Kliyubatra (Anthony and Cleopatra).^[26]

Kishkish Bey protests, “Have you come to judge my client or to flirt with him? If Husayn Shafiq al-Misri was the one in the dock you would all surely be putting your fingers in his eye!” After Umm Kulthum adds a line or two of song in tribute to the soldier, Kishkish Bey explodes, “What do you need me to defend you against, you son of sixty Manchesters rolled into one??” For his rebuttal he tells the court that his client was “just following orders . . . so pronounce him innocent, or sentence him to death, as you like. I don’t care. I don’t like this red race at all. Take him wherever you want.” In its verdict, the court rules:

Whereas: The accused could have prevented the ministers from entering the High Commissioner’s residence in order to sow the seeds of difference between England and Egypt, and

Whereas: He deserves to be hung by the neck until dead, and

Whereas: He is English and his lawyer is Egyptian,

Therefore: The accused is declared innocent and his lawyer Kishkish Bey is to be hung. The condemned is also to bear all the legal expenses.

In response the soldier makes a daring escape: he leaps from the dock, boxes the judges’ ears, and drags Kishkish Bey off under his arm, as the audience applauds and the Sha‘b party falls.

Badi‘a assumes the role of president of the majlis for the last time in her fifth appearance, also the last time the feature ever appears in the magazine (June 10, 1935). On this occasion she is joined by the actress Fatima Rushdi and the producer ‘Aziz ‘Id.^[27] Music-hall comedian ‘Ali al-Kassar, creator of the comic stage character “Egypt’s unique barbarian,”^[28] takes the role of prosecution against Sir Miles Lampson, the British High Commissioner. Britain had announced it had no intention of meddling in Egypt’s internal affairs, and yet Lampson had refused to permit the application of the Egyptian constitution. When pressed by the members of the majlis he refuses to indicate why he will not permit its restoration, although he claims to have no objection to it. ‘Aziz ‘Id declares that Lampson is such a good actor, he should be a member of ‘Id’s performing troupe, and an argument ensues between him and Fatima Rushdi about the minimum requirements of art. Barriers between prosecution and defense break down as ‘Aziz ‘Id continues to express his admiration for Lampson’s acting talent. Badi‘a, dazed and confused by this point, asks the court recorder to reread a portion of the record. But he hasn’t been writing anything down. Instead, he cocks his tarboosh forward in a fetching attitude and recites a comic monologue to the audience. “This court has become a dance hall,” she groans. ‘Aziz ‘Id wants to declare a mistrial, but Badi‘a savagely promises judgment after the judges’ recess.

Her verdict: In view of the fact that Lampson has refused to tell the court anything and that the court recorder has neglected his duty, the tarboosh of the court recorder will be burned and Lampson will walk.