Ramadan TV 2018: Based on Short Story, Poetry

At least two Ramadan series this year are based around literature:

Tareeq 

It’s hardly Ramadan without a new Naguib Mahfouz adaptation. This one — called “Tareeq” — is based on a short story, “The Vagrant” or “al-Shareeda,” which was already adapted into a 1980 film starring Najla Fathy and directed by Mahmoud Yassin.

That 1980 film, according to IMDB, was about “a bitter divorce between a well educated young woman and an illiterate rich man,but her ungratefulness makes her revisit the past and what he did for her sake to end her poverty despite the gap in their education status.”

In the story, one of Mahfouz’s early works, a woman marries a man who’s sex-obsessed. Soon after the wedding night, he returns to the clubs, and he goes so far as to come home with his girlfriend while both of them are drunk. The wife becomes quasi-homeless, searches for another man who can replace her husband. One GoodReads reviewer said she was really curious to know how they could spin this out into an entire Ramadan series.

This new adaptation, “Tareeq,” seems to turn the story into a story of star-crossed love between two Cairenes — Abed Fahed and Nadine Najeem — from different social classes.

It appears on mbc.net.

Al Majdy Bin Daher

According to The National, “This is one of the biggest productions of this year’s Ramadan season. The local drama follows the life of the Emirati poet Al Majdi bin Dhaher (d. 1623) as he works on the first collections of prose that would go on to be described as Nabati poetry. The drama…looks at what would become the UAE in a time when the major sources of income were pearl diving, fishing and boat building.” It appears on abudhabitv.ae.

Also according to The National: “Among the most renowned Nabati poets in the UAE is Al Majidi Bin Dhaher, who died in 1623. His poetry recorded many regional events, as he lived in Ras Al Khaimah. He was known for writing improvised poetry and starting his poems with reference to himself, saying: “Al Fahim Al Majidi Bin Dhaher says” and then continuing his poem.”