The most recent JOKE-themed issue of ArabLit Quarterly features, among other things, an anonymous essay examining the joke as a counter-hegemonic discourse in the underground music scene of post-revolutionary Egypt.
We have put together a YouTube playlist of the songs discussed in this essay, and share a translated excerpt from Ramy Essam’s “Balaha” below.
Ramy Essam – “Balaha”
Ramy Essam is one of the very few underground artists to have accepted public talks, interviews, or academic collaborations since 2011. This contributed to his detention and torture in 2011 and 2014. He was finally able to leave the country in 2014, after he was granted a safe-haven entry to Sweden as part of Malmö’s sanctuary program. Still, in response to “Balaha” (‘Date’, 2018), one of Essam’s most daring protest songs, Essam’s Egyptian passport was revoked and seven people were arrested in connection with the song, including filmmaker and director Shady Habash, lyricist Galal El-Behairy, and web designer Mustafa Gamal. On May 1, 2020, Habash died of medical neglect at the age of 24 in the infamous Tora Prison after nearly 800 days in pre-trial detention. El-Behairy and Gamal still remain in prison to this day.
Hey little brittle Balaha dates
Your four years have passed by in disgrace
We’ve been too long with your grace
And we’re sick of your dumb face
So may God answer our prayers
And punish you slap-head
As you take your gang boys by the hand
And go rot in Tora Prison
Eh, Balaha dates!
Four years have passed without a trace
While the people are in dire straits
You beg here and there for pennies
And go spoil your judiciary rotten
Then say you’ll raise a new generation
By building new jails with iron gates!
Well, thank you, mister corrupt president
Little brittle Balaha dates!
A lousy clumsy screw-up in every way
You sold them our land and gave it away
And still they kicked your ass like a sock ball,
Snatched the Nile, and built a dam
So you dug a canal, may you win
But now we know it’s just a ditch
All you do is spin your webs
Little brittle Balaha dates!
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For more chants, photos, poetry, short stories, and essays on THE JOKE, get the most recent issue of ArabLit Quarterly digitally through Exact Editions or Gumroad, or in print via Am*zon and participating bookshops.