The screen accompanies the lives of celebrities as if it were an extension of the screen novels. The realistic narration sometimes turns into a scenario that exceeds the desire and ambition of the directors. In the comparison between the life of Asmahan and the life of Souad Hosni, we always see the tragedy at its extreme: the extremes of fame and wealth, and the extremes of misery and destitution. And just as Asmahan was Taie Al Karam, so was Cinderella. Both endings were poor and heartbreaking.
The two beauties spoiled their lives by politics. The first brought singing to its climax from its inception, and the second, her movie “Khali Balak from Zouzou” was a success that no other film in the history of Egyptian cinema knew. And just as the people of Asmahan interfered in its affairs alive and dead, so did the people of the other Levant. Each in its own time and age. One in royal Egypt, and one in revolutionary Egypt, two destinies similar in antithesis of lines. Two moons in overcast clouds, first and foremost.
Souad Hosni moved between her father’s house and her mother’s house eight times. School was lost, then illness took hold of her, and everything was lost.
But who is the third Syrian in this series? Forgive us. Where can I get a third star that has all this splendor, these events, and these rings? Other Syrian women lived ordinary lives like all women. They fell in love, got married, sang, succeeded, and had difficult beginnings. Fayza Ahmed entered the history of the song as the singer who sang to the mother, “Sitt El Habayeb”, her share of stardom. Najat Al Saghira shone in singing and Nizar Qabbani’s poetry, but in people’s minds she remained just the sister of Souad Hosni. The title “Al-Shawam” was applied to both the Syrians and the Lebanese. However, the number of Lebanese working in art and journalism is much greater. Because Lebanon is a country of emigration, as it was then also a country of few.
The strange thing about the Shawam phenomenon in Egypt is the absence of Palestinians from those fields. Before and after the Nakba.
Was the reason Palestine’s preoccupation with its state of struggle, also before and after the Nakba? Perhaps this explains that the great militants left Egypt. At the forefront of them was Yasser Arafat, who continued to speak in the Egyptian dialect until the last day.
