Egyptian screenwriter Mohsen Zayed has debuted in adapting Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Hadith Al Sabah Wa Al Masaa (Morning and Evening Talck) into a TV drama.
Not a single screenwriter has dared before to think of this work fearing that it was impossible to transform such novels into drama.
“I did not reach the stage of discovering the novel’s secret except after four months I spent isolated in a room on the walls of which I drew the tree that combined the characters of the novel together. I used to sleep and wake up thinking only of the novel until I understood its theme,” Zayed told the UAE daily Al Bayan.
Mahfouz wrote the novel in 67 parts bearing the names of the characters and organized alphabetically which made it irrelevant for a series on the small screen, said Zayed.
“I had to discover the secret in the novel which took me four months. When I told Mahfouz about it he paused for four minutes which to me were as long as few hours but when I heard the renowned writer repeating the word “Allah” three times, I understood what he meant because I know this great man,” said Zayed.
He added, “I told him I had a short story entitled Heena Egtazat Safiyyah Al Bab (When Safiyyah Crossed the Door). The story’s hero walks unsteadily and appears as if he were lost after a long absence. Despite darkness he sees the old house as it is in the neighborhood yard which becomes narrower. So he raises his hand to the brass doorknob and keeps knocking at the door. At a moment of despair the door opens for him to see his grandfather with his wrinkled face, gray brows, and white long beard hanging over his wide chest. He carries a primitive lantern in his left hand while holding an immense book he was reading when the door was being knocked at. From this point I drew the character of Al Nakshabandi who enters the house to sit with his fifth or sixth grandfather to ask him about what happened. This grandfather who represents the family tree is called Yazeed Al Masri. The book he gives to his grandson is the book of characters. Who comes first is not the issue but more important is to see the characters on the book pages or in the yard where the drama characters gather. We see them in their daily life and so this is how I discovered the secret in the drama so that the viewer will enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed reading the book.”
While some people saw the series as a compilation of metaphysics, which are given bigger roles than the original novel gives them, Zayed sees that our actual life is like that. “Our thinking is scientific despite the fact that we read our horoscopes daily and know how they are written. But we need to have some optimism regardless of our scientific perception of things,” he said -- Albawaba.com
