Having tuned in early to Channel 4 on Friday morning for the cricket, I caught the end of episode 5 of Ramy, a US comedy drama series. Set in New Jersey, this deals with the travails of a son of Egyptian immigrants and has proved a surprise hit in the US. The Channel 4 relay was merely washing over me until the end titles rolled and the opening words of the backing song threw my mind back in Proustian fashion to a room in an Army junior school in Tel-el-Kebir in the early 1950s. One of the girls had arranged with the head teacher to entertain us fellow pupils with a couple of Egyptian popular songs which she had learned. Even at the time it seemed to me that both her family and the school staff were quite enlightened to encourage her involvement with local popular culture. It should be borne in mind that we army families were in the process of being evacuated from the Suez Canal Zone after a violent uprising instigated by the Egyptian military. She would have learnt the songs before the evacuation (TEK was a garrison town) but even so, it was a bold step for those days. The opening words of the first song were "mish mumkin".
The phrase turns out to mean "it's not possible". I do not have a clear memory of all the words of that song from seventy years ago, but I do remember one other phrase and the shape of the melody. The Ramy play-out was definitely different, but with a little effort I am sure I can find a translation of the lyrics from the wealth of material the TV series has generated. I am left wondering what the earlier song meant and whether that was suitable for a young girl. Indeed, whatever happened to the girl?
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