In the 1990s when I encountered Yasin on the sidewalk, the vendor sold me five colouring books in of a series of six, or so I surmise from the titles advertised on the back of them. My missing Isma’il Yasin colouring book is Isma’il Yasin fi al-Fanus al-Sihri (…in the magic lantern). Oddly enough, there seems to be no film by that title, at least not in any reference book I own. Perhaps it was a television show or play that may or may not exist in an archive. Or possibly it was Hilmi Khalifa’s gloss on ‘Ali Baba wa al-Arba’in Harami (Ali Baba and the forty thieves), Isma’il Yasin’s second film way back in 1942. Or it could have been an Isma’il Yasin film that existed entirely in the artist’s mind.

Obviously four of the five colouring books available from the sidewalk vendor that day featured what one might call a “security theme.” It could have been otherwise. The artist could have instead played on Isma’il Yasin in the Wax Museum, Isma’il Yasin in Damascus, or Isma’il Yasin Meets Raya and Sakina (two notorious murderesses from World War I-era Alexandria, who were immortalized in plays and a 1953 film—three years before their encounter with Isma’il Yasin). But he didn’t. Nor was there a colouring book modelled on Isma’il Yasin for Sale. And no Isma’il Yasin, Tarzan. It was Isma’il Yasin in the army, navy, airforce, police, and … mental hospital.

I own video copies of several of these films—mostly poor-quality copies. The most serviceable video copy I have is Isma’il Yasin in the Army, which was made in 1955. It was a recruiting film, as I imagine are all the Isma’il Yasin series featuring the armed forces in the titles. It was also an enjoyable film—exceedingly crude by the standards of Egyptian films of that period, but brimming with the energy and hopes of early independence. It was surely the hopefulness of the mid-1950s that made Isma’il Yasin in the Army a happy memory in the 1990s. The Free Officers were in power. Egypt was independent and eager to make its mark as a modern nation-state. At the same time, the Suez War had not yet made Nasser the unassailable hero of Arab nationalism. No ideology had crystallized. The controversial acts of the Nasser years were all in the future—nationalization of property and industries (including the cinema), political repression, disastrous defeat. All were yet to occur when this film was first shown. A recruiting film from this brief period between the heady first days of independence and later events seems like a moment of innocence in retrospect. The colouring book emphasizes the manic chaos that surrounded everything Isma’il Yasin did in the film, or indeed, in most of his films. Or to put it differently, in the colouring book he is mostly shown screwing up. [Figure 8] But his screw-ups are purposeful. Yasin’s mishaps with drill sergeants, army food, barracks life, and all the miseries that basic training undoubtedly inflicts on army recruits all over the world evoke the communitas of every group training experience, military or otherwise. The moments of vulnerability focus memories of eventual success.

Figure 8

The colouring book images from Isma’il Yasin in the Army are inspired by the film, but do not depict actual scenes in it. The film itself follows a predictable institution-building formula. It follows a group of men from a working-class neighbourhood, tracking their progress from recruitment through training and into active duty. Much of the colouring book is consistent with the spirit of the film. In the beginning, the army pokes, prods, and measures its new recruits. They are not exactly promising material, as [Figure 9] shows.

Figure 9

As they embark on their training they can barely walk a straight line, let alone march in formation. But this is the army, and the army knows what to do with even the rawest recruits. By the end they are part of a vast, well-oiled machine marching crisply on well-kept parade grounds. [Figure 10]

Figure 10

Throughout the film Isma’il Yasin and his platoon of neighbours bicker. They have personal tensions, pretensions, and aspirations. The drill sergeant is a fat neighbour who wants to marry Yasin’s girl-next-door sweetheart. But in the end they all pull together. Late in the film, fully trained and now deadly competent, they go on manoeuvres. While in the field they actually fight a battle. The enemy is never named. One imagines Israelis or the British, but all we see are soldiers who look just like them, but in slightly darker uniforms. No national flags. No discussions about “why we fight.” We see the tense and determined faces of the erstwhile bickering screwups. [Figure 11]

Figure 11

The battle begins, and they acquit themselves magnificently. At one point Isma’il Yasin is shown confronting an enemy machine gun nest. He pulls the pin on his grenade, throws it, and we see Egyptian feet overrunning the now destroyed enemy position.

The film is a straightforward recruiting tool. The director, Fatin Abd al-Wahhab, had been an army officer before becoming a director, and therefore had good connections with the army and with the Free Officers. In his film the army is strict but just. It makes men out of disorganized rabble. Being in the officer corps had long been a route to upward mobility, but the rank and file under colonial rule had often been forced to serve. This film attempted to shape a new reality in which the rank and file were citizen soldiers. But despite all that Isma’il Yasin in the Army was still an Isma’il Yasin film in spirit. The battle scene that confirms the recruits’ manhood is not really the high point of the film. It lasts all of one minute and thirty seconds. A musical skit that proceeds the battle brings out the really big guns. It lasts 4 minutes, in which Isma’il Yasin appears with a dozen dancing girls, and ends the song trading his army uniform for a band leader’s outfit. [Figure 12]

Figure 12

After the battle, the film ends with Isma’il Yasin accepting a challenge to fight his fat drill sergeant in a judo match (or “free Japanese Russian German wrestling … and everything that leads to a whupping” as Yasin calls it). A lot is at stake: the winner, it is agreed, gets to marry the girl next door. Yasin’s sergeant is abusive and huge. At one point in the film he humiliates Yasin in front of his girlfriend. But of course in the judo match the rubbery and utterly unmuscular Yasin triumphs over the huge but blubbery sergeant, and the film ends with Yasin getting the girl. [Figure 13]

Figure 13

It may be that the intricate similarities and differences between my 1990s colouring book and the films it cites heighten the nostalgic effect. Indeed, the colouring book copies create nostalgia in people who could not possibly actually remember the 1950s originals. Obviously a colouring book is not meant for people who literally remember the early years of independence, but for children. However, it is quite possible that children of the 1990s actually experienced more Isma’il Yasin than did their parents or, more likely, grandparents, in the 1950s. I do not know anyone else who bought the Isma’il Yasin colouring book series, but I do know lots of people who watched (and probably still watch) Isma’il Yasin films constantly on television. And as films began to migrate from VHS to DVD many of the first titles marketed were Isma’il Yasin films. The new Rotana Zaman satellite channel plays a constant stream of old movies, many of which feature Isma’il Yasin. In fact there has probably never been an easier time for a devoted fan to gorge on a steady diet of Isma’il Yasin. But the high profile of Yasin in the newest of new media suggest that the continuing availability of his films is not necessarily driven by septuagenarians pining for the good old days. An Isma’il Yasin colouring book existed in the 1990s for a reason. The differences between the colouring book copies of Yasin and the original films provide just enough friction to make one have to think about something that is otherwise part of the fabric of daily life. This is perhaps a key to sustaining nostalgia across generations. A kid with a colouring book in the mid-1990s couldn’t possibly remember Isma’il films or the period to which they belong. But such a child can still grow up feeling nostalgia for Isma’il Yasin. This is like longing to go home to a place in which one has never lived. It isn’t so paradoxical when one remembers that nostalgia is often an implicit criticism of the present. If Isma’il Yasin in the Army now seems like a crystallized moment of innocence it may be because the present is so hard to see in such terms.

Footnote:

1. Qasim, Mahmud. 1997. Mausu’at al-Mumaththil fi al-Sinima al-Misriyya, 1927-1997. Cairo: Dar al-Amin, pp. 32-33.

Bio:

Walter Armbrust is the Albert Hourani Fellow of Modern Middle Eastern Studies at St. Antony’s College, and a Lecturer at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (Cambridge, 1996), and editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to the Middle East and Beyond (University of California, 2000). He is also a senior editor of the e-journal Arab Media and Society (http:/ www.arabmediasociety.org/). Dr. Armbrust is currently researching a cultural history of Egyptian cinema.