I did something new during the pandemic: I made a movie!
Well, I helped my friend Chirine El Ansary make a movie. Chirine did most of the work.
Chirine is a spoken-word artist who divides her time between Egypt and France. I’ve known her since I was based in Cairo as a journalist in the early 2000s.
Chirine sent me an email back in September telling me about a project she was working on to restore a sabil, a public water fountain, that was established in Cairo in the 19th century by, unusually, a woman. The woman, Bamba Qadin, was known for her efforts to educate girls and help the needy. She was the mother of Abbas Hilmi I who ruled Egypt from 1848 to 1854. She built the sabil in memory of her son, who was assassinated.
As part of her restoration project, Chirine told me that she wanted to produce a kind of art documentary to tell the world about Bamba Qadin. Chirine wanted viewers to understand that women such as Bamba Qadin have existed all over the world in all eras, but are often forgotten. She asked me to participate in a film she envisioned as a conversation about women who made history, but whose stories aren't well known, with music and historic images.
Chirine's touchpoint was Bamba Qadin. Mine was Clara Brown. Aunt Clara, as she came to be known, was born into slavery in Virginia around 1800. By the time she bought her own freedom in 1859, her husband and three remaining children (a fourth died young) had been sold away from her. She would spend the rest of her life searching for her family, an odyssey that brought her to Colorado. Even while she was trying to reunite her own family, Aunt Clara helped others freed from slavery establish themselves in Colorado.
Aunt Clara learned over the years that her husband and a daughter had died in slavery. A son had been sold and resold so many times that she could not trace him. In 1882, Aunt Clara was able to locate her youngest daughter, Eliza Jane, in Iowa. Aunt Clara traveled to Iowa to be reunited with Eliza Jane. Then Aunt Clara returned to Denver with her granddaughter. Aunt Clara died in 1885 and is buried in Denver.
Like Bamba Qadin, Aunt Clara was known for helping those in need. Chirine and I were intrigued by other parallels. While the historical record is unclear, there are indications that Bamba Qadin was enslaved. And both were linked to life-giving water – Aunt Clara made her living as a laundress.
I leaned on some old skills - researching and writing - to help Chirine with the movie. I also used some newer skills I learned while working at a local public radio station to make video and sound recordings that Chirine wove into the film.
The finished product, titled The Water Women, was shown to audiences in Cairo on June 3, 4 and 5.
As we wrapped up the project, Chirine asked if I knew of any poetry that would fit our theme. I suggested an Ethiopian lullaby from "African Poems and Love Songs," a copy of which I found years ago in an antiquarian book shop in Johannesburg. Chirine was as charmed as I was by the lullaby. She translated it into Egyptian colloquial Arabic. In one of my favorite sequences in the movie, she and I trade lines from the lullaby, having the conversation she had imagined from the start.
It's time for your mother to come....
Let not your eye wander about for her.
She'll suddenly appear on the road from the village.
There are plenty of others who went to the river.