Arabic Soap Oprea

Last year during Ramadan one of the Arabic TV channels brought a really good soap opera . I would tell you the name, but after exhaustively trying to pronounce this correctly , I've thrown in the towel and given up trying . Impossible for my tongue to pronounce .

It is about a small Arab town around the turn of the last century in Syria and the inhabitants lives . Somehow or another Moe and I got hooked , along with half of the Arab world , into watching this show nightly very religiously . It captivated your attention , the lives of the these people and at the same time gave you a slice of history .

The main character is married and has grown children . His oldest daughter is in a stormy marriage . His other daughter is a mute . Then he has two other daughters that are teenagers , and also two sons that are very different from one another. Towards the end of the series the oldest son marries and lives with the parents with his bride . Of course there is instant trouble in paradise and the ensuing troubles results in the father telling his long and faithful wife of many years he is divorcing her. That was a shock for all the viewers .

So, the next day after this show was the was the Eid . That night they didn't bring the story on ok , maybe because of the Eid ? Then the next night the same thing . I watched that Arabic channel for four days before the channel announced that this was only a Ramadan show . The next installment would be the following year , this year .

I never watch Arabic TV because my Arabic isn't sufficient even after all these years to deal with all the different Arab dialects and the nuances of the language . Moe years ago bowed out of being the translator, so I just sorta gave up on Arabic TV . Luckily for me the advent of satellite TV came along nearly the same time and I had English language TV to view . So , the fact that I watched this show , WITH Moe , and continued to search for it four days after the last installment was a big deal.

Then this year about two weeks before Ramadan started adverts for this same soap opera began telling viewers that it would be back on this year . There was a lot of buzz going around town when this news came out .And not just from the female population either ! The men liked this show just as much as the women .

The excitement built up . People were speculating on the threatened divorce , did the father actually divorce the mother ?The first show came finally and he had . Oh my! Things just went down hill from there it seemed . One misadventure after the other happened to the people in the town . Real cliff hangers . On the last night of Ramadan this year we had a conclusion of sorts to the story , but you could tell there was a whole lot more to be told . When the show ended , two of the main characters came out in modern dress to tell us , the audience, that we would just have to wait until next year to learn what had happened . I moaned . Moe groaned . I looked at him and made him PROMISE that if I were to die between now and next Ramadan he was to come to my grave EVERY DAY to tell me what had happened the night before on the show, and you know what ? He promised ! LOL ! Amazing !