Ahmed Zaki

Articles on Ahmed Zaki:

He Could Barely Mutter Habibi, My Beloved
by Mohammad Soueid
Cairo– «God help him», the taxi driver sighed, hearing the news that Ahmed Zaki had lapsed into an irreversible coma. We were traversing the city streets in his socialist manufactured Lada, as old as the reign of Leonid Brezhnev or whoever preceded Gorbachev, the king of perestroïka who like Farid Shawqi, was the king of terso, Cairo's third-rate movie theatres. (more...)

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Class, Color and Transgression in the Films of Ahmed Zaki
by Laura Bier
I well remember the first time I saw an Ahmed Zaki film. The year was 1998. It was late at night and I was sitting in my Dokki apartment taking a break from Arabic homework That night, Channel Two was showing the film (The Wife of an Important Man, 1988), directed by the venerable Mohammed Khan. Set against the backdrop of the turbulent events of the late 1970s—the consolidation of a new political and social order created by then-president Sadat’s policy of infitah (“opening”), the 1977 bread riots and the violent repression of political opposition in their wake—the film is at once a devastating political commentary on state violence and a meditation on its intimate connections with domestic violence and masculine control. (more...)

Ahmed Zaki: From Playing Losers to Achieving Stardom
by Walid El Khachab
Ahmed Zaki is one of the many legendary figures of Egyptian cinema. During his lifetime (1949–2005), he reached the status of icon in Arab culture, since he played the roles of some of the key figures of these cultures, such as both presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat and singer Abdel Halim Hafez. In star studies, the emergence of a star is often interpreted as the sign of an era coming into being: according to Edgar Morin, Marilyn Monroe gave birth to a new liberated feminity that emerged in the second half of the 20th century. (more...)

Ahmed Zaki…The Real and the Image
by Mustafa Muharam
It is so difficult for one to be objective when writing about Ahmed Zaki!
I can confidently ascertain that the kind of attention Ahmed Zaki received during his illness has far surpassed any attention that was ever accorded to another artist, whether in the field of acting or singing. (more...)

Biography

Ahmed Abdulrahman Zaki was born November 18, 1949, in the Nile delta village of Zaqazeeq, in the governorate of al-Sharqiyyah, fifty miles north of Cairo. He graduated from the Zaqazeeq School for Crafts with a diploma in mechanical engineering in 1967 and moved to Cairo to enroll in the High Institute for Drama, graduating in 1974.

His first foray onto the stage came in 1969, while he was still a student. Cast in a minor part as a room service waiter in the play Hello Shalabi, Zaki’s performance was impressive and memorable for his impersonation of celebrated film actor and canonical vilain, Mahmoud el-Meligi. The part quickly earned him the role of Ahmad el-Sha‘er, in one of Egypt's most popular stage comedies, Madraset el-Mushaghibeen (The School of Troublemakers) alongside renowned star, ‘Adel Imam. Widely seen and adored, the play earned him the nickname, Ahmad el-Sha‘er (translation?). He became a star in his own right with the leading role in the stage comedy, el-‘Eyal Kebret (Children Have Grown, 1978) and with his portrayal of Taha Hussein, the doyen of modern Arabic literature, in the television series adapted from the author's autobiography, al-Ayyam (The Days).

Appearing in more than sixty films, several stage plays and television serials, Zaki never allowed himself to be typecast. Displaying remarkable range and versatility, he portrayed villains and heroes, farmers, workers, delinquents, soldiers, civil servants, businessmen, ministers, and two of contemporary Egypt's most important political figures, Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar Sadat. His talent defied prevailing prejudices that assigned leading romantic roles to light-skinned and colored-eyed stars, and earned him two other nicknames, “the Black Tiger” and “the Bronze Star.” He was often paired with Egypt's leading female superstar, the “princess of Egyptian cinema,” Souad Hosni, who died tragically a few years before him under mysterious circumstances in London. Their onscreen chemistry mesmerized audiences across the Middle East.

In January 2004, after he had committed himself to play ‘Abdel-Halim Hafez, the most famous love balladeer of Egypt and the Arab world, in the film Halim, Zaki was diagnosed with lung cancer. He felt a particular affinity to the crooner, who hailed from a nearby village and had also had a difficult childhood in the dire poverty. «Halim and I were orphans who grew up in the same town, suffering immense hardships,» Zaki is reported to have confessed to writer Adel Darwish. He filmed much of the movie while fighting the fatal disease, «He would leave his hospital bed to shoot as many scenes as possible,» Halim's producer, Emad el-Din el-Adeeb recalls. Zaki lapsed into a coma after completing seventy percent of the film. His only son, Haytham, is said to have replaced his father for the remainder of the shooting. A week before his death and shortly before slipping into his final coma, he is reported to have instructed Imad el-Din el-Adeeb to shoot his funeral «to edit it into the film.