Ride Like an Egyptian

Film: Bab el Hadid (The Iron Gate; Cairo Station)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Egypt is a country with a strange identity. It’s an African country that most people don’t think of as an African country. It’s far more easily identified as an Arabic country, but there’s something Western about it as well. Bab el Hadid (alternately called The Iron Gate and Cairo Station) takes place in Cairo, and it presents an interesting blend of Arab and West in pursuit of a story that quickly becomes dark and then gets darker.

The owner of a newsstand in the train station in Cairo takes pity on a mildly crippled man named Qinawi (director Youssef Chahine), giving him a job selling newspapers around the station. This handicap, and his threadbare existence make him less than attractive to the many women who also work in the train station, but this doesn’t stop him from being filled with desire for them. In particular, he is obsessed with Hanuma (Hind Rostom), a woman who illegally sells cold drinks to train passengers (illegal because it takes business away from the man who runs the concession stands).