The late artist, Abdel Halim Hafez, has always been famous for being one of the people who cannot swim and believes in the proverb that the water stings the diver, and there was an old enmity between him and the water since childhood.
Unfortunately for Abdel Halim Hafez, his role required him to jump into the water to save his girlfriend from drowning, specifically in the movie “Love Street”, in the scene in which the artist Sabah jumped into the water with the intention of committing suicide during the events of the film.
Director Ezz El-Din Zulfiqar asked Nightingale to stand on a tree and from it jump to the Nile, and the latter tried to persuade him to abandon this scene or use an alternative to it, but he did not agree and insisted on presenting Halim for the scene.
When Halim decided to jump into the water, he felt how filthy it was, which made him alienate and shivered for fear of contracting schistosomiasis, which he had suffered from since childhood.
The artist Sabah went to the water while she was also indignant, and she kept screaming and saying: “I am wrong because I work in one of your films, my money and money was this calamity.” A patient with schistosomiasis, and that this water may activate the germs in his body.
After filming the scene, Halim quickly returned to his home, and made sure to shower with a large amount of hot water. Despite this, his fear did not go away, so he brought two bottles of red wine, and poured them on his body, believing that alcohol kills germs.
Then his brother Ismail brought three bottles of cologne to carry out the “purification” process, and this matter remained for several consecutive days, twice a day, and then swore to learn to swim even if the director asked him to jump into the water and jumped into a clean swimming pool in order to avoid the complications of schistosomiasis.