The able artist Kamal Al-Shennawi spoke about Ramadan, saying: “I started fasting when I was six years old, and on one occasion I felt very hungry and asked my brother and younger sister, quietly, to bring me food in secret, and I ate on the balcony.
At the time of breakfast, my father continued to praise me for my persistence in fasting, despite my young age, and of course I am happy, but my brothers kept laughing and exposed me, and my father knew the truth. And I took a hot leech. He added, “I do not like acting in Ramadan, because there are scenes that are not appropriate for the month of fasting and prayer.” Sometimes we play hateful roles.
I often ask if I happen to shoot in Ramadan in the scenes after iftar, and I used to break the fast with cigarettes, and I kept laughing when a man passed by the street where we were filming and said, “God cuts smoke and shisha, why don’t you smoke?”
And the artist, Samia Gamal, suffered, in her late days with Rushdi Abaza, from ill-treatment, and was harmed by drinking the alcohol that he used to drink even during Ramadan breakfast.
Rushdi Abaza, the handsome screen boy, married the beautiful famous dancer Samia Gamal, in the early sixties, after their participation in the famous movie “The Second Man” in 1959, and this marriage lasted 14 years.
Rushdy Abaza and Samia Gamal, they were like any couple with some normal differences, which always revolved around Rushdi Abaza’s drinking.
He said in his memoirs: “Samia has always been against being drunk, and between every three times we disagree, she can confirm that twice of them are because of drunkenness, and it is a Semitic habit not to fight battles when disagreeing.
She declares her opinion and is silent, arguing with me, but I am in the whirlpool of wine.