Habibi Rasak Kharban: The Middle Eastern Story of Forbidden Love

This past week a friend of mine and I went to a film screening of Habibi Rasak Kharban graciously screened by the class The Imagining of the Middle East. I walked in not knowing what to expect, and ended up watching a beautiful film about two young persons in Gaza not being able to be together because of the unnecessary laws and hindrances of the Israeli/Palestinian world.

The film begins with its male lover, Qays, in a college classroom reading Sufi poetry, the poetry from which the original love story told in Habibi is from. Once Layla, the female lover, hears Qays reading their relationship begins to form. They realize they share a similar love of literature and poetry as well as a similar perspective on life and they absolutely must be with one another at all times. But they leave college in the West Bank and return to Gaza, the place that will force one another away from each other at all times. Gaza's traditions and worries imprison them and ultimately disallow them from being together.

Habibi's content impacted me so largely that I sought out more information on the film and the storyline on the internet, where I learned that the film is a modern adaptation of the ancient Sufi poem about the lovers Layla and Qays, Majnun Layla, “Possessed by Madness for Layla”. The poem’s origin traces back to a short, anecdotal poem in ancient Arabia which was later expanded by the Iranian poet Nizami Ganjavi as the third of his five narrative poems, Khamsa.

In the Iranian poem Majnun falls in love with Layla and composes poems about his feeling for her, poems that are obviously speaking about her. In the film he tags Gaza’s walls with these poems that mention her name. In both works Qays becomes known as Majnun because he has been possessed by the love he feels for Layla. Qays asks Layla’s father for her hand but he is rejected because he is considered a madman in the community. It would be a scandal for Layla’s father to allow for the marriage when Qays is reputed to be mentally unbalanced.

Soon after Layla must marry another man, against her will, and both are plunged into sadness. Qays runs away into the desert where he is seen reciting poetry to himself and writing in the sand with a stick.  Layla moves to Northern Arabia with her husband where she soon dies, perhaps out of heartbreak. Majnun is later found dead near Layla’s grave where one can find carved on a nearby rock three verses of poetry dedicated to Layla,

” I pass by these walls, the walls of Layla

And I kiss this wall and that wall

It’s not Love of the houses that has taken my heart

But of the One who dwells in those houses”

I especially enjoyed watching Habibi Rasak Kharban because it introduced me to the Middle Eastern equivalent of  the Western world’s, Romeo and Juliet, the narrative poem that also discusses tragic, youthful love.

http://www.habibithefilm.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layla_and_Majnun