27 August 2011

BEIRUT: It’s a popular Iraqi game show broadcast throughout Ramadan which takes viewer calls from around the world. It doesn’t show at a fixed time, but rather pops up at various times of the day.

And it’s live from Mansourieh, Lebanon.In a basement of Beirut’s eastern suburb of Mansourieh airs the Iraqi satellite television network Alsumaria. Many staff from the Alsumaria branch in Baghdad came up during the month of Ramadan just to host the show “Majina ya Majina,” the first of its kind in Iraqi game shows.

Iraqis from all over the world tune into Alsumaria’s Ramadan programs, waiting for “Majina ya Majina” to come on. The show follows a rather confusing concept: it appears sporadically throughout the day, for short, undetermined periods of time, and is built around intrigue.

According to Walid Melki, the creator and presenter, the show is a hit in more than 70 countries. “Each day, we receive between 70 and 80,000 callers from all over the world,” he said, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Sweden, Norway, Italy, and France.

The addictive element of the show is the mysterious nature of the game itself.

In the middle of the studio, an unknown object is locked inside a big wooden box, and callers have to guess what this object is. The only information they have is a riddle-like hint which Melki comes up with, and participants are then allowed to ask the hosts three questions.

Every day Melki walks into the studio and locks the object in the box, and every evening he unlocks the box and leaves with the object, and even the hosts don’t know what’s inside.

The prizes are in Iraqi dinars, and the stakes can get quite high. The value of the prize continues to grow as long as no one makes a correct guess. “Once the stakes were at 17 million dinars ($14,500) and no one guessed the answer, so we distributed the money among 32 callers,” said Melki.

Melki himself created the concept of the show, and is responsible for the artistic direction. He describes the set and the costume as having an ancient feel in the spirit of Ramadan whereas the hosts, the questions asked and the game played are distinctly modern.

According to Melki, “Majina ya Majina” is equivalent in meaning to “a long time ago” in Iraqi Arabic. “For me, Ramadan is tied to ancient Islamic, traditional times,” he said. “The identity of the show is in the costumes, which are styled to the time of the Abbasid Caliph Haroun al-Rashid, with sparkles and silver.”

The location of the Alsumaria studio in Beirut is to ensure that the station can keep running, regardless of security problems in Iraq. Melki himself is Lebanese, and sees Iraqis and Lebanese as two people having many things in common. The 12 hosts who alternate on “Majina ya Majina” are all Iraqi.

“Each has their own style, their charm, their sense of humor. They bring a lot to the show and the audience is very attached to them,” Melki said.

The lack of security in Iraq is a source of frustration for the hosts, many of whom will return to Iraq after Ramadan.

Taimoor Mohammad, 26, and Manal Almutasim, 30, work at the Alsumaria station in Baghdad and are in Lebanon just for Ramadan.

“I like to live in Baghdad, but the situation sometimes makes you nervous,” said Mohammad.

“The first reason for leaving is security,” said Almutasim. “I would rather live outside of Iraq – specifically in Lebanon or in Egypt – because there is fame, success, opportunity, a will for improvement, and people are working on it and believing in it,” she added.

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.