The first Arab reality TV show ended Monday after three months of controversy over its format — parading women before suitors in a luxury apartment for 24 hours a day. Critics damned the ground-breaking dating show Al Hawa Sawa (On Air Together) as too liberal, but fans writing on internet diary sites said it supported traditional values of limited contact before marriage. Suitors could view the girls 24 hours a day and contact them before a possible meeting in the flat to propose marriage. In a region of 280 million Arabic speakers, such shows have huge potential audiences and provoke much public debate.
"She picked him? Why the hell did she pick him?"
"I thought he was cute!"
"He's buck-toothed and cross-eyed!" |
Al Hawa Sawa ended just after an Arab version of the hit reality TV show "Big Brother" was launched to furious protests from conservatives in the Gulf state of Bahrain, who branded it "indecent" — it shows six men and women living in the same villa. Traditional values in Arab societies require the segregation of unmarried men and women, but television networks have increasingly been pushing back the boundaries. Viewers of Al Hawa Sawa suspected in January that three of the eight girls from around the Arab world taking part in the show were secretly smoking, flouting a ban on cigarettes and alcohol in the luxury Beirut apartment they moved into in December.
"Hey — they are human. We all have our demons," one online diarist who gave his name as H. Qureshi said. "It’s not a shocking thing for me. I feel sorry and sad for these ladies. They are living a hypocritical lifestyle." The show ended early Monday morning when one of the last two contestants dropped a bombshell on-air, saying she refused to get married. She then locked herself in a bedroom until she was flown back to her native Algeria. "Believe me, I do not want to get married. Please, please -- I’m not feeling right. They will know the reason in the media when I get out -- I’m going to talk," emotional 21-year-old Aicha Gerbas told the camera minutes before the finale.
| "There ain't no way I'm hooking up with some beturbanned goober from Egypt and spending the rest of my life tending to his goats! I'm entering a nunnery!" |
Gerbas had earlier agreed to marry Hossam, an Egyptian who was sitting in the living-room next door to the "truth room" where Gerbas shocked viewers with her sudden change of heart. "This is completely inappropriate behavior," the show’s "voice" responded.
| "Just shut up and marry him. We don't care if he does have buck teeth and he smells funny!" |
The Arab channel MBC, which ran the show, declined to comment on the incident. "Aicha has made fools of you all!" one viewer gloated in a text message that trawled across the bottom of the screen.
The show saw another hiccup earlier in the week when Lebanese authorities unexpectedly turned back the suitor Hossam at Beirut airport, refusing to grant him a tourist visa. "One wonders why the production company doesn’t stop the show with all the problems it’s facing," the Lebanese paper Assafir wrote recently after some contestants who had left complained of boredom and jealousy. Minutes after Gerbas’s bombshell, the viewers’ vote chose Mervat Foani from Lebanon as the "Bride of On Air Together," sending her with her chosen suitor on a honeymoon to Malaysia, where conservative Islamic values are also strong.
| I'll bet they're just thrilled to death. |
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