An Nahar newspaper spotlighted a comedy play ‘Mjadra Hamra’ narrating the dreams and disappointments of the only heroine on stage, Anjou Rihan, who embodied three women from the southern town of Nabatiyeh. The girlfriends, Suad, Maryam and Fatmeh, living in the southern suburbs of the capital, communicate their stories on marriage, divorce, children, food and immigration, and raise the issue of violence against women and the male chauvinist mindset in a fun and easy flair. The dialogue in the show switches from one character to another. Maryam, the educated woman who lived in Paris to become a writer thriving with Parisian liberty, falls in love with and marries Bassem, the Lebanese from the South, but divorces him because she refuses to become a mother. Fatmeh, a widower, interacts with her deceased husband asking him if he approves her re-marrying after 10 years from his death, and at the same time faces rejection from her children who do not want her to wed another man. The third character, Souad, personifies the southern woman crushed under the brutal power of her husband. Constantly battered by her husband, Souad decides to sneak poison into his plate of mjadra hamra, the typical southern dish, reminiscing her mother’s words that the only way to a man’s heart is his stomach. She kills him and liberates herself from his authority and his meal. (An Nahar, February 20, 2018)
