On Friday, November 15, the Arab Cultural Studies Program headed by Dr. Michael Daher screened an Egyptian movie titled Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story by Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah. After the film, Mary Assel, Ibrahim Atallah, Batool Saad, and Imad Nouri lead a great discussion about what happened in the movie. The film is about a successful hostess named Hebba for the TV program called ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ where she mainly talks about politics.

Her husband Karim is also successful in his career and he is about to be appointed as editor-in-chief of the greatest governmental newspaper, only if Hebba avoids political topics on her show. Karim persuades her to do this so she talks about ordinary people instead. However, this backfires on Karim. Hebba has three women tell stories of their lives involving men. Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story is a great film giving a "good representation of the era and what is happening in the environment."

The first woman portrayed was Amany, a late middle-aged woman who admittedly was still a virgin. Despite her beauty, she was unwed because of a lack of appeal of her suitors. One of the men was sought out by her mother. They went on one date that ended badly.

On their date, before the meal even arrived, the man pulled out a list that Amany would have to follow. Amany said she would follow it, but she asked what she would get in return, which was nothing. She called him out on this and was criticized. Apparently the rest of the men who asked her to marry were a lot like him. With this story, Karim was happy with the result, however this began lead Hebba to be suspicious about her relationship.

The second woman that was brought up was Safaa, an ex-convict, who was the oldest of three sisters. Their father had recently died leaving a store and little money with an apprentice who would have been his successor. For a short while, their uncle came to help with the store. However, it was discovered that he was gambling away most of the money the store made.

The apprentice then took control of running the store, but with the three sisters in charge. At this time, each of the sisters was of age to get married, but they had no requests. So they decided to leave it to the apprentice to choose between them. Unknown to the sisters, he chose each of the sisters behind their backs and was engaged to each of them. When the sisters discovered what he had done, Safaa sent her two younger sisters away, making it seem as though she wanted him all to herself.

That was not her intention. Safaa lured the apprentice to the store and when he arrived, Safaa beat him up, poured gasoline on him, and burned the store down with the apprentice still inside. When Habba asked why she did that, Saffa said that she was the oldest and it was her responsibility to take care of the apprentice. With this story, Karim was starting to become cross with Hebba and jealous with the publicity she was getting with her stories.

The last woman that was interviewed was Nahed and she was a successful dentist coming from a rich family. A guy came into one of her appointments and right off the bat they began to have a good relationship, or so it seemed. In no time at all, he wanted to marry her and Nahed agreed. They got married legally, but not formally.

They slept together and she became pregnant. When she was two months pregnant Nahed revealed the "good" news expecting to have a good response. However that was not what she received. He got angry and said he was sterile and said she was sleeping with other men. She wasn't in fact but he wouldn't listen and kept on blaming her and was not accepting the fact that he was the father.

She wanted a divorce and during the process she discovered that he was already married to another woman who had a child. In the end he would only agree if he received three million dollars. Not wanting to bare his child, Nahed had an abortion and got rid of the situation and began to do sidewalk protests. From this story, Karim became furious and attacked Hebba, beating her until her face was all bloody. Hebba never knew that she would be one of the stores of abusive relationships that she put on the spot-light on her shows.

The movie was well done and it portrayed great examples of the abuse women receive in relationships and even outside of relationships, in their everyday lives. "I thought it was an excellent movie particularly how it paid attention to different classes and it took the time necessary to build the point up and eventually come into its crescendo of having Hebba abused.

The last thing she says is that it doesn't matter what class you are or how strong you are; you are never at fault for your abuse.. It’s an undeniable reality of the world that we live in and women are struggling and are going to cope in different ways. This movie portrayed diverse personal examples from a very rich woman and very poor women. The movie contained realities that many people would like to avoid and ignore and pretend does not exist.

This is not something that implies only to Islamic nations, but to the whole world. The movie and stories were not real, but accurately portrayed that this abuse happens everywhere in the world and many people are turning a blind eye to the situation.