When her young nephew hears a sermon in Cairo encouraging religious war, filmmaker Nadia Kamel takes it upon herself to acquaint him with the life of his maternal grandmother Maria and the family's hundred-year history of mixed marriages. Her effort takes the shape of a film called Salata Baladi or House Salad.
In her stories Maria reveals bits of her identity as a part Jewish, part Christian, part Muslim, Italian and Arab woman who has been an ardent communist and feminist. But much as Nadia loves these stories, their self-indulgence begins to irk her and she decides to encourage her family to travel across borders with her mother to discover, acknowledge and consolidate who they are with who they have been living as. The footage from their subsequent travels to Italy, Palestine and Israel, interspersed with their conversations and daily routine at home in Egypt is captured spontaneously and has a ‘live news feed’ feel to it. But where it can, the film makes space for the characters to make intimate acquaintance with the audience with the help of lingering images that capture them at crucial personal moments. Through the journey confusion clouds over Maria’s introspection and a volley of questions surface. Why did the World War force them to convert to Christianity? Can she reveal to her family in Egypt that she has relatives in Israel and expect them to understand her need to disregard the boycott and travel to the country? Is it right for her to? Can her half-Palestinian grandson who has no nationality get an Italian citizenship? Should he? Are the personal decisions she is about to make going to threaten her political stands? To reclaim one identity must she mar another?
The beauty of the film lies in its refraining from over-emphasizing dilemmas as it does in its courage to look for honest answers irrespective of the probability of disappointment.
Even as one watched the film, news streamed in of a massive political rally in the city with an agenda to celebrate the identity of a linguistic group. The assertion sadly was at the cost of running down other identities. A section of ‘migrants’ were thrashed and told that there is no room for them in this state if they continue to behave as ‘outsiders’. Masses of people forced to constantly realign their identities on lines of religion, caste and language at the behest of politicians spurred by vote-banks, must indeed wonder if the pre-independence dream of one nation made any sense. Their fate bears resonance in the stories of migrations told in this film that reveal identities mutilated by political discords.
Fortunately the truth about our civilization lies neither in political rhetoric nor historical texts. It nestles safely within homes where identities have merged to form families. We have only to take a long hard and true look at ourselves to disband the notions of ‘separatism’ as propagated by the politics of power.
(The article originally appeared in Mumbai Mirror)
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