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Kamal Attia (1919-2008) is a well-known Egyptian director and screenwriter, and the owner of beautiful and bold cinematic works that relied on action, adventures, and mysterious crimes, or touched on the struggle between good and evil, or dealt with emotional and social issues, including films: “The Criminal” and “The Back Streets”. In addition to his immortal film “Qandil Umm Hashem”, which is ranked among the best hundred films in the history of Egyptian cinema, and “A Message to God”, which won the Best Film Award at the Cork Festival in Ireland in the sixties.
However, Kamal Attia, at the same time, is the author of many beautiful songs that appeared in his films or the films of other directors.
But we will stop here at one of the most famous songs written by Attia, whose lyrics and music were composed by musician Muhammad Al-Muji, to be sung by Al-Shahrora Sabah in the movie “My Woman’s Nut” in 1961, which is the song “The seducer drops his cap”, which would have been prevented had it not been for the categorical refusal of that by the late President Gamal Abdel Naser. The summary of the story is that in 1961, director Niazi Mustafa asked his colleague Kamal Attia to write a song for him that expresses a certain dramatic situation, to be sung by Sabah in front of Farid Shawky in the movie “My Woman’s Nut”, which he was directing at the time. Attia responded and wrote the song “Al-Ghawi”, which Sabah performed with her beautiful voice.
However, what happened following the movie was shown and the Egyptian radio broadcast the song was that some people launched a harsh campaign once morest the song, claiming that Sabah performed it in an inappropriate way. Among those who carried the banner of criticism and attack was the former member of the Revolutionary Command Council and Minister of Education at the time, “Kamal al-Din Hussein”, who wrote in Al-Jumhuriya newspaper, criticizing Sabah for her excessive flirtation while performing the song, and at the same time insulting Kamal Attia as the author of the text.
This position of Kamal al-Din Hussein, and his article published in a state-owned newspaper, tempted some of the press to follow the example of Hussein.
The whirlwind did not end at this point, but the journalist and member of the Socialist Union &”Sami Daoud” made a new escalation represented in his raising the issue to the President of the Republic, complaining and asking him to order banning the song.
Writer Reham Kamal says in an article she published in 2020 in "The Artistic Dawn&" on the occasion of the anniversary of Shahroura’s death: Abdel Nasser’s response was shocking to writer Sami Daoud. Free, whoever listens listens, and whoever doesn’t like you, Sami, closes his debt or doesn’t buy the record. Is it possible, Sami, that I say to Sabah, my hero, that you are singing this song, or not singing it, there is no shame! We should not stone anyone, especially artists." Likewise, the lyricist Jalil Al-Bandari defended the song with a sarcastic response, in which he demanded that its words be replaced with "The seducer drops the cannon, handing over to me Qarqosh the factory".
At the time, it was said that the song almost caused Sabah’s divorce from her then-husband, broadcaster Ahmed Farag.
Whether the song and the fabricated uproar it caused was one of the reasons for the separation of Sabah and Farrag later or not, “Al-Ghawi kept freaking out” and the listeners continued to listen, until everyone forgot the origin of the story and its separation.
