DesiDabba - Boss, Thoda Sa Roomani Ho Jaye

A few days ago, astonished by the size and scale of the cottage industry that has sprung up around Sanjaya Malakar’s stubborn presence on American Idol, I was moved to remind people that this is still just a TV show. Nothing of national importance has come to pass. In the unlikely (gulp) event that he does become this year’s Idol, life will still go on. As Taylor Hicks will attest, nobody can force you to buy his album even if he wins. No big deal.

Alas for my hubris. It did not live to see even a fraction of the time Sanjaya has spent on Idol. For I have just seen footage of a lovely young lady whose time spent on TV seems to have mattered a great deal to her nation.

Her name is Shada Houssan (also spelt Shatha or Shaza Hasun) and she is the Arab world’s latest Idol. Star Academy is a show that debuted in 2003 to a level of criticism that would make the barbs directed at Idol look positively kind (produced by the same company that makes Big Brother, it’s sort of Real World meets Idol in a school setting – enough said?) but it is still one of the most popular shows on Arab TV and draws contestants from all over the Middle East. And last week, Shada, an Iraqi affectionately dubbed the "Daughter of Mesopotamia" won by a landslide.

This is no mean feat for an Iraqi. Unlike the other contestants, Shada’s fan base was often unable to watch her perform, thanks to frequent power cuts across Iraq. And yet, by most counts, she still got seven million Iraqis to vote for her.

"Her triumph will show the world that Iraqis will still sing despite their wounds," Israa Tariq, a homemaker from Baghdad’s al-Ghadeer neighborhood, said before Friday’s final episode.

And that seems to be the general sentiment across the Middle East and especially in Iraq: in Shada’s victory lies a seed of hope for Iraqis in general. For a country that has seen increasing amounts of sectarian violence, Shada’s presence on the show, which is held in Beirut, Lebanon, became an oddly unifying factor. Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds – as long as Shada was on that stage, they were all ‘Iraqis’. Al-Jazeera elaborates:

Even in the deeply religious Shia city of Najaf people were delighted. An Islamist politician, Sabah Ahmed, said: "We welcome this woman because she has held the name of Iraq aloft. We needed a voice to unify us. Being an Islamist, I have some reservations about singing. But seven million votes for this woman from walks of society. With this percentage she outclassed politicians in Iraq. Therefore the victory unites Iraqis."

Exaggeration? Perhaps, perhaps not.

I am not an Arab, much less an Iraqi, so I have not watched the show in its entirety. I’ve no idea whether her competition was more talented and the votes slid her way solely because of her nationality. Such pan-Arab solidarity is becoming increasingly popular but would it extend to TV shows?

Or maybe it extends particularly to TV shows. Events such as Star Academy (or American Idol for that matter) are geared towards the manipulation of viewer sensibilities. If you can’t make the public connect at some level with the contestants (pity, sympathy, commonality, admiration, etc) then your show has no hope of survival. Part of the pull is, of course, the vote system – it is fairly impossible to not care about a person when you feel like you’ve had a direct hand in their success or failure.

By this count, Shada is rightfully a raging success – she is young, personable, sings songs in the Celine Dion mould (hey, she could well be the Shakira of Arabic, how would I know? She looks like she took Dion lessons), dresses well and has a very nice tone to her voice. She’s also an Iraqi at a time when life for an Iraqi is about as far removed from dressing up in pretty clothes and floating in a cloud of smoke in front of an adoring crowd as life can get.

However, it is also true that Shada, like so many Iraqis, grew up outside of Saddam Hussein’s vicious rule in her mother’s country of Morocco, which she still calls home. While a number of people have seen fit to raise an eyebrow at that piece of information, I personally doubt whether it matters so much to the Iraqis (well, clearly…). Any number of Iraqis went into exile during the years of Hussein’s dictatorship and more people continue to flee the violence that has failed to stem four years after the cessation of major hostilities.

In any case, Shada identifies herself as an Iraqi and as per her interview to CNN (below) says that she always wished to represent her country in some way. She displayed her loyalties loud and clear by wrapping herself in the Iraqi flag immediately upon winning the competition before jumping around like an excited child (a reaction much more endearing than the dropped-jaw Oh-My-God-I-Won-The-Beauty-Pageant pose adopted by so many young women).

Now, while it’s nice to see that we are not the only ones overtaken by Idol mania, all of this begs the question, can a TV show actually do what all these people think it can accomplish? Well, let’s see:

Will Shada’s win stop the violence? No. Will it make all the political factions sit down and hammer things out in a renewed spirit of unity? No. Will it make the United States and its allies withdraw their troops? No. Will it stop the kidnappings, torture and murder? No. Will it make it safe for little children to come out and play? No. Will it halt the rise of religious extremism in Iraq? No. Will it stop the steady exodus of refugees fleeing the country? No. Will it ensure a full restoration of civic amenities like electricity and water supply? No.

But psychologically, watching Shada win is bound to provide a measure of relief to millions of Iraqis. For the best part of a century, all that the Iraqis, especially those of Shada’s age who couldn’t make it out of Iraq, have seen is violence and deprivation. Now, here’s a beautiful, poised young woman, wrapping herself in their flag on a show that gets covered by the international media and there’s absolutely nothing ugly about it.

If you were in their position, wouldn’t you be happy, at least for a moment? I belong to her generation and I can’t imagine what my reaction would have been if she was the first visual I ever saw of my country in which violence and misery didn’t play a role. Such is the power of TV.

Shada Hassoun Interview:

Shada’s Performance: