“Qalam Humra” Series “A Lipstick”

I usually don’t like watching a lot of series, perhaps because of the stereotyping and repetition of topics, but I have to tell you that the social drama “Qalam Humra” made me haunted by it, and stuck in my mind even after I finished watching it, this is also the case for many people who watched this historical epic. The writer Yum Mashhadi, by writing the script of “Qalam Humra”, presented a drama with a deep impact on the conscience, touching the events that the Syrians have experienced in recent years, and playing on small details of humanitarian cases from all spectrums of society during the war. She talked about old issues, crazy changes that occurred suddenly in life, and about the unprecedented crack and collapse of the educated middle class life. The writer touched on topics professionally and boldly, such as: “homosexuality, frustration, unemployment, the boredom of marriage, interfaith marriage, identity, citizenship, and the issue of asylum”.

As for the title of the drama, it is a metaphorical expression of the masks that people always put on, their passion to be like such masks, perhaps because of our strong desire to be the person we love with a philosophical depth that was posed through the questions and answers of the heroes of this series, and in a simple form as a call to aspiring minds to think more deeply and reflectively to come up with answers and logical perceptions of the step-by-step sequence of events. Sulafa Memar excelled in embodying and performing a superimposed character. As a screenwriter, many questions revolve in her mind and is always searching for the missing link, as she ends up in a dungeon that took a large part of her life and her thinking, leaving us in a sea of ​​deep questions that are still revolving in our minds with no answers. Among these questions is the topic of “the identity and the self.”

The truth is that Sulafa Memar, with her outstanding performance, moved us from her narrow dungeon to new horizons more spacious than her prison, where she focused on the social and psychological dimension of the character, in the journey of self-recognition and identifying life again. Sometimes she gave us the answers directly, and other times she took us out of ordinary thinking to start the journey of discovering what is outside the box in an innovative and unusual way. As for the soundtracks, I can say that it is one of the most beautiful soundtracks I have heard. It takes you to worlds you have not been familiar with before, and awakens feelings in a harmonious and smooth way. The actresses were very simple and did not bother to put on makeup.

We notice this clearly in the spontaneous behavior of Sulafa Memar, as she could not wash her face for long periods and did not have a shower while in the dungeon, she even refused to put on lipstick until the last episode of the series. I still remember as I write this article the beauty of the music accompanying the series and the deep thoughts and feelings that are still imprinted in my imagination about life, existence, identity, and the human soul. I guarantee that I will never forget this work, at least not for a short time.