Egyptian Chronicles: Big Bakiza and Little Bakiza

I am waiting with anticipation to see HBO Grey Gardens starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange , ins Allah I will search for it on the torrents as soon as it is available there. Already I downloaded the original 1975 Grey Gardens documentary , I was curious to see Big Edie and Little Edie live somehow , they were for sure a rare type of people whom when you look to their lives you wonder a lot about how those ladies managed to live all that time isolated from the whole world , living in their shell of the past !!! It is just like falling from grace or what we call it in Egypt falling from the seventh heaven !!

Big Edie and Little Edie reminds me with the 1980s hit Egyptian TV series Bakiza and Zaglol in fact they were representing Bakiza and her mother to be accurate ; Big Bakiza and Little Bakiza.

Bakiza and Zaglol TV series was about two women from different backgrounds; Bakiza, the daughter of a Pasha who was forced to marry a very rich mean old man “Ashamawy” to live in the same standard she lived in before the revolution and Zaglol is the daughter of that man from his first marriage in the country side , that man did not pay a penny for her nor for her mother because she was not a boy. Two different world Bakiza the high socialite and Zaglol , the tomboy street wise woman were representing the contrast in Egypt. Both worlds meet and have to live with each other in a big empty palace when “Ashamawy” dies living nothing for them at all except that big palace. Zaglol tries to live in that big palace with Bakiza her eccentric step mom whom lives in the past with her clothes and fur coats facing a difficult life.The contrast of both women and the fact that some people really helped them made them survive and even return back to the real life. I think you believe it was a big drama , well on the contrary up till now that TV series was a big comedy hit that became a classical among TV comedies.

Back to the American Bakizas ,they lived in the past with a complete isolation from the real life because if they had had any sense about the real life , they would not have lived in a dirty mansion like that .They could sell one of their fur coats and live in a better way , they could clean that garbage, it would n’t cost them anything !! There were several ways they could improve their lives.

I was shocked to know that they were the aunt and cousin of Jackie O, it seems that Jackie and her sister seemed to forget that her direct aunt and cousin all those years and only remember them when the National inquirer published a report about them as they were Jackie O relatives , it is not about saving the day but about years of neglect !! May be I am thinking in the Egyptian Eastern Islamic way that you should not leave your relatives to reach this level regardless of what they had done in their lives. I am not surprised at this mother-daughter relation because in Egypt ,it is something regular to find in Egypt. I think their main problem is that there was no one that really cared for them personally .

For sure both Big Edie and Little Edie were suffering from a very severe depression and delusion that made them live in the old good past without even paying attention to the garbage in their house or even thinking in a way to improve their living somehow.

When you watch the original documentary , you will feel sad for both of them .