“To Be Born a Woman in the Desert of Sacred Masculinity”
I never imagined, while watching the film “Naga” that many of its scenes would remain in my mind for so long. I usually forget details of films I watch, and only the story remains in my memory. However, I believe that the fact that all the details of “Naga” remain in my memory is due to the film’s strong connection to reality.
From the very first scene in “Naga” the viewer is driven to fear the lived reality: a man storms into a hospital in 1975 and commits a massacre, simply because a “male” doctor delivered his wife, who had a difficult delivery and nearly lost her life. It’s a terrifying moment, but it’s not a coincidence; it becomes the key to everything that follows in the film.
Although the rest of the story seems, on the surface, to be unrelated, the film focuses not on the events but on the mindset that produces them. From here, the threads of events begin to unravel. Between Past and Present: Identity Crisis and Inherited Norms
What “Naga” masterfully creates goes far beyond a simple narrative through characters moving from point A to point B. Through the journey of its heroine, Sarah, the film reveals a society caught between eras, stuck in a state of cultural stagnation, where modernity struggles to break free from its entrenched traditional rules. The violent opening scene is not an isolated incident; it mirrors a complete generational and psychological crisis.
Although the camel appears later in the story, it is the film’s central symbol. The angry camel, who lost her young child to the recklessness of Sarah’s lover, Saad, embodies many things: the silent mother, the wounded community, and the unresolved collective trauma that strikes the wrong targets. Sarah, who runs away from her father’s house to attend a desert party, finds herself in a surreal confrontation with the ghosts of patriarchy. The camel is not her enemy, but her reflection. Both are victims of a reckless and arrogant masculinity, yet both are condemned as dangerous, brutal, and in need of self-control.
She confronts her fear of men, her shame about her femininity, and the fragility of emotional trust. In that brief period, she realizes the hollowness of her lover’s promises, the complexities of her seemingly gentle father, and, most importantly, the deep rage of a mother figure betrayed by society. The camel becomes a merciless, incurable, and furious mother.
In the final scene, we see Sarah running into the desert, pursued by the enraged camel. But the real pursuit is symbolic—she is escaping from memory, from inherited guilt, from societal control. But this is not an escape; it is a transition, as this pursuit symbolizes her liberation from the “unconscious” in which she was trapped. She may not defeat the camel, but she survives. This survival, this breathless emergence into the present, is victory. It’s not a neat ending, but a cry of “I’m still here.”
The true audacity of “Purity” lies not in the cigarette or the lover’s encounter, the removal of the veil, or attending a mixed-gender party in a remote location, the risky dialogue, and the female escape on motorcycles, but in its exposure of internal divisions. The film dares to expose the psychological cost of a society that no longer functions.
It is a film daring in its cinematic language: the inverted opening shot, the raw chase scenes, the visual poetry of light and space, and the precise rendering of desert lighting, whose expressions convey everything, even silence.
The music blends horror and humor, defies linear construction, and even the few extended scenes (like the camel chase or the police chase) feel part of a wider, more emotionally chaotic world. In short, “Naga” is not just the story of a rebellious girl—it’s about a society suffocating under its weight, about mothers crushed and resurrected as monsters, about love betrayed, and about women punished not for their sins, but for their pursuit of life. The film is about pent-up anger, reluctant awakenings, and the urgent question of identity in a world that punishes femininity for its mere existence.
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Naga is a Saudi film, debuting on Netflix on December 7, 2023. The film is written and directed by Meshal Al-Jaser and stars Adwaa Badr and Yazeed Al-Majioul.
She is a poet, teacher, editor, writer, and playwright born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1967, who now lives in the United States. Faleeha was the first woman to write poetry for children in Iraq. She received her master’s degree in Arabic literature and has now published 27 books. Her poems have been translated into English, Turkmen, Bosnian, Indian, French, Italian, German, Kurdish, Spain, Korean, Greek, Serbia, Albanian, Pakistani, Romanian, Malayalam, Chinese, ODIA, Nepali and Macedonian. She is a Pulitzer Prize Nominee for 2018 and a Pushcart Prize Nominee for 2019.
Faleeha is a member of the International Writers and Artists Association, a winner of the Women of Excellence Inspiration award from SJ Magazine 2020, the winner of the Grand Jury Award (the Sahitto International Award for Literature 2021), a member of the Women of Excellence selection committees for 2023, a winner of a Women in the Arts award for 2023, a member of Who’s Who in America 2023, on the judging panel for the 2023 Sahitto Award, the winner of the HerStory Award from the Women’s Federation for World Peace New Jersey 2024, a Cultural Ambassador between Iraq and the USA since 2018, a Cultural Ambassador and worldwide literary advisor for PEN CRAFT Bangladesh.
She is also honored to be appointed as a 2024 Peace Ambassador by the Universal Peace Federation and to be a member of The Founding Mothers Global Women’s Congress 2024. You may email Faleeha Hassan at d.fh88@yahoo.com
