‘Um Harun’ is not ‘Um Jan’

TDT | Manama

The controversies surrounding MBC’s hit Ramadan series “Um Haroun” has nothing to do with Bahrain’s real-life “Um Jan”, said a Bahraini official rejecting all claims doing rounds on social media platforms.

Controversies had flared over the series before even a single episode had aired, in which the central character is a Jewish nurse living in Kuwait in the 1940s.

Quoting the series maker, Yousif Mohammed, the head of the media department at the Ministry of Information Affairs, insist that the series is a work of fiction and has nothing to do with ‘Um Jan”, a Jewish midwife moved to Bahrain from Iraq in 1937.

Scriptwriters have said the series, however, takes inspiration from the personality of Um Jan but does not portray her. Social media users, however, claims that it is no coincidence that the series Um Harun (Mother of Aaron) is set in the early 1940s.

Kuwaiti star Hayat Al Fahad plays the role of Um Aaron in the series centred on an elderly Jewish midwife in the Arabian Gulf, which started airing from the start of Ramadan.

“The scriptwriters have confirmed that the events in the series are completely different from the true story and biography of Um Jan and are not related to her,” Yousif Mohammed said.

Um Jan, who was of Jewish faith and was known to people here as ‘A Mother to All’ was a prominent midwife in Bahrain. She arrived in Bahrain in 1937 with her husband already working in Bahrain as an employee of Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco).

“She was known among the people of Bahrain as ‘Um Jan’, a name that reflects her immersion in the Bahraini society and her adoption of the culture, customs and traditions of the people in Bahrain,” Yousif Mohammed said.

“She contributed a lot to the wellness of the people here through her work as a midwife.” Her deep values of “tolerance, peaceful coexistence and acceptance of others” were much appreciated and respected by the people of Bahrain.

“Um Jan lived in Bahrain safely and moved on with her life in freedom, providing great services that are still recalled in Bahrain’s collective memory,” added Yousif Mohammed.

Mazen Hayek, MBC Group’s director of PR, in his comments to the frontier post, earlier stressed that the series was pure fiction and not a docudrama. “We are not worried by controversy,” he added.

“We look at it as a healthy debate about issues, conceptions and conflict, which is necessary for any society to advance,” he was quoted as saying.