Ramy – Miakhalifa.mov

By starrymag | June 4, 2020

By: Ariba Bhuvad

 

 

 

Having promised the Sheikh (Mahershala Ali) that he’ll take care of Boomer (Mika), Ramy (Ramy Youssef) is sticking to his promise. However, he can’t help but be in his feelings as he scrolls through Instagram and finds out the cousin he hooked up with is now engaged. He decides to go to the center to talk to the Sheikh, but finds Zainab (MaameYaa Boafo) instead. The Sheikh is out looking for new investors because since the Dennis (Jared Abrahamson) situation, their biggest donor pulled his funding. Now, Zainab has to drive out to Connecticut to convince an Emirati guy to give back his donation. Ramy offers to join because he feels bad for creating the situation in the first place. Since he can understand and speak Arabic, Ramy can translate for Zainab whenever needed. Reluctantly, Zainab agrees to let him join her. 

 

Mo (Mohammed Amer) and Ahmed (Dave Merheje) are surprised that Ramy is going with Zainab alone and warn him not to mess it up. He could really screw things up with the Sheikh if he tries to do something like try and hook up with her. Ramy doesn’t have that intention, but given his track record the boys feel differently. Yasmina (Rana Roy), Ahmed’s wife, tells Ramy not to listen and to take this chance to help the center. Mo and Ahmed suggest playing the Quran in the car. There are Quran reciters he and Zainab could listen to like Abd El Basset or Al-Rashid. 

 

Ramy brings Boomer with him on the road trip, which Zainab doesn’t think is a good idea because Arabs don’t like dogs. Ramy says that is just a prejudice people have about Arabs and it isn’t true at all. Zainab prefers to drive in silence over the Quran recitation Ramy was going to put on. And, just like that, they’re off. That is until they arrive at the gates of a huge mansion. They’re greeted by two guards (Afrim Gjonbalaj and Fawad Siddiqui) who inspect the car and have them sign NDAs before driving onto the property. 

 

No one answers the door as a nervous Zainab and Ramy stand outside the door. They hear someone saying “salam” (the Islamic way of saying hello) and walk in to find a parrot is saying the greeting. Upstairs a servant (Al Nazemian) supposedly tells Ramy and Zainab to come up. Because the Arab dialect is different, Ramy is having a hard time understanding what anyone is saying. 

 

They walk into a room and see a woman there that Ramy recognizes as Mia Khalifa (playing herself) walking out of a meeting with Bin Khalied (Omar Metwally). Bin Khalied is the guy Zainab has been trying to get a hold of and the man with the money. He makes it clear that if they are there to get his donation back then it is out of the question. Zainab tries to make her case, but Bin Khalied isn’t interested in her at all. Instead, he’s looking at Boomer with fascination. 

 

The azan (call to prayer) sounds as one of Bin Khaled’s men, Kamil (Paul Elia), pops in to ask Bin Khalied if he’d like for him to pray on his behalf. Ramy joins him for prayer while Zainab waits for them since she can’t join them. While Kamil is calibrating for the Earth’s axis to make sure he’s praying in the direction of Mecca (holy site of pilgrimage), Bin Khalied reveals that Kamil prays for him and refers to him as the “Lebron James of praying.”

 

Bin Khaled noticed that Ramy recognized Mia Khalifa and confesses he watched her porn videos at an alarming rate. Ramy chimes in to say he was watching a lot of porn too and the Sheikh helped him through it. Unaware of what Ramy is saying, Bin Khalied continues his story about being obsessed with Mia’s breasts and pondered about how he could make a new relationship with them. According to a debatable Islamic hadith (actions of the Prophet) Bin Khalied read it said that if a person drinks the breast milk of a woman, they establish lineage and become family. It was used with women who took in orphan boys to ensure no fornication took place between them. He reached out to Mia and told her about the addiction. She decided to help Khalied and they proceeded to induce lactation and get milk from her breast. By drinking her breast milk Bin Khalied said his body would understand and therefore prevent him from masturbating to his “own mother.” He has Ramy take a sip of the milk he’s drinking and then asks about Boomer. Ramy takes this chance to get out of the room and check on Boomer, but he runs into Mia instead who is playing with the dog. 

 

They start talking about Bin Khalied’s strange request, but Mia understands his intentions and knows that he just wanted to stop watching her porn. Plus, he got radical groups to leave her alone after she got banned from the Middle East for doing it. 

 

Bin Khalied comes out of the prayer room and asks Ramy for his name and gets excited because of what it means. To show him why, they all get on a golf cart and travel across Bin Khalied’s property. He explains that he prides himself on obtaining the unobtainable. Over the years he’s collected lions, tigers, bears and even white people. It’s been his way of exerting dominance, but then he decided to open a new chapter in his life and give in to the only one who could dominate him–God. This is why he donated to the Sufi center. It was the “woke” thing to do. But now that people are associating the center with violence, he doesn’t want the heat. Zainab asks Bin Khalied to stop by the center to see for himself and Ramy backs her up by saying that there is no way they could have anticipated what happened with Dennis. 

 

They finally arrive at the place where Bin Khalied wanted to take Ramy. Because Ramy’s name means archer, he wants Ramy to shoot a bow and arrow. If he makes the target and if God truly wills it, Bin Khalied will give the donation back. And if he misses, then Ramy has to give him Boomer. Ramy is absolutely not on board with this deal, but Zainab insists on it. He gets a practice try and gets it right on the target, but since it was just a practice shot it technically doesn’t count. But when Ramy takes the shot again, he misses by a lot. Bin Khalied tells Kamil to take Boomer, but Ramy refuses to give him up. He points out that they are asking him to contribute to a good cause and it could be his ticket to heaven. He agrees to give the donation of trwo million dollars as initially planned and allows Ramy to keep Boomer. 

 

Zainab is thankful to Ramy for what he managed to pull off, even though it was his fault to begin with. He reminds her that he just repeated what she was saying because Bin Khalied wasn’t paying attention to her. Despite the Sheikh thinking this wouldn’t work out, Zainab is relieved that it did and she tells Ramy that she knows he had the right intentions and was even trying to do the right thing with Dennis. 

 

The Sheikh sits down with Ramy at the center and doesn’t look too pleased. He thanks Ramy for securing the funds, but he’s angry with Zainab for approaching Bin Khalied when he would not allow it. And now she has her sights set on Ramy. Apparently, she has expressed interest in exploring the idea of getting married to Ramy. She was impressed with him and admires his resolve, much to both the Sheikh and Ramy’s surprise. But Zainab likes to do things the proper way, so she wants to explore the idea of liking Ramy. However, he’s concerned with whether or not the Sheikh has told Zainab about his past. 

 

Being a father, the Sheikh wants his daughter to know everything but as the Sheikh he also has a duty to his students to keep their secrets. But he prefers that Ramy tell Zainab about his sexual exploits if he decides to proceed, even though he’s unsure if Ramy should actually consider it. He heeds a warning that as Zainab’s father he asks Ramy not to desecrate his daughter. He inquires if Ramy understands to which Ramy responds with a quiet “yes.”