If you’ve been avidly watching Khaly Balak Min Zizi (and we know you probably have been, let’s be real), then you must be reeling at where the show has gotten. Hesham and Zizi are still in love despite their many issues and their divorce and everyone has been having relationship drama left and right. And despite all that, we just need to talk about one thing:
Just what the hell is Nelly doing? No, seriously. And if you don’t think it’s that bad, allow us to just tell you that it is and we NEED to talk about it.
Let’s talk about Nelly
Here’s the thing. Nelly has been having a very specific arc, literally starting since the show began airing, and her arc is Marriage Problems 101. See, Nelly is more than a little insecure in her marriage and is clearly anxious at being separated from her husband, currently working in Morocco, but won’t visit him because of her fear of flying.
When Zizi’s own marriage falls apart, Nelly switches from being supportive to projecting her own fearful energy at her cousin. And that’s not all. While all this happens, Nelly keeps up with a Facebook wives’ confession group like it’s an addiction and accidentally discovers that her father is secretly married in Saudi Arabia. Naturally, this makes her suspicions of her own husband compound.
So what does Nelly do? Well, Nelly catches feelings for Murad, her cousin’s divorce lawyer, and this is where things go from interesting to disturbing.
“Why is it disturbing, though?“, you may want to ask. “Isn’t Nelly a neglected wife? Wouldn’t it be natural for her to develop feelings for other people?” — and here’s where we tell you that we’re not actually blaming Nelly for having a crush because these things do happen.
What we ARE blaming her for here is how she lets this small crush develop. Instead of recognizing her feelings and not letting them go too far, Nelly lets her crush get the better of her and allows herself to get attached to Murad.
And not only that, Nelly also becomes jealous over Murad from Zizi, of all people, and gets trigger-happy just being hurtful to her cousin.
As we saw this happen, we realized something wholly important — this is deeper than just emotional cheating.
Nelly is a hypocrite too. If you don’t need the refresher, Nelly has been surrounded by a lot of shocking revelations all at once. Her cousin’s marriage falls apart and they discover that Hesham has been cheating on Zizi and Nelly does the right thing by condemning him. Nelly also discovers her own father’s infidelity and condemns that too.
And seeing all of this happen makes it just horrifying that Nelly would go on to do the very same thing and cheat on her own husband, even if emotionally. She doesn’t just parallel Hesham’s own behavior — she surpasses it and she won’t allow anyone to tell her she’s wrong.
But why does Nelly do this? Why won’t Nelly just talk out her feelings with her husband instead of developing an unhealthy coping mechanism and cheating? Well, in episode 15, she lets her true feelings show. We discover that, despite Nelly’s modern look of sophistication, she still holds on to the horrible tradition that sees divorce as something shameful. And that’s more than clear in the way that she treats Zizi.
Whether she actually believes the horrible things she said or she was just lashing out at being found out, Nelly still fears being alone so much that she won’t know when to quit and when to apologize. And in this aspect, well, Hesham might actually be just a little better than she is — at least, he’s self-aware. Nelly, though, has a long way to go and we can’t wait to see how it’s addressed.
This is far from being the only case of emotional cheating this Ramadan, too.
Though, in other instances, like in La7m Ghazal, the emotional cheating isn’t as condemnable because Mai Selim’s character is trapped in an abusive, manipulative marriage that she literally cannot escape. Nelly’s situation, on the other hand, isn’t this serious and it looks like her relationship with her husband (before, at least) was largely positive.
