Arab Anthony Quinn is dead

The Arab World lost one of its greatest actors when Khaled Taja, dubbed “Arab Anthony Quinn” died in Damascus at the age of 73 on Wednesday.
Picked by the US Time magazine as one of the world’s best 50 actors, Taja passed away at hospital after suffering from severe pneumonia and cancer. He was buried in the Syrian capital on Thursday.

Taja of Kurdish origin was born in Rukn Aldeen neighbourhood in Damascus in 1939. He started his career on stage when he was under 20 before becoming one of the best known TV and cinema actors in the region.

“We are gathered here to bid farewell to a great actor who contributed to the emergence and development of the Syrian drama over decades,” Syrian Minister of Information Adnan Mahmoud said during the funeral.Taja had won many awards including the golden medal at the 9th Damascus International Film Festival, and the Golden Award for best actor in the 2005 Cairo Festival of Radio and Television.

He had also been honored at many festivals.“I did not choose my name, family, or country...therefore I have to choose my death,” he once told an Egyptian newspaper.Before his death, he asked that the following phrase is written on his tomb stone “My life is a dream of madness, it is a flash, a shooting star, for a moment lighting up the hearts of all who saw it and then it passed.”

Under that phrase, he added: “The home of artist Muhammad Khaled Bin Omar Taja,” as if he was saying to death, “you can come whenever you want.”

Taja, who was described as a tall man with sharp eyes, had participated in more than 100 TV and cinema films and episodes to become one of the most prominent and productive actors in the Arab World.

One of his latest works was the popular TV episode Al Dabour (the wasp), in which he played the role of Abu Hamdi, who later became the Mukhtar (chief) of the neighborhood in old Damascus.Abu Hamdi symbolized the evil side in the episode as he became the chieftain after murdering the former Mukhtar. In the following episodes, he had to kill more persons to cover his first crime before he was exposed and hanged.

Taja began in the theater as a writer, director, and actor in many plays, until he was tempted by the cinema. In 1970, he played the leading part in “Men Under the Sun” adapted from the famous book by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani.When Syrian cinema began to lose its luster, Taja stopped acting for a long time.

He then returned and was successful on television in many episodes.Among his audience, he is best remembered for works such as A Crime Remembered (1992), Damascus Days (1992), Al-Zir Salem (2000), The Four Seasons (1999 and 2002), The Palestinian Emigration (2004), and The Age of Shame (2009). He could also do comedy well, particularly in his role in The Diaries of A General Manager (1995).His ability to play many roles prompted the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish to call him “The Arab Anthony Quinn.”

Taja had never rejected a role for being too minor. He had always said that “no role was too minor or too major…there are only minor and major actors."

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