My Dancing Songs

It is a new departure in modern Arabic song, the "dancing songs" — light of word, light of melody. Few would grant that Arabic verse, with its stately ornament, suits this color of song — until the Rahbani brothers came, and succeeded in setting down a number of songs which the ether carries to us every day from the Arab broadcasting stations. Below, "Fairouz" — she of the tender, wounded voice, and the finest who has sung in this color — speaks to us about them.

When I sing these songs and the flowing music engulfs me, how powerfully longing stirs me! I feel that I am finding many tales about many feelings; I am speaking of the most varied emotions and sensations, for each of these melodies is a tale — a tale that carries one into a free, gushing, clamorous air.

And here I present some of these tales, beginning with the song:

You Are Mine:

You are mine
as the clouds are the brook's,
as the melody is the nightingale's,
and my desire is your love.

You are mine,
and my house belongs to love,
and in it is the velvet,
and every good thing be your ransom.

My house among the pines is the home of the tame doves;
my house — its world is a Kawthar, a paradise of leafy life.

And when the clouds passed by, shading every bough,
the doves went singing in every direction.

You are mine
as the clouds are the brook's,
as the melody is the nightingale's,
and my desire is your love.

You are mine,
and my house belongs to love,
and in it is the velvet,
and every good thing be your ransom.

I sing this melody imagining the flocks of tame doves repeating "You are mine!" in something like a cooing, and I imagine the little house among the pines, and a joy that aches floods over me; I glimpse the clouds that shade every bough, and I long for those shades. And then I take up a second song, a new tale:

Strong Is My Beloved:

Strong is my beloved, like the oaks in the mountains;
strong is my beloved, and his face is a world of shade.

When he appears the roads grow clear, and all hearts
yearn toward my beloved's resolve.

This youth of the sun-marked brow,
bearing strength in his stride,
in his two mantles the splendor of enchantment —
the forest adores him when it sees him.

Youth of youths,
fierce in his desires —
so be glad, O my eye,
in my beloved's resolve!

And when the poplars stir, and the roads grow clear, and the forest takes shelter with a youth, then he is truly a marvelous youth. I shall not run on through the many tales that the Rahbani brothers write and set to music — I will sing them from behind the microphone of the radio; but I want to tell one tale more... it is... it is a gift for Christmas, and it is:

O Pealing of the Bells:

The feast-day bell rises in the distance,
and on the hills the vanguard of the feast-keepers,
while I, from my lonely house, recite
the hymns of love in the temple of longing.

O pealing of the bells

from the humble villages,
bearing the earth's longing —
your destination the beloved shrine.

O pealing of the bells —

I have, on the slopes of the far horizon,
where the echo climbs,
a companion there, and a waiting.

O pealing of the bells,
far away,
in the happy place of shadows,
far away —
a flower and a lonely fragrance.
Stretch out your arms to me,
take me from my house
to her whose radiance is shining gold.