Society News — With Umm Kulthum at the Capitol

I heard her in the distant past, repeating melody after melody, song following upon song, and I did not admire her... Then I heard about her from girl friends and friends who had had the pleasure of sitting beside her, or had listened to her chanting and singing, and I persisted in my obstinacy, clinging to an opinion for which I wanted no substitute... The years went by... and I remained set in my obstinacy, holding fast to my views, until a trumpet sounded among the people, saying: Umm Kulthum is on her way to us... I paid the event no heed and gave it no care... but I noticed the interest of the people around me, and their concern with it... so I paused and listened... and human nature awoke in me, tempting me to inquire and search, curiosity driving me to probe and explore...

And I went to her... at that party given for her by the Syndicate of Lebanese Musicians at the Capitol Hotel... And I saw her... then I heard her... and doubt crept and stirred into my soul... doubt about the opinion I had formed of this human being... and the leavings of time and the sediment of the days began to wrestle with what I had seen and heard... while my obstinacy insisted on standing firm, in a pride that defied the truth before me...

And so I left the hall while she was still carried along in her singing — immersed in it, rather... I left it against my will, silent and dazed.

In my depths there had awakened vague sensations, feelings set loose, the like of which I had never known... In vain I tried to suppress them, in vain I tried to ignore them... I set obstinacy aside, threw the leavings of the years far away, and turned to my own soul, listening to it with sincerity and deliberation... It had been made drunk by what it heard, and quenched by what had seeped into its depths of sound melody and limpid voice — like the water of Salsabil, that slakes thirst and puts out the scorching heat... Is my soul then to be blamed for what it felt?... Umm Kulthum sings with sincerity and mastery; she forgets her own self, so as to become one with the melody, and then with the selves of others.

It was as though my soul had felt all this, and responded to it... I felt that Umm Kulthum pours out of her very self, melts down the essence of her being; that she spends a whole year learning a single melody in order to perform it in the best possible manner, attaining in it something like perfection... And there is nothing man has ever attempted in which he renounces his selfishness and pours out his spirit to perfect it, but that he succeeds in it... Those winged melodies carried me off to worlds brimming with love, goodness, and beauty... and I grieved over the long years of my life spent denying that sincere artist her due... And how it pleased me to see at that party the great ones of the nation — ministers, deputies, and poets — laying aside their gravity, casting solemnity away, appearing in their true colors, in their nature — that human nature which will not but honor creative, inventive art, and give the goddess of lofty inspiration her due of reverence and admiration.