A Night of Melody...

...Our friend Miss Samira Azzam was spending her holiday in Cairo, and a sweet chance came her way — a friendly reunion to which the musician Mohammed Abdel Wahab had invited her, in honor of Fairuz and her bridegroom Assi Rahbani...

And naturally the night was... a night of melody... What, then, has the graceful storyteller Samira Azzam to say in describing that night?? Let us listen!...

She was still the same girl who has never felt fame and has no wish to feel it; if she sings, it is because song is her one means of expression, by which she gives proof of her existence.

There was Fairuz, and there were (the two Rahbanis), and I was with a few of my friends from the Near East station and Cairo Radio, spending an evening at Mohammed Abdel Wahab's.

And I saw the bashful Fairuz — Fairuz of the voice that exudes feeling — tucked into one of the seats of the graceful, elegant salon, drowned in objets d'art and testifying to the taste of an artist... a wealthy connoisseur...

Abdel Wahab straightened his necktie, took from his mouth a cigarette holder he had been turning between his lips, adjusted the set of his thick-lensed spectacles, and began welcoming Fairuz and her party in a voice which, I assure you, is as sweet in speech as it is in melody — and sweeter.

Fairuz grew more bashful still; her face took on the color of the elegant red dress she wore; and, as usual, she did not know what to answer...

Then (Iqbal), Abdel Wahab's wife — a painter who has left a trace of her art in every corner of the house — launched into telling us how she came to know that authentic voice, the voice of Fairuz. She said: I was sitting with my sons in their room, listening with them to a small radio set, when my attention was caught by a voice singing, to the accompaniment of a chorus and a nimble musical rhythm, a song of which I understood no more than “la la.”

I waited for my husband to come home so I could ask him eagerly whether anything of the kind had caught his ear. He said: You mean “Ya ba la la”... I am mad about that song. And through (“Ya ba la la”) Fairuz and the Rahbanis became known in Egypt, and the Egyptians learned that in our lands there are powers of authenticity, crystallized in personality and character.

Fairuz listened to Abdel Wahab's wife, toying with the sleeve of her beautiful red dress...

And she made no comment... for she feels that she sings with sincerity, authenticity, and art.

Fairuz kept her lips closed until we were summoned to a generous table whose center of gravity was the dish of Circassian chicken that is the specialty of the house of Abdel Wahab... and our artist, as his wife testifies, is a taster of food of a unique stamp...

And Fairuz fell to toying with a chicken breast...

We finished, and gathered in a circle on the glass veranda of the elegant apartment, whose face the Nile and the Cairo night reach up to greet; and the elder Rahbani took up Abdel Wahab's oud and began plucking soft notes upon it, accompanying the voice of Fairuz as she sang (“I Love You”).

And love, in Fairuz's voice, has a warbling ring.

Even the word comes out of her steeped in feeling...

I love you in my leafy silence
and in the flutter of the fearful lash;
and in me, O you who color my life, there is toward you
the longing of the vines for the gatherer.

And hearts opened upon a deep communion — a company that feels the melody and lives it. Allah, Allah — so Abdel Wahab voiced his great delight... Allah, Allah, what pride is this, in such a summons to love!! They had her sing it again, twice and three times... and she followed (“I Love You”) with (“Min dallak fil-hawa a baytna”).

And the voice that exudes feeling fell silent, and eyes closed upon dreams.

And so ended a night that lords it over all the nights of melody, since first melody had dominion and thrones!!

Sin wa-Ayn