With the Trio... Fairouz, Assi, Mansour

For how long had life been preparing the meeting of this melody, this poem, and that throat, that they might interlace and melt into one, and so become the song — the sweet, beautiful song that looks out upon our country in the radiance of its renaissance, to be part of that renaissance?!

Was nature dreaming of this trinity in her fitful drowsing, in which she closes her eyes upon a dead tune, and starts up in alarm at the din of some singer, and wrinkles her face in disgust at words they called poetry and set to music in the name of a song?

It was no mere coincidence, the meeting of these three units in one complete unity.

It is life, watchful over its own developing, self-renewing continuance. Answering its call, at its inspiration, two young men set out climbing a path where the thorns flourish and put out leaves, and where the fingers of harm have grown strong; and on the first summit there was someone waiting — waiting for them. And in the sanctity of summits, and the grandeur of attaining them, life loosed from the mouth of one of them poetry, from the string of the other a melody, and from the throat of the third a warbling; and so there was the song, complete and new, bearing in the folds of letter, melody, and tune three names: Fairouz, Assi, Mansour.

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This piece has no occasion in itself, but the subject as a whole has an occasion of which the least that can be said is that it is a victory the two Rahbanis and Fairouz have achieved, for themselves and for their country. They have returned from Egypt, after entering it neither begging the delivery of a song nor the composing of a melody. For this beautiful song, which has perfumed the air of our country with the new, the fresh, and the noble, captivated the greatest of Egypt's artists — hence the journey; and they returned leaving in the souls of the Egyptians a longing for more. Hence the promise to return to Egypt next year, after leaving there forty-eight songs which the Egyptian broadcasting station folded onto tape, to send out to the millions over the ether, carrying the perfume of our country and its colors, its renaissance and its taking flight, sung by the green Valley.

They sang for Egypt:

Do you remember, I wonder, our green wall
where the birds would come for shade;
in those days our love, in our quarter,
was the story of the rose, the confiding of the flowers!

They talk to you of what Fairouz owes to Rahbani, and of what Rahbani owes to Fairouz.

How do they understand art?

Every dividing and parceling out of Rahbani and Fairouz is meaningless. They are a unity, which has lifted poetry above the flesh and cheap passion to loftiness and nobility, drawing it out of their soil, their country, and the depths of their souls; and lifted the melody, so that it stirs in your soul nothing but what is noble and beautiful; and lifted the voice, in a throat that is melody, that is poetry, that is a burning, generous feeling.

Have Fairouz and the two Rahbanis realized that they are an indivisible unity?

We all know the answer!!

And they sang of their homeland in Egypt:

My homeland — for a long age
the usurpers have humbled you.
My homeland — look forth a little,
for we are returning.
My homeland — over it there passes,
with the dawn, the melody of the grieving.
My homeland — carry me back to it,
though it be but as a flower, O Spring!!

And they sang Egypt, and their homeland, in the poetry of Harun Hashim Rashid, Boulos Salama, Kabalan Mokarzel, Bechara al-Khoury, Morsi Gamil Aziz, Amin Mushriq, and Mahmoud Hassan Ismail...

And Egypt was generous to those who deserve: it placed the symphony orchestra at their disposal for the whole length of their stay; Mohammed Abdel Wahab presented them, and Fairouz presented the listeners' request corner; and the Broadcasting magazine wrote a long reportage about them. The finest praise they received in Egypt is that the Egyptian broadcasting station contracted with them to record twelve songs and recorded forty-eight of theirs, and that it signed a contract with them for the coming year; and finally, that Mohammed al-Tabii did not care for this success and attacked them with harshness and malice — and that is the finest praise they received!

Assi Rahbani tells us of the beauty of Egypt by night, of the splendor of the Nile and the Pyramids, of Mansour's absent-mindedness and Fairouz's vivacity; and he answers me for himself and for Fairouz. They left us no opportunity for questions, for they answered everything we would have wished to ask before we asked it.

And I asked Fairouz:

Do you feel that your artistic gift has increased or diminished since your marriage?

I do not know why she appealed to Assi, and answered me by his tongue:

— Her gift has increased six kilograms since the marriage!...

And I asked her again:

Which song do you most enjoy singing over to yourself?

She answered: I never sing over any song of my own songs. And Assi added:

The song she will sing to herself has not yet been written, nor yet composed.

And I looked into her eyes, and heard the song they had begun to write.