Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 February 2000 Issue No. 467

Contemplating harmony I drew her throat, that incredible throat, perhaps even more incredible than her face. I looked at no pictures, but drew her as one of her records played, and her voice, liquid like a molten metal, poured into the room. The lines stopped when they reached her hair: I had to look at a picture then. I had enjoyed drawing that splendid, unattainable, unimaginable voice. Could I draw it? Can the stroke of a pen translate for the eyes the pure aural delectation that one experiences when listening to the incomparable Umm Kulthoum? As I draw, I am transported back in time, I am sitting at one of her concerts, bathed in sound, shouting out despite myself: "More! More!" I summon that instant, willing myself back into my seat at that concert hall. The present seems insipid in comparison, but my memory is accustomed to these prodigious feats of purely cerebral yoga. Then is now. It is difficult, but immensely rewarding. The advantage of memory, here, is its capacity to act as a sieve, retaining only the very best moments: now I can see her, the throat swelling as her pure voice rushes through in song, her arms stretched out to encompass the last notes as they leave her, soaring into the air. "You are my life": this is what she sings; "what I saw, before my eyes laid eyes on you: a whole life wasted, how can it be counted as my life?" The lines of her face are taut, like the strings of the orchestra that frames her. Sometimes they cross, like the violinist's bow across the chords; then they curve, like a harp, or a tambourine. The conductor has lifted his baton; she is a lute, a violin, preparing to sing, her lungs filled to bursting with the pure oxygen of music. The qanun sings to her, a hymn of passion and temptation, and she replies. Her dress is embroidered in rhythmic patterns that take up the music's theme, echo it, rise and fall between the urgent, persistent strains of the Voice. She returns to the refrain, holds it, repeats it, differently every time: there is infinite variety in each eternal harmony. Bubbles of sound rise and hover; there is no use waiting for the explosion, for it will not come. There is a secret here, in the fluttering hands, the face like a pale full moon raised to the heavens, scrutinising the sky for signs of faith. What it is, I cannot say. Everyone knows it. It sings for itself.   George Bahgory