Untold stories

Author's name: Ibrahim Abdel Majeed

I remember in 1979, I was returning from working for a year in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and I found among the tapes the Rubaiyat of Salah Jahin, sung by Ali El Haggar and composed by Sayed Mekkawi. I played them in the house every day, not stopping until I went to sleep. This was the first time I heard Ali El Haggar and I loved him very much. As for Sayed Mekkawi, I have an old and never-ending passion, and so is Salah Jahin. Many of the meanings and contemplations of Salah Jahin take you into the existential zone of understanding the world or feeling it, and I remembered the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as they also take you into the zone of the existential meanings of the world, humanity and life. Although I am a reader of philosophy, and I know these meanings and am convinced of them intellectually and spiritually, their poetic formulation suffices you instead of dozens of philosophical books. When you hear them sung, the world expands around you, even though many of them suggest nothingness as the end of every hardship or as a void that surrounds us even if we do not see it.