Middle East - Anthony Ham [69]
▪ Naguib Mahfouz rarely sounds a wrong note. Choose anything from The Cairo Trilogy, but if you have to choose just one Mahfouz title, The Harafish would be our desert island choice.
▪ The Map of Love, by Ahdaf Soueif, is the Booker-nominated historical novel about love and clashing cultures by this London-based Anglo-Egyptian writer, but In the Eye of the Sun is simply marvellous.
▪ Memed My Hawk, by Yaşar Kemal, deals with near-feudal life in the villages of eastern Turkey and is considered perhaps the greatest Turkish novel of the 20th century.
▪ Amos Oz fans will no doubt have their favourites but My Michael masterfully captures the turmoil of Jerusalem during the Suez Crisis of 1956, as reflected in the private torment of a woman in an unhappy marriage.
▪ Pillars of Salt, by Fadia Faqir, is a skilfully conceived work exploring social divisions and the vulnerability of women set against the backdrop of the British Mandate in Jordan.
▪ Beirut Blues, by Hanan al-Shaykh, deals with the fallout of the Lebanese Civil War, as seen by a young woman trying to decide whether to stay or flee abroad.
▪ The Stone of Laughter, by Hoda Barakat, is a lyrical work by a young Lebanese writer that beautifully charts Lebanon’s civil war through the eyes of a character torn apart by issues of identity and sexuality.
▪ The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa al-Aswany, has been anointed as heir to Naguib Mahfouz’ larger-than-life chronicling of life on the Cairo street.
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Of the new wave of Middle Eastern writers, the names to watch include Alaa al-Aswany (Egypt), Ahdaf Soueif (Egypt), Khalid al-Khamisi (Egypt), Laila Halaby (Lebanon) and Dorit Rabinyan (Israel).
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MUSIC
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Arab Gateway – Music (www.al-bab.com/arab/music/music.htm) has everything from clear explanations of the basics for the uninitiated to links and downloads of contemporary Arab music.
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If you’re a music-lover, you’ll adore the Middle East, which has home-grown music as diverse as the region itself. Yes you’ll hear Bob Marley and other Western icons in traveller hang-outs such as Dahab, but this is one part of the world where local artists dominate airtime and you’re far more likely to hear Umm Kolthum, soulful Iraqi oud (Middle Eastern lute) or the latest Lebanese pop sensation.
Arab
CLASSICAL & TRADITIONAL
Tonality and instrumentation aside, classical Arabic music differs from that of the West in one important respect: in the Middle East the orchestra has traditionally been there primarily to back the singer. Such orchestras are a curious cross-fertilisation of East and West. Western-style instruments, such as violins and many of the wind and percussion instruments, predominate, next to local species including the oud and tabla (drum). It’s a style that was popularised by such icons as Umm Kolthum and Fairouz (see the boxed text, opposite). More recently, Lebanon’s Ghada Shbeir is a name to watch for her mix of traditional Arab-Andalusian sounds backed by the oud, qanun (plucked zither), ney (flute) and percussion.
PEERLESS DIVAS
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Umm Kolthum
It’s difficult to overestimate the importance of Umm Kolthum (1904–75), one of the towering figures of 20th-century world music. A favourite of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Umm Kolthum had the ability to stop a nation whenever she performed; rumour has it that the coup that brought Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi to power on 1 September 1969 was delayed so as not to clash with an Umm Kolthum concert.
From the 1940s through to the ‘70s, her voice was that of the Arab world, a region that has never fallen out of love with her music nor with the fervour and hope of those tumultuous times that she represented. The passion of her protracted love songs and qasa’id (long poems) was nothing less than the very expression of the Arab world’s collective identity. Egypt’s love affair with Umm Kolthum (where she’s known as kawkab ash-sharq, meaning ‘Nightingale of