Transcript:

“موسى نبي ، عيسى نبي ، محمد نبي ، و كل من له نبي يصلي عليه”

He always starts like that.

“Moses was sent by God, Jesus was sent by God, Mohamed was sent by God. So whomever you follow, just pray for them.”

And people, always reply in one voice: Peace Be Upon Them All.

His name is Hassan, the Rababa player, and also the protagonist of our story tonight. A very special night, because it’s the wedding of the eldest daughter of the village’s richest man; Haj Metwally.

Haj is a title, given to people who went on pilgrimage to Mecca. And although the man never actually went there, he earned the title based on the villager’s respect for him.

It’s his eldest daughter’s wedding. Her name, is irrelevant to the story. What’s relevant though is that he called for Hassan by name from one of the neighbouring villages. He only has two daughters, and he’s going to give them the weddings they deserve. This means, among a lot of other things, getting the most famous and expensive Rababa singer in the area.

And on that night Hassan was at his best. He sang songs of long gone folk heroes, songs about lovers who defied all challenges, and songs about revolutionary figures fighting the Ottomans and the outside rulers of Egypt for the last two thousand years.

On his last song, a sad love story about an Arab prince being held in jail in Tunisia, he glanced at the great house across from him. The biggest in the village, and where the women’s part of the wedding was held.

He glanced, through the semi open wooden window on the first floor and saw her. Starting at him. Listening to him with all her senses. He didn’t know it yet, but her name is Naʻema.

Maybe it was the song he was singing, maybe it was the way she was looking at him and singing along with no voice. Or maybe, just maybe, like the cliché love story he was telling, it was love from the first sight.

Hassan finished his act and paused for the awes and applause. He excused himself from the crowd and left, like he always does, not to steal the show from other performers. The father of the bride, Haj Metwally, came to him personally and appraised him for the great performance. He asked him to stay till the end of the wedding. Hassan politely refused, and left.

He walked around the great house that the wedding was in. Almost no one was on the muddy streets of the village. Almost everyone was in the wedding, a testimony for the wealth and generosity of the family. Almost no one, except her.

If Hassan didn’t know better he would’ve said she was “El Nadaha“. A daemon, in a lady-like figure that lures men into the darkness to their death. But that’s a story for another day. It was Naʻema, it was most definitely Naʻema. And now he knew her name.

They talked and talked. For minutes, ten or fifteen. If you want to be precise, it was the duration of one song by the guy that followed his act. The sound of the applause far away startled them, and made them realise the limits they were breaking just by talking. She left in a hurry, back to the women’s section of the wedding. But not before she asked him how can she listen to him sing again.

Whenever Hassan wouldn’t be travelling to perform in some wedding or religious festival, he would go sit near the bridge on The Nile separating their villages. And that’s where Naʻema would go. Hassan would go on his side of The Nile, play his Rababa, and sing. And Naʻema would go on her side of the river, and hear him sing in the distance. Whenever he ended the night by singing a song about a travelling Rababa player she would know that he wouldn’t be there the next night, he would be in some other village performing. They did that almost every night for forty nights. Until one night, Naʻema crossed the bridge.

They talked and gazed at each other’s faces. It was a full moon night and they stole two hours of it before anyone noticed that she was away. And in the end of it, Hassan told her that he would come and ask her father for her hand in marriage.

Naʻema was ecstatic. She didn’t know exactly how she reached home, but it seemed like the wind was blowing her there. She didn’t sleep that night, thinking of when Hassan would come to ask her hand for marriage. Thinking of the dress she’s going to buy with her elder sister from the city. Hassan didn’t give her a chance to wonder the next night, because he came.

She heard him knocking the door. She heard Haj Metwally greeting him. She ran downstairs when her father asked her to prepare some team for him and Hassan. And after serving it, she hid on the other side of the wall to hear their conversation.

“Do you think my daughter is a belly dancer to marry a common singer like you!“

That’s all she heard, before running crying upstairs to her room.

Hassan left. Naʻema heard her father later that night go to sleep between her sobs, but she didn’t. She stayed awake, for a different reason this time.

She collected her favourite clothes, the necklace her mother gave her before she died, and waited. Once she heard the call to prayer for the Dawn Prayers, Naʻema knew she would have twenty minutes before the men of the village would start waking up and start heading for the mosque to hold the prayer in time. Twenty minutes are enough time for her to leave the village and go to the bridge, to Hassan’s side. After all, she didn’t know where else to go. She just wanted to escape. And Hassan, for some reason, was there.

He didn’t understand what she just did. She just crossed a lot of limits. Nevertheless, love is stupid. He took her back to his place, woke up his elderly mother, and explained to her what had happened. She took her in her arms, calmed her down and put her to sleep. She then yelled at Hassan to leave the house. After all, Naʻemais not his wife nor his blood relative, and no house can have them both overnight together. That’s a limit you can not cross.

Next day came and Haj Metwally didn’t know what to do. Naʻema didn’t go to her sister’s place and she’s no where to be found. He, of course, chose to neglect the obvious answer because he knew his daughter wouldn’t do that. Nevertheless, not knowing where else to look, he went over to Hassan’s village.

As a man of his stature would do, he went directly for the village’s mayor who of course knew him. Who doesn’t know Haj Metwally! The mayor called for Hassan, who came by the time Haj Metwally had finished his cup of tea.

“Yes she’s here“, Hassan bluntly said. “And we’re getting married. She doesn’t need your consent“. For four hours straight, the men discussed, argued, and shouted at each other and the mayor mediated between them. Until Haj Metwally accepted.

Hassan will marry Naʻema. Under one condition. Naʻema goes back home with her father tonight, and her wedding is held three weeks later at her village. Like every other respectable woman from every other respectable family.

Hassan accepted. The mayor shook their hands and everyone left happy. At least that’s what Hassan thought.

You see. That’s the thing about artists. The live in their own world, built by their own art. And Hassan’s world was that of bravery, successful revolutions, love, and where the hero marries the heroine.

Ten days later, Haj Metwally sent a messenger to Hassan asking him to come over to review wedding arrangements. Naʻema was of course…with her sister buying a wedding dress from the city. They went over a lot of unnecessary arrangements. Haj Metwally stalled and stalled and stalled. Hassan ended up leaving for his village around midnight, where a shadow was waiting for him in between the plants on the corn field, near the bridge over the river.

One shot was all it took. No one knows exactly who pulled the trigger, but everyone knows who was behind it. The mysterious shadow went over to the dead lying body and threw it into the river. Almost exactly where Naʻema used to sit, and listen to him sing.

Two days later, news broke out that Hassan went missing. His elderly mother barely made it, along with three young men from his village, to Haj Metwally to ask about Hassan. But Haj Metwally knew nothing.

On the day he was supposed to get married, Hassan’s body washed up three villages downstream. His killer was never found.

Haj Metwally left the village years later. People say it was only him leaving that day, because no one had ever seen Naʻema since then.

And now. A hundred years later. The great house is still standing there in the middle of the village. Reminding everyone, not of its previous rich inhabitants, but of the tale of Hassan w Naʻema. Their love story being told by other Rababa players, with the perfect backdrop of the Rababa.

Music:

• Sayyidi Rabab (Egypt) - Yosuf Majed

• Egyptian - Rababa Online

Footnotes And Commentary