To Westerners, her voice sounds like the siren call of a lovesick cat at midnight. When Egypt's Um Kalthoum sings on Cairo radio, however, the entire Arab world falls into ecstasy.
It happens, like some grand exercise in mass therapy, at 10 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month, nine months of the year. As the hour nears, the streets from Mecca to Marrakech grow strangely quiet. Groups of spade-bearded sheiks repair conspiratorially to their salons; workers jam the coffeehouses, and nomads huddle like crapshooters in their tents. As they listen to Um Kalthoum's tremulous voice, old men weep,...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
