Republic or Death! (33 page)

Salah carried on writing great patriotic songs and poems (‘I love her when she owns the earth, east and west, / And I love her when she's down, wounded in battle,' one goes), but much of his work became infused with sadness and nostalgia (‘Let the projectionist rewind the scene. / I want to see myself in the old days, young / among the ranks of the revolution'). He died in 1986, aged just fifty-five, from an overdose of painkillers (Bahaa says it was accidental).

Out of everyone involved in the anthem, the only person who really came out of 1967 better than before was Umm Kulth
Å«
m. She performed in Paris that year and donated all proceeds to the national treasury, as if she was going to single-handedly save the country. Soon she was doing similar concerts in Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Kuwait and elsewhere. She was given a diplomatic passport (you can see it at a museum dedicated to her life in Cairo; its photo features her in jewelled shades). Most people saw her music as old-fashioned by then and preferred listening to pop, but despite that she stopped being simply the voice of Egypt, and became its face as well. When she died in 1975, some 4 million people filled Cairo's streets, the overpasses so crowded with those wanting to see her that it was feared they might collapse. At one point, the crowds took her casket from the pall-bearers then passed it around the city for three hours, as if everyone had to be given a chance to pay tribute. A band marched in front. It played ‘Oh, My Weapon'.

*

Immediately after 1967, most Egyptians must have found singing ‘Oh, My Weapon, It Has Been a Long Time' absurd, knowing full well that it hadn't been a long time and that Egypt's weapons had just proven wholly inadequate in its defence. But the song's power did creep back, especially under Egypt's new president, the fashionable, slim and moustached Anwar Sadat, who took office immediately after Nasser's death. Sadat is a man whose character is almost impossible to decipher. He was capable of bold, some would say irresponsible, actions – in his twenties and just a captain in the army, he tried to forge an alliance with the Nazis to throw Britain out of Egypt – but then he also had a habit of writing himself little self-help notes as if he lacked all self-confidence (‘Be yourself, hopefully and happily' and ‘Keep yourself healthy and young' are two I saw at his museum in Alexandria).

In 1973, Sadat restored much of Egypt's pride when he decided to send the Egyptian army back across the Suez Canal to reclaim Sinai. It should have been a suicide mission, especially as Sadat made no effort to hide from Israel what he was about to do, even telling journalists that ‘everything in this country is being mobilised for the resumption of battle', but somehow the army got over the canal and then managed to survive long enough for a ceasefire to be negotiated (Israel did actually launch a counter-attack and go even deeper into Egypt than it had before, but the political victory was Sadat's).

During the next few years, however, Sadat became increasingly fed up with the state of the region – its aggression, its uncertainty – and so in November 1977 he suddenly announced that he'd be happy to go to Israel's parliament to debate with them about both Sinai and Palestine. He scheduled a visit for ten days later. As the day of his arrival approached, the shocked Israelis realised they didn't have any Egyptian flags to welcome him with; neither did their military orchestra have the faintest idea how to play Egypt's anthem. Its foreign office sent an urgent telegram to Chaim Herzog, Israel's delegate at the United Nations in New York. ‘Send Egyptian flags, all sizes,' it read. ‘Also Egyptian national anthem, scored for military band.' Herzog found the anthem in the UN library, bought a dozen miniature flags from its gift shop, then put them all on a plane. He later told journalists it was ‘among the most pleasant' orders he'd ever received. ‘I'd like to hope the music generates the tune and harmony for future relations,' he added, which certainly suggests he hadn't had the lyrics translated. In the end, it turned out he needn't have bothered sending the sheet music; the leader of Israel's military orchestra had taught himself the anthem by going out to the desert and listening to Egyptian radio, pen in hand.

On 19 November, Sadat touched down in Tel Aviv. Moments later, ‘Oh, My Weapon, It Has Been a Long Time', a song written to encourage Egypt to repel an Israeli invasion, and sung for years by people baying for the country's blood, was played to welcome him.

Less than a year and a half later, Sadat landed at Cairo airport and waved his walking stick in the air triumphantly. He'd just been to Washington DC and signed a peace deal with the Israelis, guaranteeing the return of Sinai. That deal had angered most of the Middle East because it had done nothing for Palestine; it had angered many Egyptians too for the same reason, a lot of whom already disliked Sadat for pandering to America and dumping Nasser's socialism. Sadat didn't care, according to reports from the time. Anyone who complained was a fool who didn't understand the magnitude of what he'd achieved. He walked down the steps of the plane and was met by the sight of a military band fronted by Mohammed Abdel Wahab, the most famous composer of his age, the man who'd written the anthems of Libya, Tunisia and the UAE.

Sadat knew what was coming as Abdel Wahab raised his baton: a new national anthem was about to be played. Out with the violence of ‘Oh, My Weapon, It Has Been a Long Time'. That wasn't appropriate for an era of peace, Sadat had decided. From now on, the anthem would be ‘Bilady, Laki Hubbi Wa Fu'adi' – ‘My Country, You Have My Love and My Heart' – more commonly known as ‘Bilady, Bilady'. It was a song everyone in Egypt already knew and loved. It was by an old composer, Sayed Darwish, ‘the father of Egyptian music' as everyone called him, but Sadat had thought it best to get Abdel Wahab involved, to modernise the song and give it some stardust. He'd even made him a general especially for this occasion. Abdel Wahab's baton came down and President Sadat straightened up to observe this new anthem of apparent peace.

The next morning anybody who picked up a copy of
Al-Ahram
, Egypt's biggest newspaper, found themselves greeted by a picture of Sadat with news that peace had arrived. On the same page there was an advert for toilets, which some of those who didn't view the announcement favourably may have felt was an appropriate juxtaposition. Over to the right, there was another story. ‘Starting today,' it casually read, ‘there is a new national anthem.' Some people would have got to the end of that article, put down the newspaper and thought, At least there's one thing he's done right. Everyone liked ‘Bilady, Bilady' after all – its melody and words are simple enough for a child to learn. Others, though, would have felt cheated, as if the only reason Sadat changed the anthem was to sugar the pill that Egypt was no longer the Middle East's greatest country; that they'd traded Palestine's future for their own. Some of them might have even felt as if he was going against the whole meaning of that song.

*

When you talk to Egyptians about ‘Bilady, Bilady', they always say you need to know about the time it was written and you need to know about its author. When people say that about a song, it's normally an indication it's not very good, but in the case of ‘Bilady, Bilady' there is some truth to it. Sayed Darwish, the man behind it, was a revolutionary who probably wouldn't have liked his music being used by the establishment. He was born in 1892 in Kom el-Dikka, a slum right in the heart of Alexandria, the great city on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. His family, poor carpenters with no money to pay for his education, sent him to religious school to train as an imam, since it guaranteed he'd be fed, clothed and given a job. There he showed a remarkable – raw – talent for reciting the Qur'an, so much so that he was made a muezzin, a caller to prayer, at a local mosque.

His love for music was so strong that at the same time he also started singing in Alexandria's cafes, surrounded by men smoking
shishas
with probably one or two prostitutes present in dark corners. Unfortunately for him, one of his teachers walked past one of these cafes one night and saw him through the glass mid-performance – a muezzin in a place of ill repute – and promptly kicked him out of school (Sayed seemed to take that rejection rather personally, later writing a song called ‘The Preacher's Anthem', which features some mullahs saying they are off to France to ‘eye up white women whose flesh is like rice pudding').

Sayed had no choice after that but to pursue a career in music. He certainly had the looks to be successful, with hair that curled up wildly, almost like a quiff, and a fat, disjointed nose that made him unmistakable. But things didn't go well. His voice was quickly ruined by his love of drink and drugs and he also had a tendency to get distracted by belly dancers. But once he moved to Cairo in 1918, and started writing songs and plays for the theatre, something changed. He still drank and snorted and became infatuated with women, but in five short years, with the help of a librettist, Badi' Khayri, he turned Egyptian music upside down. He wrote songs about working-class Egyptians like porters, doormen and fruit sellers – something that had never been done before. He wrote songs that were short and catchy – something that had never been done before. And he wrote songs that were nationalist and political – something that definitely hadn't been done before. He was, in a way, lucky to come of age at the same time as Egyptian nationalism – in 1919 much of the country was in revolt in the hope of ending the British protectorate that ruled. Sayed wrote ‘Bilady, Bilady' with the pure hope that it could boost the uprising – a motivation that's a far cry from the peaceful image Sadat later imposed on the song. He's meant to have based the words on a speech by Mustafa Kamil, Egypt's original nationalist (‘If I had not been born an Egyptian, I would have wished to be one,' Kamil once said), which Sayed claimed to have witnessed as a child, its words somehow never leaving him in the years afterwards.

Sayed wrote other, more direct songs for the revolt too, of course, one called ‘I'm an Egyptian', another named ‘Rise Up, Egyptian' (just affirming someone's Egyptianness having significance back then). One of his plays even featured a song with the line ‘Our army is coming with victory', which, given that his audience normally included a British officer or two, wasn't very wise. But Sayed was never one to care. If the British closed down the theatre where he was working, he'd just start again elsewhere. Sayed's rebelliousness and salaciousness probably annoyed as many Egyptians as it did British at the time, but no one could argue with his creativity. At one point, he even wrote the drum rhythm that's still used to mark the end of every wedding in Egypt. His musical future seemed assured; he had plans to head to Europe to study, then overturn that continent's music too.

But then in 1923, aged just thirty-one, he was dead.

In Cairo, I talked to several people about Sayed Darwish and all were obsessed with the circumstances of his death. ‘He was killed by the king,' said Fathi al-Khamissi, a musician and scholar of Darwish's life, ‘because he was a danger man, not just a musician. The king poisoned him with massage oils. I'm sure of it! Before then, Sayed Darwish had never expressed pain once in his life. Nobody had heard of him ever getting a headache; not even a cold. Then suddenly he's dead? Impossible!' Iman el-Bahr Darwish, one of Sayed's grandsons, a singer himself, insisted it wasn't the king who'd killed him, but the British. They had refused to let an autopsy take place afterwards, he said. He then asked me if I could go through the British government's records to see if they had any documents proving the murder. ‘Please do,' he said. ‘If it's true they killed him, it would be a great honour. It shows how important he was. It shows he was a hero, not just a musician.'

Unfortunately, neither story is likely to be true. Shortly before going to Egypt, I met a woman called Reem Kelani in London. A flamboyant British-Palestinian singer, Reem's devoted several years to recording Sayed's songs and researching his life (she gave me most of the information about him here). ‘So the idea's either the British killed him or the king killed him,' she said. ‘Then other people say it was his muse who did it – the queen of the belly dancers – but it was really a cocaine overdose. I'm sure of it. His family try to say he didn't even take drugs, but he even wrote a song for cocaine addicts saying, “I've ruined my lungs, I've ruined my life but still, if I have to [use more] I'll take the local stuff.”'

The only other part of Sayed Darwish's life that caused this much division was ‘Bilady, Bilady', especially how he would have felt about it being the anthem. Iman said he was sure Sayed would have been prouder than anyone could fathom – ‘His patriotism was so big.' But then another of his descendants, who didn't want to be named, insisted he'd have been appalled especially at it being the anthem today. ‘I think he'd be composing again for another revolution,' they said proudly. But it was Reem who was most verbose. Sadat ‘hijacked' the song when he made it the anthem, she insisted. He knew all the associations both it, and Sayed Darwish, had with Egypt's fight against the British and he thought that by making it the anthem he could tap into those memories, and make Egyptians believe that peace with Israel was a kind of revolution too. ‘Why didn't he just write a new song? “We Love Israel”,' she said, only half joking. Sayed would have been more than appalled, she was sure.

I asked her if people had bought Sadat's revision of the song, and she pointed out that he'd been assassinated in 1981, just two years after making peace (he was shot by Islamist army officers during a military parade); the inference being the song clearly didn't convince many people that peace had been a good idea. ‘Bilady, Bilady' didn't recover its true meaning, she added, until some thirty years after Sadat made it the anthem, when the Arab Spring occurred and it was sung at the protests in Tahrir Square.