The difference between my colleague Hazem Saghieh and me is that he writes while I practice. I arrived to Beirut on the 17th of this month and directly went to a private party where the pretty and charming Nancy Ajram sang. The next day, I went to the book fair and bought one of my dear colleague's latest books entitled “Nancy is not Karl Marx”. What probably strengthened my relationship with Hazem Saghieh is the fact that we don't agree on politics at all. This is better than to agree because had we done so, we would not have found a subject to argue about. Hazem, who has moved from one political party to another before rejecting them all, knows the intricacies of Arab politics – add to it his encyclopedic culture and his inherent tenacity, which makes pointless any attempt to persuade him of any opinion. This is why I just tease him with Nancy Ajram whom I've heard singing in about ten private parties, the first of which was in Amman during the wedding of one of my friends' son. She was 19 at that time. She sat at a table between me and my friend the Pasha Taher al- Masri and when we knew that she was still an adolescent, we asked her to come back when she grows up – which she did. Today and tomorrow, I will be reviewing a number of books that I have chosen at the book fair in Beirut. Some deserve that I allocate the whole column for their review, but I cannot afford to spend two weeks reviewing books and “waive” whatever readership I may still have, this why I am going to summarize and let the reader choose what he/she wants to read. Hazem Saghieh starts his book with an article on Nancy Ajram bearing the same title as the book. In the first four articles he also talks about Sabah, Abdel Halim, Amr Diab, and Edith Piaf; the review and comparison of the articles reflect a vast knowledge of music, the art of singing, and the Arab and Western arts at large, which is knowledge that I had not recognized in him. And still, while talking about Nancy, he is able to say that “she unites childhood and infantilism in an obvious presence...” and “a slight reminder of the pre-Doufailiyine brotherhood” and “with her relative plumpness she preserved in her face, Nancy infantilizes the sexuality of lips.” The reader will not find such statements in any Arab art magazine, nor perhaps even a Western one. For Hazem and the reader, I have a story about Piaf. She sang at Casino du Liban one day and for her days in Beirut, she took a young, handsome boyfriend who used to work at the games hall in the Casino. We taunted him because of her old age, but he answered that there was something of a prestige in dating her because of her fame, and that he would add it on his CV. I move on now to my fellow poet Mohammad Ali Farhat who offered me his new book “Kitab el Ikama” published by Dar el Nahda al-Arabia, a collection of quasi-verse prose, about the years of war in Lebanon, a book that could have borne the signature of Amine Nakhleh had he witnessed that war. Mohammad Farhat moves from the village to the city and some of his images are present in the “Album” of my memory. When he talks about primrose flower prairies, the drug heaven and the neighbor of the white rocks, with the flowers she comes, and leaves when the sun torches the silks of the earth dry... or about figs, my favorite fruit, he says: “the end is honey in a straw pot, in the winter storage, in the exile of the body; the start is green buds in the dewy spring." There are also lines about the “Tahsildar”, a Turkish word for tax collector, a concept totally ignored by me in my rural experience. However, I certainly knew the “Aljalilati” who dresses the donkeys in a red suit, and whose visit is awaited by the whole village. From Hazem and Mohammad to another friend, the journalist and poet Zahi Wehbeh and his new book entitled “Dance me a little”. Page after page, this book reminded me of his previous work entitled “I don't want this poem to end”. Zahi is in the spotlights of his well-known television programs; and although light illuminates, it sometimes dazzles and blinds, hence obscuring the vision when media fame prevails over the depth of national sense, belonging, and commitment that move Zahi Wehbe's conscience. A few weeks ago, he wrote an article in Al-Hayat on Palestine and Jerusalem, which speaks about him like no other television program does. Also, much of what is written in “Dance me a little” is not related to dancing. Moreover, his poem about Mahmoud Darwich brought personal memories back to me of this patriotic, talented and pleasant friend. At the beginning of the poem, he says: It is hard for me to sing alone, It is hard to weep, My tears are stones, My face is aborted, But roses are in my language, And so are lovers.
