Ashan asalhak w arda Alek
Hagat kitir lazim tamilha
These are the beginning lines of the Arabic song that we sang for the last class of Level 3 of my Arabic class at Kalimat. Here the lover is telling his girlfriend that in order for them to reconcile and for him to be content with her, there are a number of things that she must do??. The things that she must do include that she should stand up when he speaks to her as well as “shut up” when he speaks to her. It even goes on to say that if the people from her past have forgotten to teach her and make her understand certain things, then the lover will teach her what she has missed!!
When this song by Bahaa Sultan was played for the first time in class, I immediately realized that it is the same song to which I love dancing in my belly dance workshop. But when the teacher translated the Arabic lyrics for us, I was surprised that this song was a chartbuster a year back. And the surprise was due to the nature of the lyrics.
I remember that in the belly dance class, our lady instructor hummed the lyrics-I can understand that the music is really catchy but the lyrics are just so one-sided. I asked my teacher how could the song have been a blockbuster; weren’t the lyrics considered “objectionable”? And she told me that the catchy music overrode all the objections.
Well, I for one may not be able to dance with my earlier abandon to this song!
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