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Fairuz

from Not Listening by James Wood

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about

A song about the incredible Lebanese singer, Fairuz, with text taken from an article I found on the internet here: leb.net/rma/Articles/fairuz.html.

It's by a person called Khaled Salem, and research has yielded little information on him (assuming he is not the Palestinian footballer of the same name). I would love to thank him for these inspiring words, so if by any slight chance anyone sees this who knows of him, please get in touch!

lyrics

I love her and I never met her, but her voice I live with and I can not
hide from.
She sings and I can't help but smile. She makes me happy.
And then she sings and I can't help but cry.
She makes me sad. She captures my free flying soul and fills it
with feelings I've never known.
She will always be unrivaled for me.

When I listen to her sing, her voice penetrates my body and it fills me
with this strange chill.
I love her to the extent that I wish I was born in the 30's to have
grown with her songs;
to the extent that if this time of ours was to be set hundreds
of years ago,
I'd travel through the days and the nights to reach where she is and
live there for the rest of my life.

I listen to her sing about this place that I've never been to but to which
I feel I belong.
Out of time and out of place, in a past that's so far but still so close.
She is singing and I am there with her, sitting right there on the roof of
the house watching her awaiting the moon to descend from the sky.

I am there with her fetching for the loved ones who left their village and
went away beyond that faraway mountain.
I listen to what the doors are saying and to what the
birds are praying for.
I see the falling petals and I feel the empty hollowed tables.

I am there, walking with her in the dying roads of Jerusalem.
I am standing on the hills of El-Janoub.
I am beholding the blood flooding down the hill of the martyrs.
I hear the cries and the sighs of agonizing souls who got ripped off their
lives, their homes, their sun and their moon.

No matter how divided we have become, or how old we have grown outside our bodies and our homes,
it only takes one song to listen to, before we regain our powers and forever get full of pride.

The love I have for her is not that of an admirer nor that of a son, a husband or a worshipper.
It's a strange love which I can not explain or define
for these could not be the only kinds of love.

credits

from Not Listening, released June 1, 2014
Words: Khaled Salem

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