Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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In my column I have always avoided writing about politics, concentrating instead on culture in all its manifestations. But for the last few weeks, politics has preoccupied us all to the exclusion of anything else. What is happening to Lebanon which, with Egypt, forms the cultural and artistic hub of the Arab world, indeed of the Middle East, raises a number of questions that can be controversial.

Many questions have been posed, but perhaps the most important one is whether entertainment should continue, whether, that is, singers should stop singing and actors stop acting, or whether they should continue to perform while Lebanon is burning. Quite a few voices have been calling for the cancellation of all that smacks of entertainment. TV women announcers are dressed in black, festivals have been cancelled and we have started counting our dead.

In my humble opinion, we should prove to the enemy that, come what may, the show must go on; we should bring home to our enemy, that in spite of all the horror, art should never stop. Art is the staff of life, and no bombs, missiles, tanks or air attacks can stifle it.

All through wars, art -- especially poetry and songs -- was the rock against which people leaned under duress. The Spanish Civil War produced some of the best novels (Hemingway is the obvious example), poetry (see Lewis McNiece) and art (Picasso). During World War II, poetry was the weapon of the resistance. In France, poets produced resistance magazines, and Aragon wrote his masterpiece "Les Yeux d'Elsa". In Greece, the anti-Nazi resistance blew up bridges and ambushed German troops, to the tunes of their Greek composers.

I was in London before the end of World War II and saw for myself the destruction that German bombers had wreaked on the city. But I also heard the songs that were sung during the attacks. I heard Sir Harry Lauder's beautiful song which went something like "You take the high road and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland before you."

The British took the song to which German troops had marched in their invasion of Europe and turned it into a popular song. Who would have thought that a march tune to which the German boots trod the lands they invaded could become a popular English song? And that's apart from other signs of a thriving cultural life that defied the enemy -- such as the London night club The Windmill with its sign "we never close", and the radio programmes which provided comic relief during the war.

In all wars art was victorious. I still remember the masterpiece of our composer Nouh after the 1967 defeat, the lyric from which -- " Madad madad madad, Sheddi heleik ya Balad " -- is virtually impossible to translate. But I shall always remember the thousands of young people who were there, clapping and shouting and expressing the hope that whatever happened, Egypt will again rise, like a phoenix from its ashes, to redeem what she had lost, as indeed she did in the 1973 War.

Now that I have come to the end of this column, a question still remains unresolved. Should we sing, act and entertain, or should we wear black, wring our hands, shed tears, and give up all desire to live, let alone entertain? Will we give the enemy the pleasure of feeling that it has succeeded to interrupt our lives, the life of Lebanon, of Beirut, that bride among cities? Will Lebanese singers, who have become the divas of Arab songs, keep silent? Or should they continue to sing? Songs are the throbbing of the national heart. So, for God's sake, and for the sake of Lebanon and the Arab world, let them sing!