لَسْتُ أَدرِي

While the piano man was playing “Kalemat” today, I remembered the first time I heard this song. I was a kid watching Magda El Rumi’s live concert on TV – with my parents at night. My father is the one who taught me poetry. He taught me to love good words, and to seek the hidden meaning behind any song. Both of us share the love of almost the same singers and poems, and share many memories singing together Farid El Atrash songs in a duet..

My mother taught me how to taste music. She taught me to appreciate fine arts, all forms of arts. Good novels, architecture, nature and Om kalthoum. She says I remind her with her father – my grandfather. He was a painter. He was a very good painter actually, who used to listen to radio every day at night while painting. She told me that she knew Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Korsakov through listening to my grandfather’s radio playing in the other room. I used to draw too – before I stopped. I drink coffee like him while working, I listen to radio everyday at night, I wish to tour the globe one day like him, and I dream to have a library, as big as his library.. before they sold the old house..

I am still living with my parents, but my grandfather died long time ago. I barely remember his face, though I can still feel his hands tapping on my shoulders, when I used to call him “Dodo” with 3-year-old-voice…
These memories seem so far away now..
And although they may be no one, no one at all to you.. I am proud to be a fresh copy for the three of them.

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