ABSTRACT
Jerusalem, as the other essays in this book make clear, represents so much to
so many. For Arabs and Palestinians it has become, particularly since 1948,
and more so since 1967, a symbol for loss: the loss of land and home, the
loss of hope for a unified Arab world, the loss of honor. It will surprise no
one that many Arab poets, famous and unknown alike, have both written
about this loss and expressed hope of recovery. Many of these poems have
taken the form of popular song. It would be difficult to find an Arab singer
who has not sung for Palestine generally or Jerusalem specifically. It is arguable that no one’s songs for Jerusalem and Palestine have been more
listened to than those of the Lebanese diva Fayruz. She is undoubtedly the
most famous living Arab singer and one of the best known in the last cen-
tury. She and her artistic team of her husband Assi Rahbani and her
brother-in-law Mansur Rahbani have collaborated on hundreds of songs,
both singles and those sung as part of musical films and plays. Though
Fayruz and the Rahbanis are most famous in the wider Arab world for their
songs for Palestine, most of their work focused on Lebanon in general and the Christian mountain village in particular. If there is a unifying theme to
their work, it is nostalgia. Singing for Palestine and Jerusalem, then, was a
natural fit. This essay examines several paradoxes in some of Fayruz’s most
famous works for Palestine and Jerusalem, paradoxes that speak both to the
nature of nostalgia and to the nature of imagined spaces.
