The Lady's Tavern, by: Mohammed Baraka

The writer sits as an observer while Umm Kulthum recounts her tragedy, starting from her birth into extreme poverty in a male-dominated society with a father who was an Imam, muezzin, and Quran memorizer but only wanted sons. Umm Kulthum details the severe hardship she experienced in childhood and adolescence in her village, Tamai Al-Zahaira, and her gradual rise from singing and reviving celebrations and religious festivals in the village to the city as a professional singer. How her life changed and she achieved fame in Cairo, even singing for King Fuad and his crown prince. Of course, the path to success was not smooth; most of the story is filled with flowing tales of battles and pains, leading to the end, illness, and death with her body laid out and her tongue singing "Haneh Al-Aqdaar." The story is not devoid of scenes of jealousy, envy, and women's cunning. It is natural for Umm Kulthum to envy her peers, but Baraka makes her envy to the extent that she describes Sayyid Darwish as "the man who was not dedicated in his life to anything as much as his dedication to cocaine, whiskey, and failure—failure with unparalleled success in everything." She mocks Wahba by calling him "the bald," and dismisses Rami's love for her, speaking to herself with opportunism: "I didn't sympathize with his dream as much as I saw in it a big father figure through which I could reach my dream." In more than one place, the writer boldly intrudes into Umm Kulthum’s innermost feelings, especially in the most private and sensitive aspects of her personality. With an internal voice of Alset Najah Baraka, he impersonates her as if she were real, addressing herself as an infertile woman, according to the foolish, at her first marriage when she was thirty-four, which was to obtain her husband's permission to travel to Baghdad. In another instance, she defends herself with an internal voice that outright denies her evil love for women and any suspicion of homosexuality: "I am the nun of Islam, the last of the singers, and the last woman. The day will come when your history will be summarized in cheap rumors." In another scene, she converses with herself about her hidden desires as a woman. Was this merely an imaginary biography of Umm Kulthum, or is the story overall a judgment by the narrator on her, within his interpretation of the details she herself narrated, challenging the sanctity that remains imposed on her as a symbol and an exception beyond critique? Number of pages: 284