I remember the year 1979, returning from a year’s work in Saudi Arabia, finding among the cassette tapes one with Salah Jahin’s quatrains sung by Ali El Haggar and composed by Sayed Mekkawi. I played it every day to fill the silence of the house, stopping only at bedtime. That was my first time hearing El Haggar—and I loved him instantly. As for Mekkawi, he was an old love that never faded.

Salah Jahin’s verses carry you to an existential plane, just like Omar Khayyam’s quatrains. They delve into the essence of human life and the mysteries of the world. Though I read philosophy and understand these concepts intellectually and spiritually, the poetic form conveys them more powerfully than volumes of academic texts. And when you hear them sung, the world expands—even if many of the verses speak of void and vanishing, of absence as life’s final truth.