Mohamed Mounir: A Morning That Resembles a Promise
Saturday 10/October/2026 - 04:22 PM
Today, a new year dawns, unfolding into its long succession of days.
Children are dressed by their mothers without protest, and the clucking and chattering begin in the poultry yards.
Church bells ring out in celebration, and mosques resound with the call to a new dawn…
A festive day, yet an ordinary one…
But it is a morning that resembles a promise.
So the soothsayer of the evening told me, whispering quietly:
Raise your voice in song… There are still songs to be sung.
And if one day you are broken… you must rise and stand tall,
Like the palm trees gazing toward the sky…
No defeat… no surrender… no fear… and no… no dream sprouting in the wilderness…
This meaning has enveloped my life, and continues to do so.
I have fought many battles under this banner, weaving my own legend through it… No breaking, no defeat.
The dream is planted in the open expanse, watered by the Nile; the soil is rich, black alluvial earth, and the crops grow strong and vigorous.
Pitchers of honey and an abundance of the soul's finest treasures we laid beside all that we had planted in that vast open space. And the boundless horizon yielded dreams and tales that wandered along the shores of the soul and wrapped the heart in a love free of reproach.
I, the aforementioned, hereby acknowledge that I am utterly and entirely entangled, of my own free will, in that tale—that beautiful predicament which took possession of me forty years ago, or perhaps more, when I was twenty.
I write of forty years of pure sweetness; of the windows of our lives that we opened early upon Mounir and Abdel Rahim Mansour. Our horizons broadened… We touched the dream… Wonder filled our hearts… As though we were being born anew at the very first touch.
I write of an innocent young man, dark-skinned as chocolate, who came from the warm embrace of Egypt's Nubia and burst into our lives with steadfastness, confidence, and singularity.
He was the very antithesis of his era. Some rejected him, others were astonished by him, and still others feared him—those who had grown addicted to the familiar and conventional, who had lulled themselves to sleep with the soothing strains of dull romanticism, the melodies of ornamental vocal virtuosity, the vocabulary of worn-out dictionaries, ready-made meanings, and endlessly recycled tunes.
The dark-skinned young man, the color of chocolate, emerged with tousled hair and a restless soul, breathless with passionate concern for his homeland.
Simple and unpretentious, standing in the very heart of the circle, he seemed entrusted with cultivating the vastness of the soul… Arranging nature… Bringing grace and order to emotions and feelings…
He invited us not merely to listen to him with our hearts and souls, but, following in the footsteps of the great master Sayed Darwish, he allowed us to sing alongside him.
He sang for us… and we sang with him.
He taught us a beautiful, mischievous trick. We, the bashful lovers who lacked the courage to confess our feelings to our beloveds back then, would whisper or recite fragments of his songs within their hearing:
Your eyes taught me how to travel…
O Bride of the Nile, O fragment of heaven…
You whose image, deep within my heart, is an epic…
He blended the beloved with the homeland, and the homeland with the beloved, until eyes and hearts became one.
If Cupid's arrow struck the beloved's heart, all was well and good. If not, we could deftly evade embarrassment by saying, "We only meant… the homeland."
The words of Abdel Rahim Mansour, together with Mohamed Mounir's voice and heartfelt emotion, bestowed upon us comfort, depth, and a sense of uniqueness.
Mounir's songs, along with the poetry of Ahmed Abdel Muti Hegazy, Mahmoud Darwish, and Salah Jahin, furnished the language of our earliest love letters and our charming ways of reaching out to our beloveds when we were in our twenties.
Mounir called upon us to inscribe our names in the nation's register… to speak… to give voice to what lay within us:
Why remain silent before the passage of time? Speak out!
Why should you alone pay the price? Speak out!
And when treachery and terrorism struck at the heart of the homeland, Mounir sang:
The heart of the homeland is aching.
And when deceitful thieves, merchants of religion, attempted to steal Egypt, strip away its history, culture, and arts, and forbid Egyptians the very joy of living, Mounir's iconic, immortal cry rang out:
Madad, madad, madad!
Grant us your spiritual aid, O Messenger of God!
I swear by Al-Furqan,
And by Surah Al-Insan,
Justice stands upon the scales,
For every creature of God.
Madad, madad, madad!
Grant us your spiritual aid, O Messenger of God!
I swear by Al-Isra,
And by the innocence of the Virgin,
All blood is equal,
And its shedding is forbidden by God's command.
Mounir sang, creating a manifesto of revolution against injustice, everywhere and in every age:
How can you accept, my beloved, that I should be consumed by love in your name,
While you keep deepening my confusion,
Unaware of the goodness of my heart? How can you?
How can you leave me in my weakness? Why won't you stand by my side?
When I have lived my entire life so that I would never see fear in your eyes.
I can find no reason to sustain my love for you,
Nor does my sincerity in loving you plead my cause.
How can I hold your head high, while you force mine to bow?
How can that be?
Had I been free to choose whether to love you,
My heart would have changed long ago.
But I swear by your life, I will keep trying to change you,
Until you are finally pleased with me…
He stood with the ordinary people… the struggling, impoverished farmers… the kindhearted workers.
He sang of the stranger and his acts of heroism… of soldiers… of the girl in the navy-blue school pinafore… of the cross… of the crescent… of Jerusalem… of the Intifada… of the martyrs… of life itself.
He rediscovered the treasures of our musical heritage, not only in Egypt but throughout the Arab world—from Algeria and Morocco to Tunisia and Libya, and from Sudan to Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.
Mounir has every right to take pride in what he has given us. And we, too, have both the right and the duty to take pride in him, and to declare openly our devotion and affection for him.
Here, then, I write my declaration as a listener… an admirer… someone deeply and willingly immersed in Mounir's musical world.
A world whose words have ushered in a new year for me with optimism and confidence in the future.
I am no critic, but I am unabashedly partial… Yes.
I speak of what I see… what I feel… what belongs to me in this… tale.
And I know, at the same time, that millions share my love, my devotion, and my gratitude toward Mounir.
They also share my optimism and confidence in the future, and in the day we are living…
The one who is still running and striving,
Whose eyes are still journeying toward distant horizons,
Whose heart has yet to grow weary of life's long journeys.
Paris: 5:00 p.m., Cairo time.
