Al-Hadi Adam

Al-Hadi Adam gave Umm Kulthum her one Sudanese lyric — and one of the most trembling openings in her late repertoire. Born in 1927 in al-Hilaliyya on Sudan's Blue Nile, he crossed to Cairo for his education, graduating from the Dar al-Ulum faculty in Arabic language and letters before returning home to a life of teaching, journalism and verse. When Umm Kulthum visited Sudan in 1968, poems were pressed upon her by the dozen; from among them she chose his "Aghadan Alqak" — "Is it tomorrow I meet you?" — a lyric poised between longing for the beloved and fear of the meeting itself, the heart shrinking from the very joy it has begged for. Mohammed Abdel Wahab set it, and she premiered it in 1971, in the last years of her concert life; overnight its author's name traveled the whole Arab world attached to hers. The choice mattered beyond the song: by singing a poet of Khartoum rather than Cairo, she confirmed that her repertoire belonged to the entire Arabic language, wherever it was written. Al-Hadi Adam died in December 2006, forever the poet of that question — is it tomorrow?