Bayram al-Tunisi

Bayram al-Tunisi lifted Egyptian colloquial poetry from the street to the summit of art song. Born in Alexandria to a family of Tunisian origin, he made his name with zajal — vernacular verse of scalding wit — and his satires of the palace and the British occupation cost him nearly two decades of exile in Tunisia and France. Back in Egypt, he formed with composer Zakariyya Ahmad one of the great partnerships in Arabic music, writing for Umm Kulthum the wartime masterpieces "Ana Fi Intizarak" (1943) and "Ghanni Li Shwayya" (1945), which she performed in the film Sallama, and later "Houwa Sahih El-Hawa Ghallab" (1960). His signature is the dignity of everyday speech: the patience, irony and tenderness of ordinary Egyptians rendered without a trace of condescension, in lines so idiomatic they feel overheard rather than written. He died in 1961, honored at last by the state that had once expelled him — the outsider whose Arabic became the very sound of Egypt.