Mamoun Al-Shinnawi

Egyptians called Mamoun Al-Shinnawi the poet of a thousand songs, and the count is barely an exaggeration: born in 1914 into a literary Delta family — his elder brother was the poet-journalist Kamel Al-Shinnawi — he wrote for virtually every major voice of the century, from Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Farid al-Atrash to Abdel Halim Hafez. Umm Kulthum came to him in her last, renewing decade. "Ansak" (1961), set by the young Baligh Hamdi, opened the partnership; then came "Ba'eed Anak" (1965), with its imperishable sigh that life is bitter away from the beloved — a lyric first meant for another singer, who asked him to soften its words; he refused, Umm Kulthum took it whole, and it became one of the emblematic songs of her final period. "Darit al-Ayyam" (1970), composed by Abdel Wahab, closed the arc: the days turn, and love returns to where it began. Shinnawi's gift was the colloquial phrase with an aphorism's finish — lines that sound remembered rather than written, made to be repeated for an hour by a voice that knew exactly what they weighed. He died in 1994.