Project 365

When I’m homesick, one of the ways to cure that homesickness is by eating Middle Eastern foods or by listening to Arabic music! 😀

This song, Ally Gara, is one of my favorite songs and probably my only favorite classical Arab music. I don’t know who the original singer was, but this classical song was made popular (again) by Saber Robaei and Asalah Nasri. Saber and Asalah are two of the best Arab singers. Their voice is just amazing. Both of them have performed this song on separate occasions. If you watch this video, you’ll notice it’s a rather  spontaneous performance at a random party attended by many Arab celebrities. You can see how they made gesture to each other to tell whose turn to sing next. But despite the spontaneity, both Saber and Asalah did a great job!! I even think Saber can survive without Asalah there haha.

The song is quite long (more than 10 minutes) — the video that I embed here is the second part of the performance. It’s common for Arab singers to prolong a song by “playing” with their voice (like what Saber did at 2:34 and Asalah at 4:40). They do that quite often when performing a classical Arab music. I’m not sure why. Perhaps, it’s to show the greatness of their voice and how long they can sing without breathing.

You can download the mp3 of this performance from here. Saber and Asalah never recorded this song, so the one from this performance is used and was widely played in the radio across the Middle East when it was first broadcasted on TV. So you can hear the voice of Asala asking for a glass of water in the beginning of the song hahaha. It’s a spontaneous performance, I told ya!

The Arabs have a weird way of greeting their friends. They would ask the following questions:

• How are you?
• How’s everything?
• How’s your health?
• How’s your family?
• How’s your son/daughter?
• and the list is expanding… (but usually those first four questions are asked)

And what’s the answer to all those questions?

Alhamdulillah. All praise is due to Allah SWT.

In Saudi Arabia, when you greet a person, you’d kiss him/her on the cheek. So if you ask him/her four questions above, then you’d kiss him/her for four times. So it all depends on the number of questions that you ask. And all of them must be answered with alhamdulillah.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I suggest you watch this funny and short video made by MTV Arabia about Saudi kiss:

My brother and I used to make fun of the way Arabs greet. It’s funny, when you think about it. I mean, you ask so many questions and no matter what you ask, the answer will always be alhamdulillah! It’s soooo “basa-basi”.

Anyway, it turns out that this way of greeting has existed for so long — it was once the habit of salafus shalih (the ‘pious predecessors’ from the first three generations of Muslims) which has been passed down until now! The reason why they did it was so that they can say the word alhamdulillah for so many times. In other words, they deliberately did it so that we can praise Allah SWT more often — i.e. so that we can be grateful to Allah SWT more often.

Subhanallah, I didn’t know that!!! I’m such a loser for thinking about it in another way. Oh God, please forgive me.

* Taken from a book titled “Kaya & Bahagia dengan Syukur” by Ahmad Hadi Yasin.

I have successfully influenced my friend Ari to Arabic music! Haha! And she seemed to like it! 🙂

Anyway, I was supposed to have dinner with my friend today, but unfortunately she cancelled it. I was a bit disappointed about it as we hadn’t seen each other for so long, but I understood that she had some stuff to sort out.

I went for an afternoon walk today and I thoroughly loved it. Walking for half an hour, thinking about my life and other issues. It’s enjoyable. Spending your time alone is really important 🙂

And what was the result of this afternoon walk? I got an idea to write for my blog. Stay tuned!! 🙂