The lost honor of Farid al-Atrash, Egyptian legend

HAARETZ – Forty years after his death, a tribute to the singer who was tormented by the feeling that he’d never be an equal among equals in the Egyptian pantheon of giants.

He was a Druze prince who had to make a living selling textiles; the “king of the oud” who dreamed of composing for the Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum, but was rebuffed; one of the great singers of the Arab world, who felt he did not receive the esteem he deserved; and an eternal romantic, who fell in love time and again but never married.