Singers’ squadrons

I am not so fond of the songs sung by Iraqi singer Kathem Al-Saher, neither his voice. I might not even know any of his songs except for one of his first ones; ‘Abart Ash-shat Ala Modak’ (I crossed the river for your eyes). Contrarily, I hated him and his songs at a certain age. I still remember when I was living in Cairo, Egypt in 1992 or 1993 after Kuwait was liberated and my driver played a song and I asked who the singer was. The man mentioned Kazem El-Saher’s name and I immediately ejected the cassette tape and threw it out of the car into the street leaving my driver in shock as he only knew that the man was a good singer who had made a considerable number of fans in Egypt.

As we had just liberated Kuwait and were still overwhelmed by grievance and the stories of POWs and tortured Kuwaitis, I blamed him for having a tape for a singer who belongs to a country that invaded mine, destroyed, killed and took many as POWs. I am mentioning this introduction after hearing news about inviting Saher to sing in Kuwait with all the reactions this invitation has already created, as many citizens reject it on grounds that Saher has sung glorifying Saddam Hussein and, since the latter invaded Kuwait, he is our enemy and all our enemy’s friends are our enemies.

Well, these groups seem to have forgotten that many Kuwaitis had supported, loved and praised Saddam in certain situations before he invaded their country. And if Saher praised Hussein in his songs, he was nothing more than an Iraqi citizen who could not sing away from other flocks or squadrons that included all Iraqi singers in and outside Iraq. Accordingly, I see that inviting Saher to sing in Kuwait must be alienated from such tragic political past as he was not the culprit or the one who applauded it.