Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria

SEVEN: Notes Toward Closure

188      NotesTowardClosure  Matla⁄: Listening with the Heart It is my last week in Aleppo before heading back to Damascus and then New York, and I pay a final visit to the vocalist and munshid Sabri Moudallal. Moudallal , a spry octogenarian and one of the few surviving students of ⁄Umar alBa œtsh, operates a small shop for household goods not far from his home in the JÂalÂum neighborhood of the Old City of Aleppo. I visit him there in the morning as he is getting ready to go to the Great Umayyad Mosque and deliver the noon call to prayer. He invites me to join him and, after he sets his trademark red tarboush on his head and grasps my arm, we set off through the old cobblestone streets. As we pass other shops, people shout out customary greetings of welcome and I feel proud to have the honor of walking with him, arm in arm, as I had done with Fateh Moudarres in Damascus on a number of occasions. For me, this walk through the streets of the Old City with the venerable œhÂajj at my side is the picture of authenticity, one soon to be complemented, I imagine, by the sound of his voice when he calls the faithful to prayer.1 As we pass through the streets, we talk about sundry things: how when he traveled to Europe he found it strange that people on buses there are so absorbed in reading newspapers and books that no one talks to anyone else; how the great ⁄Umar alBa œtsh used to charge his students half a lira for lessons but never charged him because he was his favorite; how he himself has composed over forty muwashshaœh-s; and so on.2 As we near the mosque, I ask about the call to prayer (adhÂan) and how he chooses which melodic mode to present it in (like other forms of inshÂad, the adhÂan utilizes the Arab modes). He says that it depends on his mood, what he feels like; he’ll start in one and then modulate to others, and then finish on the original one. I was told by others that Moudallal excels in the adhÂan and that 7. Notes Toward Closure 189 his rendition in the mode nahÂawÂand is especially noteworthy, so I ask if he could present it in that mode for me to record. He says, “May your eyes be honored” (tikram ⁄uyÂunak). I had tried on other occasions to record him from outside the mosque, but my recorder had always failed me: usually the batteries were low or dead, or I had forgotten to bring a blank tape, or something had gone awry. However, today I am prepared, having that morning procured fresh batteries and a new cassette; I even tested them in the taxi on the way over to Moudallal’s shop. This is, after all, my last chance to record him, and I don’t want to blow it. The Great Mosque, Aleppo, 1997. 190     We remove our shoes and enter the great mosque. The faithful are beginning to stream in from the streets and head toward the main prayer room as the bright mid-morning sun glares from the marble floors of the courtyard. Some older men stoop before the central fountain to perform their ablutions, and children play hide and seek among the columns that form a portico around the courtyard. Hajj Sabri introduces me to the sheikh who coordinates the adhÂan, who warmly greets me and brings a chair for me to sit on. I get my recorder out and Moudallal, checking his watch and seeing that the time has come for him to begin, looks at me and asks, “Ready?” I nod and he walks into a small room off the main door of the mosque, opens a small metal cabinet on the wall that turns out to be the microphone for the mosque, and unceremoniously flips a switch. Taking a deep breath, he begins. I press the record button on my recorder and hold out the microphone. Nothing happens. His voice begins to soar, AllÂahu akbar! AllÂahu akbar! (God is Most Great), but the recorder is lifeless, dead. How can this be?! Frantically I press buttons, shake the recorder, even smack it on the side in the way people superstitiously hit television...