My husband used to listen to her while he was getting ready in the morning when we lived in London. I didn’t understand anything she said, except for her liberal use of the word habibi or dear. We only listened to Fairouz in the morning. When we moved to Jordan, my mother-in-law switched on her radio in the kitchen every morning while she smoked her cigarettes and drank Nescafe, singing along to Fairouz. She tells me that she knows people who used to drive from Amman, through Damascus, to Beirut just to watch Fairouz perform live. Those were the days.

Fairouz's vocals echo from the radios in the old taxis of Beirut. Her songs played back-to-back for several hours each morning. Why in the morning only? I asked one of the drivers. He didn’t know, but Fairooz is for the mornings ONLY, he affirmed. And after the Beirut blast in 2020 her song, Li Beirut or For Beirut became the anthem for a grieving nation and still brings me to tears. Even Emmanuel Macron, President of France, when he visited Beirut last year, took the time to go meet Fairouz in her home and present her with an award for the Legion d'Honneur (which is a bit peculiar). He said "She represents stories of love and a Lebanon dreamed of and loved." Very true.

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