Life away from home, in Ayoob’s songs [Archives:2003/665/Last Page]

Mahyoub Al-Kamaly
The honoring of artist Ayoob Tarish Absi by the ministry of culture and tourism was described by some intellectuals as an honoring for national songs and concern with the immigrants suffering and their longing for home. For Ayoob has invariably described their experiences with beautiful songs, telling about their lonesome far away from the country that very much needs its people. He sang melodies that expressed the feelings of those far away and their nostalgia for home and the ones they love, while their land is calling for them as he sang:
“Return to your fields, how thirsty it is there,
Rama'a valley, which but you would water it and care?”
Actually the song expresses a social problem of farmers abandoning their land in search for more and better job opportunities. Yemen has been left in unhealthy circumstances and has been discarded while it is needy. Things could be helped if all Yemenis came back to work in their own country. Especially that the once green fields have become dry and grey.
Ayoob also sang on behalf of the Yemeni in foreign countries explaining the hardships that forced him to leave and the hardships that he suffers abroad. That sometimes life can be hard enough to force someone to leave his family and home not knowing where to go, taking the first plane to anywhere else leaving his destiny in the hands of God:
“I fly, not of feathers, but metal my wings are
Which land they take me? I don't know how far”
Furthermore Ayoob has described them, those who are far away from home as “birds on trees” seeking to earn and go back home victorious after a long journey of suffering. Yet the artist's songs always concluded that this country is big enough to embrace all its citizens, and misses them too, like deserts miss rain, like eyes miss light after so long darkness.
——
[archive-e:665-v:13-y:2003-d:2003-09-04-p:lastpage]