Tape 6 Track 1 Take 6. Cifte Telli, For years you have left me alone to myself, my heart burns in your absence. You burn my heart, you threw into fire my head full of pains. [Recorded 22 September 1955, my 1st birthday] Take 7. The southern hot wind is blowing…etc. Track 2 Take 1. The spring has come again…Your hair is beautiful. Take 2. Are you tired? You astonish me. Take 3. Let’s go to Adana and have some fun. Take 5. The fortress of Estargon has a moat before it. My sweet heart has left it, with the absence of my beloved one, I am sad. Tape 8 Track 1 Take 1. Ceplikli, dance rhythm, periodic handclapping, interrupted by a donkey’s cry.
…this was the first time since I had been in Turkey that I felt that away from the half-Westernized cities there were still some places left where people were not ashamed to strike a rhythm on a drum.
-Translated lyrics and Recording notes, Deben Bhattacharya, The Desert Road
I know what it’s like to come upon a wayside bard singing in an incomprehensible language, knowing nonetheless that what he says is true but soon to be forgotten, and must be heard by others urgently. Out comes the tape recorder and he sings the song again. Her waist is not flabby but her hips are wide/Yet still just one hand can gird her buttocks riding high/By the life of the Prophet on a feast day!/Her gown shines brighter than the glow of dawn.
Back in New York, UN Arabic translator Khidr abd al-Razik, a Sudanese familiar with Kordofani dialects, told me exactly what Saeed had sung, and I was floored. All those weeks and miles in the desert, carrying such lyrics with me. Gold. Then Khidr said that the song’s following lyrics indicated Saeed was singing about his camel. Even better I thought.
Maybe Deben had a translator standing by in the field with him, more likely he had to wait until he got to the next half-Westernized city where someone bilingual might live. So he was like me a bit, although with better equipment and better field notes. Carrying unknown love lyrics in a bag, waiting until later to fully understand what they said, but knowing they will make everyone either laugh or cry.
We listened to Hanan Bulu Bulu’s song Zurni Marra til the tape wore out