Word: kalthoum
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...Westerners, her voice sounds like the siren call of a lovesick cat at midnight. When Egypt's Um Kalthoum sings on Cairo radio, however, the entire Arab world falls into ecstasy...
...Thursday of the month, nine months of the year. As the hour nears, the streets from Mecca to Marrakech grow strangely quiet. Groups of spade-bearded sheiks repair conspiratorially to their salons; workers jam the coffeehouses, and nomads huddle like crapshooters in their tents. As they listen to Um Kalthoum's tremulous voice, old men weep, women writhe on the floor, and the hashish smokers-whose purchases soar to monthly peaks just before the broadcasts-drift into glaze-eyed reverie...