Ana wa Laila: An epic love poem

Rasha al Raisi -

Hassan al Marwani is an Iraqi poet who’s known in his motherland. Mention his name anywhere else and people wouldn’t recognize him. Mention his poem: Ana wa Laila (Laila and I) and people would instantly smile in recognition.

Who in the Arab world who haven’t heard his poem being sang by the well-known Iraqi singer Kathem al Saher? So who’s Hassan al Marwani and what’s the story behind one of the most famous love poems in modern times?

Hassan was born in a poor family in the village of Misan in Iraq. In the 1970s, he became a student in the facility of education in the university of Baghdad. Hassan was a talented poet who was recognized for his work and even had fans. He fell in love with Laila — his colleague at the time — but being shy by nature, he kept his feelings a secret for years.

Finally, when he gathered the courage to confess his love, he sent a mutual colleague to Laila as a messenger. Laila was astonished as she’d known him for years and had never guessed his feelings towards her.

It was late anyway, she was in her final year and had been engaged to a masters level student in the same university. Hassan was shocked by the news and became so depressed that he’d almost lost his life and career, if it wasn’t for his friends who’d helped him to get over his emotional crisis.

Still grieving, he wrote the poem “Ana wa Laila” and read it to his friend Ashraf al Kathimi who insisted that he should read it at the university’s poetry festival.

Hassan agreed and read the poem that starts with the famous verse: “At the Mihrab of your eyes my prayers died, and to the wind of despair my flags surrendered”. The poem goes further to describe their epic love story and how poverty was what separated them, which was outrageous as none of it was true.

The students adored the poem that they’d engraved it on the wall of their university. Many years later, Kathem al Saher came across the poem and was stricken by the sad beauty of it. He decided to sing it but there was no mention of the name of the poet anywhere. He put an appeal in the local newspaper asking for the poet to come forward to take his permission.

For five years, imposters came forward with a few known extracts of the poem claiming that it was theirs. Hassan appeared at last with the original poem in 355 verses.

When Kathem composed the music and played it for the first time to Hassan, the latter cried saying that he’d written it to describe a mood he was going through at that time.

The song came out in 1998 and became an instant hit in the Arab world. Laila was in Istanbul at the time — with her husband and daughter — when she heard the song. She told her husband that the poem was about her as she’d heard it before in her university days.

Years later — after the death of her husband and the marriage of her daughters — Laila opened a Facebook account. There she met Hassan again and reproached him for hiding his love for years and for making her sound cruel.

He apologized saying that ‘poets are not always accurate in what they write’. He felt happy though that they’d became friends after those long years. Separated by a misunderstanding and united by friendship and an epic love poem.

(Source: Wassini Al-Araj article: Living a poem: Hassan and Laila, Zahrat Al-Khaleej Magazine, Issue no 2076 and www.aljazeera.net)

Rasha al Raisi is a certified skills trainer and the author of:

The World According to Bahja. rashabooks@yahoo.com