Beloved of Tunisia, Egypt
the tunisian singer “habiba msika” was born in 1903 and died in 1930 when she was only twenty-seven.
habiba was endowed with the beauty of her face and the sweetness of her voice, and she was one of the most prominent singers and actors of the first half of the last century.
margaret mesika was born into a modest jewish family, and her aunt, laila sfaz, was a well-known singer, and habiba changed her name, as did dozens of other singers of that time, to hide her origins.
habiba learned music and singing from “archer mizrahi” and “khamis ternan”, and she became famous, becoming the most prominent star of artistic life in tunisia, and she also performed theatrical roles in tunis, paris, and berlin. she performed her songs mainly in the tunisian and egyptian dialects. she also sang in the levantine and libyan dialects, and she was fluent in mwahaha singing.
because of her fame, beauty, and the splendor of her voice, many fell in love with her, including the rich jew, eliyahu maimoni, who lavished a lot of money on her and built her a beautiful palace in the tunisian city of pasteur, which is currently a destination for tourists, and witnessed their flaming love story and their death.
habiba had other lovers lavish money on her, and this aroused the ire and jealousy of her beloved eliyahu, so he sneaked into her bedroom at night and poured kerosene on it, and set it on fire, but she noticed that the fire was burning her and she clung to eliyahu tightly, so she burned and died, and he died a few days later of his burns.
habiba’s short and exciting life story inspired tunisian director salma bakkar with the idea of producing a film about her short and tumultuous life in 1995 called “dance of fire”, or in french la danse du feu, but it was not very popular outside tunisia.
bakkar was inspired by the name of the movie from a famous theatrical performance previously performed by habiba in the twenties with the same name on stage, after her return from her artistic tour in europe, and the show represented a new form that the tunisian audience was not familiar with at the time!
among the songs that habiba performed wonderfully and can still be heard by searching the internet: at your doorstep, spring is shining, oh place of spaciousness, oh place of its light has come out, and visit me once every year, and the last two were composed by the giant of arabic music, sayed darwish.
shada sang the song “visit me every year once” by male and female singers before and after habiba, the most prominent of whom were mullah othman al-mawsili, sheikh imam, hamed morsi, and sabah fakhri, as sayed darwish himself sang it, and of course, the wonderful “fayrouz” sang it, and her words were composed by muhammad younes al-qadi.
