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Warda “The Girl”

Warda Fatuki (1939-2012) grew up in Paris, surrounded by a collection of the most important artists from the east and west of Arab lands occupied and "protected" entirely by foreign forces. With a Lebanese mother and an Algerian father who owns a cabaret named ‘TAM TAM’ taking the initials of the Maghrib countrys’ names: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. She recorded her first CD, possibly at the age of 16, titled Ya Ommy "Oh My Mother." Then she set out to start making the longest and most successful story of communication and friendship between Egypt and Algeria.

She came to Egypt at the end of the 1950s and left retired from singing a few years after the independence of Algeria. She married an official in the nascent independent state, give birth to a boy and a girl, and then decided to return to singing in 1972 at the invitation of Houari Boumediene on the 10th anniversary of independence. It cost her her marriage and opened the way to a new marriage with Baligh Hamdy. Warda lived since then with nearly two personas, one for the Egyptians and one for the Algerians.

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They know nothing about Warda's concerts and songs, nor about urban myths and sex scandals, which brought up an entire generation in Egypt. Nor do the Egyptians know anything about the ‘Elder Sister’ who returns to her country only on holidays to sing "My country, I love you above all suspicions," and a dozen other nationalist songs.

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