My memories of Oum Kalthoum's (Uum Kalsoum's) (Umm Kulthum's) Visit to our Home

My father, Dr. William Chapman, was physician for Oum Kalthoum, Egytian singer, (which he pronounced "Kalsoum") back in the early 1950's at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. He was young (handsome) and part of a team of doctors there. But he, in his late twenties at the time, made the proper assessment and recommendations which led to the diagnosis of a thyroid condition which he (and, of course, his colleagues) treated successfully. She was very grateful to him, because in her heart she credited him in part, by the grace of Allah, with saving her voice for singing. She wanted to pay her respects to my father's home and family, and so she did.

She arrived at our house in Bethesda with quite a strong presence and coterie, and I will never forget it. I was about 6 years old, and since my father was a young Naval doctor, we lived in a relatively humble abode, in comparison to Oum Kalthoum's universe, which was probably closer to the Taj Mahal in terms of gravitas.. But she came, wearing a turban-type hat and silk scarves, arriving in a large car with 4 or 5 bodyguards in front of our little home. They spent an hour in our home, sitting graciously in sofas in front of the fireplace, Oum, interested, (her male friends or musical accompanists)i.e; bodyguards, bored, while my father enjoyed the company, and my mother was possibly having paroxysms of anxiety in the kitchen....Madame Kalthoum's asked her bodyguards to carry in the hugest, most exotic and beautiful basket of fruit I have ever seen to this day, a gift for our household. Oum Kalthoum bent over me and my sister and pinched our cheeks so hard that they hurt, an enthusiastic greeting I had never experienced before....the pinches so hard they brought tears to my eyes but I was still enthralled by her enormously exotic presence.....and then she invited me to come as her guest to Egypt when I was old enough. (The month I wrote her the letter reminding her of this invitation, and saying I was grown now and a single mother of a very young child, and hoped to visit with her again and possibly work for her, was the month she died, about 1975 or so.)



So back there in the 1950's , Oum Khalthoum invited my parents to a dinner at the Egyptian Embassy in Washington. The entire episode- her visit to our home, and my parents' subsequent visit to the Egyptian Embassy dinner, was sensory overload for my mother. My father never tired, until his dying day, of telling the story about my mother having too many unfamiliar strong drinks, and falling asleep on a little chair in a hallway at the Embassy. Oum Kalthoum gave my mother elaborate necklaces and bracelets which I loved and wish I still had, but my mother passed them on to her sister Georgia, a tall and glamorous type who my mom thought could wear the jewelry better..I've never seen it since.

Once a few years ago I went into a local pizza parlor on the Jersey shore, and told the Egyptian guys there that my father was physican to Oum Kalthoum, and that I met her when I was a child, and the man in the pizza parlor wept many tears. It's amazing how the Egyptian people still remember her and hold her in such high esteem, and how her voice is still revered. I'm proud to have met her and to remember her so clearly, and to have witnessed how she formed an attachment, after my father became her physician, to our family.For years my father kept a magazine article she sent him from Egypt which featured a story about his involvement with her. I remember being young and looking at the picture of my father appearing so incongruously in that Arabic magazine, and how entranced and mystified I was by the beauty of the script.But that magazine, too, disappeared into the years.

I hope someday to see Egypt and the developments in the Arab World, and am very interested in what I've read about Dubai, and the man-made islands formed to spell out prayers such as "There is One God and One God Only" which I happen to believe.... but that will be just a dream.