Princess, Singer, Actress, Spy: Asmahan (S6E4)

In the 1930s, singer and actress Asmahan became one of the most beloved performers in the Arabic-speaking world. After the outbreak of World War II, she embarked on a secret mission to Syria to aid in the fight against Hitler.

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Above: Asmahan, whose legal name was Amal al-Atrash, posing for a promotional photograph in Egypt (1942).

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SHOW NOTES

In the wake of World War I, another war broke out between the al-Atrash clan and the French-controlled government. Leading this rebellion against France was Asmahan’s uncle Sultan al-Atrash, pictured in the front with his saber. Sultan would later play a key role in Asmahan’s secret mission, which contributed to the overthrow of the Vichy government in Syria and Lebanon.

Tired and fearful of the violence caused by the al-Atrash rebellion, Asmahan’s mother, Alia (center), took her three children to live in Egypt without their father’s knowledge. This photo depicts the refugee family in their Cairo apartment. From left to right: Farid, Fu’ad, and Amal/Asmahan.

The invention of sound cinema contributed to the rise of the musical genre. In Arabic-speaking countries, the biggest musical stars were from Egypt. This picture, taken in the 1930s, depicts a cinema in Damascus named after Umm Kulthum, the most famous Egyptian singer of all time. A cutout of the legendary performer graces the facade of the building.

Asmahan and her brother, Farid, sang together on the radio and at private parties. In 1941, the siblings achieved new heights of fame when they starred in the hit musical film “The Triumph of Youth” (Intisar al-Shabab), directed by Ahmed Badrakhan.

The garden of the luxurious Mena House Hotel (1940s). During World War II, the Mena House eventually doubled as a headquarters for the British military operations in the Middle East. Asmahan’s ex-husband, Emir Hassan al-Atrash tracked her down to this garden in an effort to get her back, only to be politely—but firmly—rebuffed.

After Asmahan’s spy mission was complete and her second divorce from Hassan finalized, she returned to Cairo in 1944 to star in her second, and final film, “Love and Revenge” (Gharam wa intiqam). Directed by co-star Youssef Wahbi, the movie was still shooting when Asmahan died in an apparent car accident. Wahbi changed the ending of the film, causing the character played by Asmahan to die in a tragic car wreck, as well, an artistic decision that met with criticism.

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

---Alsayyad, Nezar. Cairo: Histories of a City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

---Azzam, Intisar J. Gender and Religion: Druze Women. London: The Druze Heritage Foundation, 2007.

---Cooper, Artemis. Cairo in the War 1939-1945. London: John Murray, 2013.

---Cormack, Raphael. Midnight in Cairo: The Female Stars of Egypt’s Roaring ‘20s. London: Saqi Books, 2021.

---Daly, M.W. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 2, Modern Egypt from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

---Darwish, Mustafa. Dream Makers on the Nile: A Portrait of Egyptian Cinema. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1998.

---El-Shammaa, Magdy Mounir. The National Imaginarium: A History of Egyptian Filmmaking. Cairo: The American Univesity in Cairo Press, 2021.

--Gaffney, Jane. “The Egyptian Cinema: Industry and Art in a Changing Society,” in Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter 1987): pp. 53-75.

--Hitti, Philip K. The Origins of the Druze People and Religion With Extracts from Their Sacred Writings. New York: Columbia University Press, 1928.

---Layish, Aharon. Marriage, Succession, and Divorce in the Druze Family. Leiden: Brill, 1982.

---Mellor, Noha (ed.). The Routledge Handbook on Arab Cinema. London: Routledge, 2024.

--Raymond, André. Cairo. Trans. Willard Wood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

---Zdafee, Keren. Cartooning for a Modern Egypt. Leiden: Brill, 2020

---Zuhur, Sherifa. Asmahan’s Secrets: Woman, War, and Song. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.

---Zuhur, Sherifa (ed.). Colors of Enchantment: Theater, Dance, Movement, and the Visual Arts of the Middle East. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2001.

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TRANSCRIPT

The night was still in Demirci, a remote corner of modern-day Turkey. Yet far away, the rest of the world was on fire. It was November 1917, and the violence of the First World War convulsed the Ottoman Empire, its former possessions falling one after another after another to the Allied Powers. But these events seemed far away. Inside the fortified castle of Prince Fahd al-Atrah, everyone was asleep, except the two watchmen standing sentinel behind the barred gates. Without warning, though, the silence of the evening gave way to the soft yet insistent thudding of horse hooves—fast, loud, and urgent. Then, a desperate pounding at the castle gate. The guards looked out to see a solitary messenger, sweating and out of breath. He needed to speak to the Emir—or Prince—of the castle right away. The Emir, his wife, and his young children were in danger.

Reluctant at first, the guards went to fetch their master, Fahd al-Atrash, the Ottoman official charged with maintaining the stability of the region. The emir, a somber, dark-haired man in his mid-t0-late twenties, came to the gate to meet the messenger. “What is the matter?” he asked. The horseman delivered his pressing news. Greek rebels were on their way to take the castle. They had already left behind a train of death and destruction, and nobody would be coming to help the emir beat them back. The rebel forces would be there in a day—two at the most. The inhabitants of the castle must flee at once to the coastal city of Izmir, before it was too late.

Fahd al-Atrash woke his wife, Alia. Nearly eight months pregnant, she rose unsteadily to her feet. The couple roused their four children, none of them older than five. They grabbed what they could—clothes, documents, keepsakes, cash—and fled their home for Izmir. Once there, they planned to sail for Beirut, where Alia had family, and then onward to Fahd’s ancestral homeland in southern Syria.

Their flight was full of obstacles. The parents worried that they hadn’t rustled up enough money to pay both for food and for their passage to Lebanon. The physical demands of the escape were nearly unbearable to the pregnant Alia, who also feared for the lives of her children. Once on ship, the rough seas and cramped sleeping conditions worsened Alia’s plight. Perhaps on account of the bodily and psychological strain of the ordeal, she went into labor on the boat, nearly a month ahead of schedule. After a hair-raising delivery, Alia was presented with her fifth child—a beautiful baby girl with bright, blue-green eyes. Born amid panic, pain, and desperation, this daughter represented the new life that awaited the family once they arrived in Syria. Turning this over in her mind, Alia named the baby “Amal”—the Arabic word for “hope.”         

From these inauspicious beginnings, Amal Al-Atrash would go on to become a celebrated singer and movie star in Egypt, under the stage name “Asmahan.” Over the course of the 1930s, the glamorous Asmahan rose to fame first as a recording artist and then as an actress. Her renown would peak in the 1940s, the same decade that she put her art on hold to become a spy, in an effort to thwart Hitler’s ambitions in the Middle East. Her mysterious death in 19444 has given rise to rumors that her brief foray into espionage even cost her her life. Today, we’ll hear how Asmahan ended up in Egypt as a child refugee, how she rose to stardom in the glittering cultural capital of Cairo, and how she joined the fight against the Nazis in Syria. This is The Art of Crime, and I’m your host, Gavin Whitehead. Welcome to another episode of Spy vs. Spy . . .

The Purple Rose of Cairo

Jabal al-Druze

Amal al-Atrash, later known as Asmahan, spent the first 5 years of her life outside the modest town of Suwaya, situated in the mountainous countryside of southern Syria. She grew up in a spacious grey stone house with fruit trees and flower gardens. As a member of the al-Atrash clan, her father Fahd belonged to the ruling family of the region, known as the Jabal al-Druze—in English, “The Hill of the Druze.” As this name suggests, the population of the area was predominantly Druze, a minority religious group concentrated in Lebanon and Syria. Both of Amal’s parents were members of this religion, a fact that would influence many facets of her life.   

                                                                        The personalities of her mother and father also left their stamp on the young girl, shaping her character and her destiny. Fahd al-Atrash was, by nature, a political animal. He was educated in Istanbul in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. His studies prepared him for various governmental positions. While still a young man, Fahd traveled to Lebanon, where he fell in love with a beautiful woman of fiery temperament—Amal’s mother, Alia. At the time of Amal’s conception, Fahd held the post in Turkey that the family fled in 1917. The job was administrative and military in nature, involving the suppression of rebellious activity on the part of Greeks, Armenians, and other aggrieved groups. According to the family, it was for this service that the Ottoman sultan granted Fahd the title of “Emir”—or “Prince.” When Fahd returned to his ancestral home in the Jabal al-Druze, he continued to participate actively in political life, even after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. From him, Amal inherited a strong sense of political consciousness, especially as it related to Syria and the Druze people.                                                     

Alia, meanwhile, endowed her daughter with a fierce, independent streak and a love of the arts. A free-thinking member of an affluent Druze family, Alia was born in Lebanon in 1895. In contrast to her husband, who was fine with living in rural castles and villas, she was a city girl at heart. She loved music and the arts and thrived on the rich forms of social life offered by the Lebanese capital. Her education included rigorous training in classical Arabic singing and the ‘Ud—an eleven-string instrument that looks like a lute.

Tradition and Rebellion

As the family settled down to a new life in the Jabal al-Druze, trouble was brewing. Though it wasn’t clear at first, the marriage between Fahd and Alia was on its last legs. Politics was largely to blame, as were historical forces beyond anyone’s control. In 1921, a violent conflict broke out in the region, one that pit Druze tradition against the new political order that had emerged after the First World War. Ultimately, this clash also shattered the al-Atrash family.

Historically, the Druze enjoyed a great deal of autonomy, especially under Ottoman rule. Sheltered by rugged terrain and warlike when provoked, they preferred to be left alone; their more intelligent rulers obliged them in this regard. This preference for self-determination had deep historical roots. The Druze first emerged in eleventh-century Egypt, as an offshoot of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam. Then, as now, they used Arabic as the basis of religious and social life; they also shared many values and traditions with Muslims. Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for the Druze to see themselves as a distinct religion. Several features of Druze religious life are fundamentally at odds with Islam. One of the most dramatic of these is the Druze belief in metempsychosis—also known as reincarnation. Their initial attempts to spread their teachings in eleventh-century Cairo made them a target of religious persecution. The Druze fled Egypt, seeking refuge in the remote, mountainous regions of Syria and Lebanon, where they lived in village-based communities governed by local Emirs and their extended families. They no longer attempted to convert outsiders to their religions. Importantly for Asmahan, they also instituted a strict prohibition against marrying outside the fold.

By the time Amal and her family settled down in Suwaya, tensions between the Druze and their most recent colonial overlords, the French, were on the verge of exploding. Following World War I, European powers carved up the Ottoman Empire into smaller territories, placing each of them under the administrative control of either France or the United Kingdom. In 1923, these arrangements were made official at the League of Nations and would be referred to as “the Mandate system.” Palestine, Iraq, and Jordan were placed under British mandate, while Syria and Lebanon were to be overseen by the French. Although Egypt had enjoyed nominal independence since 1922, the British still called many of the political and economic shots in the country. In contrast to colonization, the Mandate was supposed to be temporary—and unmotivated by profit.

However, the reality of this arrangement was less high-minded than it appeared on paper. In 1920, three years before the official beginning of the Mandate government, the French used their superior military power to conquer Syria and crush the movement for national independence. They did so against the wishes of most of Syria’s inhabitants. Even after they asserted control over the country, the French continued their heavy-handed governance. In the proudly independent Jabal al-Druze, where Asmahan’s family lived, men were allowed to vote for their governor, with an important catch: all of the candidates standing in the elections were French. The paternalism of this arrangement—as well as the foreign governor’s controversial policies—contributed to an atmosphere of hostility and distrust between Mandate officials and the al-Atrash clan.

These resentments started to come to a head on June 23, 1921, a day that would alter the futures of Amal and her family in ways that none of them could have foreseen. That morning, French General Henri Gouraud, High Commissioner of Syria and Lebanon, left Damascus by car, heading toward the Golan Heights. Out of nowhere, he and his cavalcade came under attack by gunmen on horseback. Leading the assassination attempt against was the Syrian nationalist, Adham Khanjar. Tall, dark-haired, and liberally mustached, Khanjar and his fellow freedom fighters failed to kill Gouraud, eventually retreating.

A little over a year later found Khajar waging a guerrilla attack in Damascus. Pursued by French forces, he fled into the Jabal al-Druze, seeking the house of Sultan al-Atrash—young Amal’s great uncle and one of the two heads of the al-Atrash clan. Aged thirty-one, the sultan was powerfully built, richly mustached, and famous for his entrancing blue-green eyes. Khanjar had heard about Sultan’s resentment of the Mandate government and hoped that the powerful Druze warlord would offer him safe harbor from French forces. When he reached the village where al-Atrash lived, he stopped at a well to refresh himself in the summer heat. Unfortunately, he was recognized by two French soldiers, who arrested him.

Khanjar was packed off to Suwayda and imprisoned. From his cell, he dispatched a letter to Sultan al-Atrash, explaining what had happened and imploring his aid. The Druze leader was furious to learn that Khanjar had been arrested while seeking asylum in his house. This was an egregious violation of Arab customs and traditional laws regarding hospitality. These demanded that powerful men like Sultan al-Atrash welcome those who sought his protection. In arresting Khanjar a stone’s throw from Sultan’s home, the French were undermining his authority in the eyes of the Druze community—in a public and deeply insulting way.

The situation escalated quickly. Al-Atrash blasted the authorities both in person and in a series of biting telegrams. Nevertheless, the French continued to detain Khanjar over Sultan’s objections; within days, they were arranging to transfer him to Damascus, to be tried and executed. Having exhausted his diplomatic options, the warrior-sultan gathered a small group of armed kinsmen. The men rode their horses out into the hilly countryside, stopping at a place along a gravel path bordered by olive trees and slab-like boulders. There, they smoked while they waited, staring out over the rich yellow wheat fields that fanned out across the plain. Soon, the convoy carrying Khanjar would pass by on the road below. The Druze men planned to attack it head on and rescue the prisoner.

In the distance, Sultan al-Atrash heard the sound of vehicles. His men, picking up their sabers and rifles, awaited his signal. A trio of armored cars, each equipped with a machine gun tower, rounded the bend onto the plain. In an instant, Sultan al-Atrash led the charge down the hill, jumping off his horse onto one of the vehicles, cutting down three of its passengers with his saber. The French soldiers attempted to defend themselves with their machine guns, only to be outflanked by the Druze riders. The skirmish was brief and decisive. In the end, four French soldiers died while five were taken captive. But a devastating discovery lay in store: Khanjar was not among the passengers. He was later executed in Damascus. The French immediately avenged the attack on the convoy. Their forces attacked members of the al-Atrash family. Then, a couple of weeks later, they bombed the house of Sultan al-Atrash from the air. Unbowed, the sultan engaged in a multi-year guerilla war with the French, earning a reputation as the Robin Hood of Jabal al-Druze—and as one of Syria’s early freedom fighters.

Unsurprisingly, Amal’s parents had markedly different reactions to these events. Fadr, enflamed with the ideas of family honor and national independence, embraced his family’s battle against the foreign occupiers. Alia, at first circumspect, grew preoccupied, fearful, and depressed. As a young mother during World War I, she had survived bombings and armed attacks, only to lose two of her children to disease. Then, there was the harrowing escape from Turkey, which nearly caused her to miscarry Amal. The current hostilities between the French and the al-Atrash clan put her and her three surviving children in the crossfire. How long would it be before an aerial bomb decimated their family home, perhaps with the kids inside? Fatigued by her husband’s zeal for war, in 1923, she staged a rebellion of her own, an act of self-assertion almost unthinkable in the Druze community: she walked out on her husband and moved into her family’s home in Beirut, accompanied by her children.

Any peace she felt there was short-lived. As the violence intensified in the Jabal al-Druze, Alia passed sleepless nights, dark circles forming around her eyes. Though far removed from the action, she nevertheless heard rumors that French authorities were searching for her and the kids. Fearful that they would be kidnapped and used as a bargaining chip against the al-Atrash clan, she forged a desperate plan. Without consulting her husband or parents, Alia resolved to move her children to Egypt, a country outside France’s sphere of influence. In secret, she bundled Amal and her brothers up into a car with a few belongings and set out for the seaside city of Haifa, at the time under the British Mandate. There, she sold her car for cash, in order to have the money she would need to start over in Egypt. Before long, the family arrived in Cairo. At the time, Amal was only five or six years old. We’ll hear about her stunning ascent to superstardom after a quick break.

Cairo’s Calling

The Cairo of the 1920s was a thrilling jumble of contradictions. Alfa-Romeos and Aston Martins whizzed by horse-drawn carriages, cargo-bearing donkeys, and runaway sheep. On the sidewalks, costermongers parked clunky wooden carts, groaning under the weight of bananas, figs, and watermelon. Elegant parks, gardens, and zoos could be found a block or two from creaky, crumbling tenements, packed with the urban poor. Each day, the population swelled to impossible new numbers. Mass unemployment in the farming sector brought in floods of native Egyptians, whose families had lived in the countryside for generations. Foreign immigrants—Italians, Greeks, Syrians, Lebanese—sought opportunity and excitement in the African metropolis that rivaled Paris and London in its vibrance. In 1927, a few years after Alia arrived with her children, the population of Cairo was just over one million; roughly 400,000 inhabitants had not been born in the city.

At first, Amal and her family struggled to find an economic niche in this labyrinth of a city. Alia stretched the proceeds from the car sale to get through the first few months. She rented a run-down apartment in a working-class district, a step down from the villas and castles to which the family was accustomed. Alia also took jobs not traditionally associated with princesses, washing laundry for pay. But she also had her music. She sang at parties and played the ‘ud. She even recorded a couple of vinyl singles on the side.

For their part, the al-Atrash children enrolled in a French-speaking Catholic school. The education was excellent and—more important to Alia—dirt cheap. But she feared that it may not stay that way. Asmahan and her brothers attended their classes under the assumed surname of “Kusah,” meaning “Zucchini” in Arabic. This was because their mother worried that if the nuns discovered that the siblings came from the famous al-Atrash clan, they would jack up the price of their tuition.

A Musical Life

Fortunately, her financial struggles were not long-lived. A mysterious American benefactor, who admired the al-Atrash clan, helped Asmahan’s family out with a huge cash infusion, allowing them to move to a larger apartment in a nicer neighborhood. It also furthered the artistic education of Amal and her brother, Farid, who inherited their mother’s love of music. Their first music teacher, Madhat Assim, singled out the two siblings for their exceptional talent, introducing them to Cairo’s musical elite. While Amal simply supplemented her French-style education with music lessons, Farid enrolled full-time in atop-notch conservatory. There, he gained a reputation as a wizard on the ‘ud.

On an evening that proved life-changing for young Amal, one particularly famous guest visited the al-Atrash family: celebrated composer Da’ud Husni. That night, the youngest al-Atrash sibling performed a popular Arabic song for him. By this point in his career, Husni had heard and collaborated with many of the finest singers in Egypt (and elsewhere). Even so, he was so moved by the beauty of Amal’s voice that the grown man literally burst into tears. This would have been impressive on its own, and it’s even more so considering that Amal thirteen years old. Husni decided to take charge of the teenager’s musical training. He had another revelation, too. The simple name of “Amal” failed to capture the indescribable power of his young protégé’s voice. Something more mysterious was needed—perhaps a name derived from Persian. The ideal solution flashed into his mind. In that moment, “Asmahan” was born. We’ll hear more after a quick break.

In the aftermath of her discovery, Asmahan underwent a period of intensive musical training. At one point, she was studying under no fewer than five master musicians, who instructed her in various aspects of Arabic musicology and vocal technique. Less usual for the time, Asmahan also mastered European approaches to singing—opera, in particular. This suite of master classes equipped the young musician with an exceptionally diverse set of techniques, setting her apart from—and above—the competition.

In 1931, executives at Columbia Records heard about this celestial teen singer and offered her a contract to record fifteen songs. She was paid 300 Egyptian pounds, a sum that, in the early 1930s, would cover roughly eight years of rent on a one-family apartment in Cairo. The records sold well. Before long, Asmahan’s haunting voice could be heard in cafes and street bazaars. Before long, she was giving performances at private parties and in Egyptian music halls known as “salas.” She also became one of the first Egyptian singers to perform on the newfangled medium of radio.

Asmahan’s virtuosic, multi-cultural approach to singing landed her an invitation to perform in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto, in Cairo’s lavish nineteenth-century Opera House. It was a prestigious offer. Nevertheless, it posed something of a problem for Asmahan’s family. She would soon graduate from school and would therefore be expected to marry. That was just what Druze women did. Given the lofty station of the al-Atrash family, this meant arranging a union with a Druze man of comparable standing, preferably someone within the same clan.

But cultural attitudes toward musicians, in general, and female performers, in particular, made Asmahan’s musical career a liability on the marriage market. Historically, music had played a profoundly important role in Arabic-speaking cultures. Yet, attitudes toward musicians themselves were conflicted, even hypocritical. The art of music was highly valued, and this often won its practitioners both respect and riches. At the same time, a whiff of disrepute clung to those who made their living from musical performance. The advent of music halls and cabarets in Egyptian cities made matters worse. Moralists saw these venues as dens of sexual corruption, imposed on Egypt by its colonial overlords. Traditionalists had an especially hard time dealing with women performers, who appeared unveiled before crowds of horny, drunken louts. Sure, the Rigoletto gig would advance Asmahan’s career, but if she kept singing in public, she could forever damage her marriage prospects. But then, a starring role in Rigoletto was so prestigious and so beyond reproach that it might actually shield the young performer from criticism.

Asmahan faced mounting pressure as she and her family, including her two opinionated brothers, weighed whether or not to accept the offer. In the end, she did. And she was right to. Her debut at the Opera House was an unqualified success. On the big night, she donned an elegant gown, a flowing scarf, and high heels, adjusting her costume in front of a full-length mirror. She examined her carefully styled dark hair, her lively blue-green eyes, and the prominent mole on her chin. Only fifteen years old at the time, Asmahan felt the sharp pangs of stage fright before she went on, but when the curtain glided upward, her nerves disappeared. For whatever reason, she did not perform in Rigoletto, but rather sang a program of traditional and modern Arabic songs, with skill and charm. Both critics and audiences applauded her efforts.

Asmahan’s star rose higher and higher, leading to engagements on radio, in salas, and at private parties. (Asmahan was no lover of the salas, or Egyptian music halls, not least because drunken audience members heckled her, shouting slurred criticisms of her vocal technique.) But perhaps the greatest honor of all took place in her own home. In the weeks that followed, the al-Atrash family hosted a procession of visitors, who were eager to introduce themselves to the wunderkind vocalist. To Asmahan’s astonishment, one of these well-wishers was legendary singer Umm Kulthum, Egypt’s most famous musical export. Today, more than fifty years after her death, she still enjoys world-wide fame. Asmahan idolized her. But this encounter proved more than a meet and greet. Umm Kulthum seated herself on the al-Atrash’s jewel-colored Persian carpet and sang songs acapella at the family’s request. Toward the end of the impromptu concert, Umm Kulthum invited Asmahan to join her in a duet, in what must have felt like a dream come true for the teenaged girl.

I Do—Part One

In 1933, she met a man by the name of Hassan al-Atrash, a distant cousin and an emir who played an important military role in the Jabal al-Druze. Short and non-descript, the young Hassan did not yet have the sprawling paunch that middle age would bestow on him. Hassan had no intentions of tying the knot when he travelled to Cairo, but that all change when his eye alighted on Asmahan. Now about twenty, she had matured into a devastatingly beautiful woman. Before anybody knew it, he had initiated marriage negotiations with her family.

Though Asmahan loved to perform and had started to make friends in Cairo’s music industry, she also had a responsibility to her family. Her marriage to a wealthy emir brought honor to the household—not to mention an infusion of cash that Hassan promised her family as part of the marriage negotiations. Yes, Asmahan felt responsible for her family, clan, and religious community, but zooming out even further, she felt she had a duty to Syria. It’s unclear when Asmahan underwent her political awakening, but much like her father, she longed for Syrian independence. As an emira, she must have realized, she could do her part in helping the country achieve that end. So, she bid farewell to her mother, her brothers, her friends, to Cairo, and to singing. Syria awaited.

The newlyweds divided their time between their villa in Damascus and a cliff-top castle far outside the small town of Suwayda. Little by little, they spent more and more time in this fortified mountain retreat, a dwelling that Asmahan experienced as gloomy and remote. At her instigation, Hassan purchased a third house, this one in Suwayda. While it wasn’t Damascus or Cairo, it provided an escape from the feudal castle located in the middle of nowhere.

In her role as emira, Asmahan acted as a mediator, helping settle conflicts in the Druze community. Given her youth, she proved adept at resolving issues between teenage daughters and their parents. She also performed a vital diplomatic function, encouraging her husband to maintain friendly relations with the French. On the one hand, an amiable relationship with the foreign occupiers promoted stability, which improved the quality of life in the Druze community. She also believed that ongoing diplomacy would eventually lead to Syrian independence, which was one of her most cherished hopes for the future. Remember, Syria was under French mandate, and the mandate was intended to be temporary. To these ends, Asmahan presided over lavish meals and musical evenings, more often than not in the Suwayda villa. Here is how one French visitor described her approach to hospitality: “She received us unveiled, in a pleated white gown; speaking a clear, pure French learned in a convent in Egypt. Cocktails were being served in front of a mahogany bar built into the salon of the villa… French officers, sabres in their uniforms, surrounded the Amira who laughed while drinking a mixture of champagne and whiskey.”

Asmahan may have thrived in her new diplomatic role, but that did not mean that she enjoyed her new life. Over the course of about four years, she spent most of her time in isolation, lonesome and melancholy, especially during extended stays at the secluded cliff-top fortress. Whenever she had the chance to make a daytrip into Damascus, she hunted down Umm Kulthum’s latest recordings and read whatever she could about the trends in Egyptian music.

Things took a turn for the worse when she found out she was pregnant. She knew she was supposed to be deliriously happy, but she wasn’t. The prospect of raising a child in the middle of nowhere with her kinda bland if hard-to-hate husband just made her plain sad. She missed the life she had left behind in Cairo—her family, the city, music. One day, she did what her mother had done to her father some twenty years earlier: she packed her bags and left. For the first time in years, she abandoned the dust and negative space of the sticks for the glittering lights of Cairo. There, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Kamilia. Obeying a directive from Hassan, she kept a low profile.

The marriage disintegrated, and by 1939, the couple had divorced. According to one source, Hassan tracked Asmahan down in Egypt, where he confronted her in the garden of the luxurious Mena House Hotel, situated in the shadow of the pyramids, begging her to come back to him. Asmahan, who fallen out of love with her husband even if she still cared about him, explained why she could not grant his request: “I stood with you, for independence and liberation, I did. But I was created for another purpose. I prefer the work of Farid [her musician-brother], and the work of Umm Kulthum, and of art.” And that was that.

Cinematic Egypt

As her marriage withered, her singing career blossomed. During this period, Asmahan recorded a chain of hit records that brought her a new level of fame and fortune. Among these successes was an Arabic-language adaptation of a tango, titled “Ya Habibi Taala Elhaani”. The recording showcases Asmahan’s trademark blend of emotional depth and technical virtuosity. (Play clip.) The runaway success of this song and others led to another inflection point in her career: a big-time director wanted her to star in a new movie titled The Triumph of Youth.

Egypt had fallen in love with the silver screen long before Asmahan made her film debut. In 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumière astonished Paris with history’s first public movie screening. Less than a year later, it was Egypt’s turn to gape in wonder. In November 1896, representatives of the Lumière bothers mounted the country’s first motion picture exhibition, in a swanky café in the cosmopolitan seaside town of Alexandria. While in Egypt, employees of the Lumière company took advantage of their surroundings to shoot documentary footage of historical monuments and everyday life. These short films were shot with primarily French audiences in mind. But they thrilled Egyptian movie-goers as well, who gathered in cafés and smoke-filled music halls to witness the first movie recordings of their country. The audiences for these initial exhibitions were well-off urbanites in Alexandria and Cairo, who could afford the steep price of admission—four piasters, more than a day’s wages for a manual laborer.

Soon enough, movie fandom spread to other classes as well. By 1906, lavish cinema palaces had sprung up in Cairo and Alexandria, followed by more affordable venues that second-run films. In the mid-1920s, in downtown Cairo, opposite the towering minaret of the Al-Hussein Mosque, audiences packed a converted storage basement, where they watched bootleg copies of silent films starring Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, and Rudolph Valentino. The underground picture shows attracted rowdy crowds of working-class boys. The projectionist, Shehata, doubled as narrator, and the audience of young cinephiles hung on his every word. His spirited delivery whipped the young audience up into a frenzy, inspiring them to stand up and shout warnings at the hero or jeer at the moustache-twirling villain.

The advent of sound cinema revolutionized Egyptian filmmaking. The first Egyptian talkie debuted in 1932, and almost overnight, musicals became the most popular film genre. Singers like Umm Kulthum made the leap from the stage to the screen just as many theatrical performers had the previous decade. More importantly, the introduction of sound elevated the status of Egyptian cinema in a way that kind of blew my mind. Think about it: in a silent movie, it makes no difference what language the actors speak. Live narrators or intertitles could convey dialogue or essential exposition to any given audience in their native language. Since Egypt had embraced filmmaking early on, it was poised to dominate Arabic-speaking markets in the age of sound, especially in North Africa and the Middle East. By 1940, Cairo was churning out so many films that it earned the nickname “Hollywood of the Nile.” By the 1950s, Egypt boasted the third-largest film industry in the world, surpassed only by Hollywood and Bollywood.

It was during this “Golden Age” of Egyptian cinema that Asmahan starred in The Triumphof Youth. Acting alongside her was her brother, Farid, who had also achieved rnown as a musician and composer. Several plot points in The Triumph of Youth mirror the lives of the al-Atrash siblings. Farid and Asmahan play Wahid and Nadia, Arab singers who have immigrated to Egypt in search of economic stability and artistic recognition. Early on, the brother and sister gain employment at a Cairo nightclub. During a performance, Asmahan’s character, Nadia, attracts the attention of an extremely wealthy club patron. The singer and the millionaire fall in love and get hitched. The newlyweds might be happy, but Nadia’s wicked mother-in-law is livid when she finds out her son has married a singer. A few melodramatic plot twists later, Nadia is able to win over her in-law, and the couple lives happily ever after. The film astutely explores the contradictory social attitudes toward musical artists, who are accorded low social status even though they perform a socially vital function. By implication, it also made the case for women’s space in the public spehere, at least within the context of entertainment.

The Triumph of Youth catapulted the al-Atrash siblings to international fame, particularly on account of its dazzling musical numbers. But not everyone agreed with the movie’s messaging, particularly the bits about gender. In Syria, a showing of the film came to an abrupt end when a young man stood and opened fire on the screen with a pistol. The Druze gunman was appalled to see a woman from his own sect—a former emira, no less—appear with her hair uncovered and, worse still, in the presence of unknown men.

A Spy is Born

Asmahan was on top of the world. She had no shortage of engagements, singing at private performances as well as on the radio. When the sun set, she went to the theater or a movie. After, she and her friends gathered to drink and enjoy Cairo’s thriving nightlife. The press followed her every move. Their coverage was so intense that one newspaper jokingly called her the “First Lady of Egypt.” All in all, life was pretty sweet.

Yet Hitler’s war had spread to Africa, led by German general Edwin Rommel. As Asmahan went about her daily life, she watched the conflict transform the social fabric of Cairo. There were, of course, the Allied soldiers—at first, few in number—who became an inescapable sight on the city’s sidewalks and in its bars. The normally escapist entertainment offered up in music halls also took on a political edge. Throughout 1940, actress, belly dancer, and sala-owner Badia Masabni performed nightly skits mocking Hitler. In the wake of General Rommel’s early victories in the western desert, Cairo instituted a noncommittal blackout. While the city turned out the streetlights at night, only about half the population bothered to pull their curtains.

But Asmahan proved exceptionally attuned to world events, particularly as they related to France and Syria.  As we discussed in our two-part series on Josephine Baker, when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, the country was divided into two sectors: the Occupied Zone and the Free Zone. The Vichy government, a puppet regime, took control of the Free Zone. The Vichy administration also exercised dominion over Syria and Lebanon, which were still subject to France under the terms of the Mandate. Meanwhile, General Charles de Gaulle fled to the United Kingdom, where he presided over a government-in-exile known as “Free France.” From London, de Gaulle took to the radio waves to encourage the people of Lebanon and Syria to resist Vichy rule. While residents of both countries were divided, they ultimately submitted to the Vichy regime.

The existence of a Vichy-dominated Syria and Lebanon posed strategic problems for the Allied Powers, who were mired in conflicts elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Mussolini had already invaded Greece and Crete. In February of 1941, Hitler sent forces to Egypt where they confronted British troops in the western desert. Now, the Vichy rulers of Lebanon and Syria threatened to facilitate the Nazi takeover of the Suez Canal, as part of Hitler’s larger effort to conquer Russia. Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle therefore joined forces to seize control of Syria and Lebanon, a mission that they dubbed “Operation Exporter.” It was in connection with this campaign that Asmahan’s career as a spy was born.

Asmahan, who valued her French education highly, was shocked by these events and deplored the Nazi occupation of France. These feelings deepened in April 1941, when de Gaulle delivered a series of addresses in Alexandria and Cairo, attempting to rally support for the Free French. She attended one of these speeches, held at the American University in Cairo. The event moved her, intellectually and emotionally.                          

One morning in May, a month or so after she heard de Gaulle’s lecture, Asmahan received a mysterious phone call in her apartment. The caller, an Englishman, introduced himself as Napier. He spoke in shadowy terms about the possibility of Asmahan aiding in the war effort, requesting a meeting with the singer that evening. Intrigued, she agreed to meet him on the leafy rooftop garden of the Continental Hotel, a favorite nightspot.

It's unclear why exactly Napier contacted Asmahan, but it probably had to do with the influence of her extended family, the al-Atrash clan. In order to drive the Vichy French out of Lebanon and Syria, Allied forces would have to travel overland through the Jabal al-Druze, the ancestral stronghold of her relatives. If the Druze of southern Syria sided with the Vichy regime, they could mount a damaging resistance effort to the Allies’ advance. Such a turn of events might thwart the entire campaign.

At the Continental Hotel, Napier told Asmahan that they needed her to carry a secret message to the leaders of the al-Atrash clan, advising them of the impending Nazi invasion. Since the singer had uncles, cousins, and half-siblings in the region, she had a plausible reason to visit; she would therefore be able to cross the border into Syria without arousing the suspicion of Vichy officials. Napier impressed on Asmahan the importance of advocating on behalf of the Allies. If Druze leaders did not wish to join in the fighting, they could still help the cause by simply permitting Allied troops to pass through their territory unopposed. In sum, Asmahan’s task was two-fold: First, she had to secure safe passage across enemy lines to deliver a top-secret message. Second, if possible, she had to persuade her kinsman to act in the Allies’ favor.

Asmahan accepted the mission for at least two reasons. Number one: the Allies strongly suggested that any help furnished by the Druze in this phase of the war would be rewarded with Syrian independence. Number two: Napier and company would pay her for her services—and handsomely. While exact figures are undocumented, it was rumored that the Allies offered Asmahan a staggering 40,ooo Egyptian pounds.

The singer-turned-spy was to depart from Cairo on May 26. In the days leading up to the expedition, she prepared for the worst, even drawing up her will. Then, on the eve of her departure, she fit in one last all-night rager with her closest friends. None of them knew that the following morning she would rise, hungover, and embark on a potentially life-threatening mission.

Homecoming

Asmahan’s first stop was Jerusalem, where she met with her handlers. Her instructions were as follows. She was to travel north, via the Jordanian Hills to the frontier with Syria. There, Asmahan would ask the border guards to summon her half-brother, Talal. Talal would then escort her into the Jabal al-Druze, where she would deliver the Allied forces’ secret message and urge them to facilitate Operation Explorer. In the meantime, Allied troops were approaching the Syrian border from three different directions, hoping to overwhelm the Vichy regime’s limited resources by attacking from several fronts.

Asmahan journeyed to the Syrian border and contacted Talal. Surprised by the unannounced appearance of his half-sister, Talal promised to meet her and help.  With the help of Allied officials, Asmahan had prepared for just about every way the mission could go south, including arrest by Vichy border guards. But nothing could have prepared her for what happened next: Without alerting Asmahan, Talal brought company, and that company was Emir Hassan al-Atrash, Asmahan’s ex-husband.

This was far worse than an awkward surprise. Under Druze religious law, it was not just that divorced couples were no longer married. They needed to stay the hell out of each other’s lives—period, no asterisks. As scholar Aharon Layish has shown, the two parties in a Druze divorce must swear in court “that the separation is final, that they will not return to each other or sit in each other’s company, OR EVEN GLANCE AT EACH OTHER.” His very presence at the Syrian border would have shaken Asmahan, and what was coming would knock her off her feet. Once the party had crossed into Syria, Hassan asked Asmahan to marry him—again. Needless to say, Hassan’s proposal flew in the face of the Druze legal code, but laws are made to be broken by elites, so Emir Hassan must have thought he could get away with it.

Asmahan had little choice but to take the proposal seriously. Their first go at blissful matrimony had made her profoundly unhappy. Moreover, while she had a great respect for her heritage, she hated life in the Jabal al-Druze. On the other hand, Hassan enjoyed great influence over the al-Atrash clan, and his cooperation might prove necessary to the success of the Allies’ mission. If Operation Exporter came off, the British and French would hopefully deliver Syrian independence. In a head-spinning plot twist, Asmahan said yes.

Asmahan placed her top-secret message in the hands of her kinsmen, but her efforts to aid the Allies hardly ended there. Accompanied by her male relatives, she trekked across the Jabal al-Druze, where she advocated on behalf of the British and the Free French, (that is, soldiers aligned with General Charles de Gaulle). In the weeks that followed, she acted as an intermediary between the Druze and the officers of the Allied forces. It was during this time that she confronted the most dangerous segment of her mission. According to her older brother, Fu’ad, Asmahan left the Jabal al-Druze after only a week. For reasons that are unclear, she traveled to Damascus, where she stayed in the Orient Palace Hotel, a bodyguard stationed outside her room. Before long, Asmahan received a warning that the Vichy’s secret police had discovered that the singer was working as a spy for the Allies. She was also told, cryptically, that someone was coming from Beirut to harm her. Rather than hang around to find out what lay in store for her, Asmahan resolved to escape Damascus and convene with her handlers in Tel Aviv. Fearing that she might be detained by authorities, or even assassinated by Vichy sympathizers, she could not travel by train. Instead, she would have to ride on horseback overland—incognito. Drawing on her experience as an actor, she procured dark makeup, a fake beard, and a male costume, disguising herself as a traveling Bedouin. She set out from Damascus on her horse, heading toward a small stretch of the Syrian border that had recently fallen under British control. There, she would present the identity papers that her handlers had given her and ask for help reaching her destination. After a tense and exhausting journey, Asmahan reached the border. Once her identity was confirmed by British guards, she was driven to Tel Aviv to wait out the results of Operation Exporter.

Meanwhile, a global alliance of armies was busy toppling Vichy forces throughout Syria and Lebanon. One by one, Vichy strongholds fell to the invaders. Infantrymen from India captured most of northeast Syria. On June 18, they also kicked off the Battle of Damascus, where they were reinforced by British, Australian, and Free French troops. On June 21, the Vichy government folded and handed Syria’s largest city to the Allies. A little over three weeks later, on July 12, Australian, British, and Indian forces vanquished Vichy fighters in the Battle of Beirut—effectively ending Operation Exporter and, by extension, Vichy rule over Lebanon and Syria. The following November, control of the two countries was officially entrusted to General George Catroux, of the Free French Army.

In the wake of this victory, Asmahan had the pleasure of meeting one of her heroes. On August 13, 1941, not long after she and Hassan celebrated their nuptials, General Charles de Gaulle made a triumphal visit to Suwayda. Due to Asmahan and Hassan’s service during Operation Exporter, they were placed in seats of honor behind de Gaulle during his public address to the Syrian people. They even had their photographs taken—both separately and as a pair—with the exalted leader of the Free French.

Despite this and other early Kodak moments, Asmahan’s second try at domestic bliss with Hassan proved as doomed than the first. For weeks on end, he attended to business in desolate Suwayda. These stays bored Asmahan to tears. Though revolutionary zeal was a powerful aphrodisiac in the early days of this second marriage, Asmahan realized once again that she just wasn’t that into Hassan. The emira reportedly began to drink to excess and to blow an alarming bundle of money. In 1942, she attended General Catroux’s Bastille Day celebration, where she gifted 100 lire to every solider who saluted her on the way into, and out of, the shindig. During Ramadan celebrations and her frequent nights out in Beirut, Asmahan showered struggling artists and musicians with gold coins. To make matters worse, contrary to the promises of the British and Free French, neither country was free. Disenchanted in both love and politics, Asmahan sank deeper and deeper into depression.

The Comeback

In 1943, the inevitable came to pass for the second time when Asmahan and Hassan filed for divorce. The singer and actress planned to return to Cairo and pick up where she had left off. That was easier said than done, though, because on her way to Egypt she got stranded in Jerusalem while waiting to receive the requisite visa. She checked into the luxurious King David Hotel and spiraled downward into drunken debauchery, giving rise to rumors of all-night orgies in her hotel room, the most expensive one.  In between bouts of booze-fueled revelry, Asmahan enjoyed more respectable activities with visiting family members, including her daughter, Kamilia. Meanwhile, her musical brother, Farid, scheduled a series of performances in Jerusalem, which allowed the siblings to catch up on the events of the past two years. In what turned out to be a fateful coincidence, Farid was traveling with Egyptian actor and film director Ahmad Salim. He had a bit of a sketchy reputation, not least because he had married and divorced three times. Even so, Asmahan saw in him the solution to her problem. She was tired of waiting around for her visa, and here, right in front of her, was Salim, an Egyptian citizen. Why not offer him some cash to become the next in his growing litany of ex-wives? The marriage would be a certain ticket back to Cairo and to the life she so desperately missed. Having mulled things over, Asmahan reportedly offered Ahmad Salim 5,000 Egyptian pounds to marry her; he agreed. A short time later, Asmahan’s paperwork finally came through. When it did, she embarked on the next exciting chapter of her life—it would also be her last.

In Cairo, Asmahan caught up with her family and friends. She moved in with Ahmad Salim, who owned a villa in Giza, a stone’s throw from the pyramids. By all accounts, domestic life between Asmahan and her “green-card” husband was anything but harmonious. Both drank heavily and were quick to anger. Tensions came to a head one evening, and Salim got physical. It’s unclear exactly what went down, but the most credible account came from Mary Qilada, Asmahan’s friend and personal secretary. Mary witnessed a domestic dispute that became so heated she fled the house to call the police. Events after this are a little cloudy, but Salim ended up sustaining a non-lethal bullet wound. Whether he was shot by police or whether he accidentally shot himself, he was taken to the hospital for treatment and recovered. Given this turn of events, Asmahan’s friends worried about her relationship with Salim.

In any event, Asmahan had little time to lounge about at the villa. Studio Misr began filming her second—and final—movie, and she channeled most of her time into her creative life. Titled Passion and Revenge, the film is an elegant black-and-white musical. Asmahan stars as Suhayar Sultan, a highly regarded singer (not much of a stretch for her as far as roles go), whose fiancé is murdered at the beginning of the film. Devastated, she applies herself to uncovering the identity of the murderer and exacting revenge on him. Deploying the charm and cunning of a spy, she uses her position as a singer to get closer to the prime suspect and seduce him.

But Suhayar never learns the full truth of her husband’s homicide, nor does she survive to the end of the film. Passion and Revenge was such an ornate production that, just two weeks before shooting was supposed to wrap, filming was paused to give the exhausted designers a chance to complete the last remaining sets. Asmahan seized the opportunity to go on a much-deserved vacation. Free until July 25, she planned an excursion to the Egyptian seaside resort of Ras-al-Bar with her friend and secretary, Mary Qilada. Early in the morning on July 14, Marion and Asmahan set out for the train station. Asmahan was wearing a bright yellow silk dress and carried her beach-read with her: a novel by French actress, journalist, and author Colette. The women, looking forward to escaping the suffocating heat and crush of the capital, boarded a private compartment. Before the train set out, however, two men entered that compartment. Mary and Asmahan—confused and displeased—asked the conductor why the men had been sold seats when they had paid to have the whole compartment to themselves. A quick review of the paperwork revealed that the women’s reservation had been lost.

Not wishing to travel with a pair of strange men, Asmahan thought it better to return to the home that she shared (unhappily) with her latest husband. There, a driver was packing up the car with their luggage and planned to drive down to the seaside in time to meet the train. If they hurried, they could intercept him before he left and hitch a ride with him. They arrived just in time to jump in the backseat of the car, Mary on the driver’s side and Asmahan to her left.

The car tooled along through barren desert landscape punctuated by rich, verdant ribbons of farmland. Asmahan and Mary chatted contentedly in the back seat. Then, as they approached the town of Mansourah, the car swerved off the road, plunged into a canal, and sunk to the bottom with the two women inside. By some inexplicable miracle, the driver managed to hurl himself out of the car onto dry land. Mary and Asmahan, trapped in the sunken vehicle and possibly unconscious, drowned before help arrived.

News of Asmanhan’s death spread quickly, over radio waves and telegraph wires. Throughout Egypt, North Africa, and the Middle East, her admirers grieved. Her body was conveyed to Cairo for a memorial service and then laid to rest in a tomb in the medieval neighborhood of Fustat, as stipulated in her will. Notices of the star’s passing were published as far afield as the U.S., in movie magazines and—in the Arabic-language newspapers of Michigan.

Asmahan’s untimely demise forced Studio Misr to rewrite the ending of Passion and Revenge. Originally, the film was supposed to have a happy ending. But with the death of its leading lady, director and co-star Youseff Wahbi altered the story so that her character died in a tragic car accident. The decision to add a plot point that so closely paralleled the circumstances of Asmahan’s death in real life proved controversial. But allegations of exploitation and bad taste did not dampen the public’s excitement to see the film, which was an unqualified hit.

Despite her untimely death, Asmahan went down as history as one of the most gifted singers of her day. Indeed, one contemporary expert in Arabic music has named her one of the seven most influential voices of the twentieth century. This places her in the company of her idol Umm Kulthum, whose career kept going strong until her death in 1975, more than three decades after Asmahan’s life came to an end.

Nobody doubted the magnitude of Asmahan’s death, but plenty questioned whether it was truly an accident. The public mourning had barely subsided when the rumors surfaced, most of which focused on the driver: How did he survive when his passengers did not? What had he done to save them? Did he just sit there and watch them drown? There were whispers that he wasn’t Asmahan’s usual driver, but rather an associate of Ahmad Salim, her abusive husband. Others insisted that, after the supposed accident, the driver had vanished without a trace. Others said that he had grown fabulously rich in the aftermath. The innuendos swirling around the chauffeur were all different, but what they had in common was the intimation that he was a hired assassin. But who would want to take a hit out on the beloved Asmahan?

Hypotheses about the identity of the culprit have been numerous; many have been preposterous. But three theories are worth mentioning because of their longevity, if not their plausibility.

Theory 1: Asmahan was killed by one of her disgruntled husbands—either Hassan or Salim. The origins of this hypothesis are unclear, and its evidentiary basis non-existent.    Theory 2:  Members of the al-Atrash clan paid the driver to carry out an honor killing against Asmahan, in retaliation for the shame she had brought on the family name. In this version of reality, clan members were angry over Asmahan’s public drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, and possibly her final marriage. (Remember, Asmahan had gone buck-wild in Jerusalem waiting for her visa and also partied hard in Cairo.)

On the one hand, there are good reasons to disregard this line of speculation. While I found cases of Druze women being murdered by relatives as late as the 1990s, none of the ones that I read about entailed the use of a hitman to obscure the identity of the killer. In fact, the whole point of the honor killing is to restore the reputation of the family name—or of a cuckolded husband—by committing the murder yourself and in a public, theatrical way. Moreover, I also couldn’t find an example of an honor killing that deliberately targeted an innocent bystander, in this case Mary Qilada.

The third and final theory is also the most popular: that the motive for Asmahan’s assassination lies in her brief career as a spy. Some parties have laid the blame at the feet of British intelligence, who are accused of killing the singer to keep her quiet about sensitive secrets. A variation on this interpretation of events holds the Nazis responsible for the hit-job. Their motive was simple vengeance, the killing a retribution for Asmahan’s role in running the Vichy French out of Syria and Lebanon.

The appeal of these political narratives is understandable. In one, Britain—the colonial oppressor who had outstayed its welcome in Egypt—snuffed out one of the country’s most beloved entertainers. In the other, the evil schemes of the Nazis were so thoroughly thwarted by Asmahan and her allies that they made it a priority to cut her life short. There’s no real proof for either scenario. But this hasn’t stopped speculation along these lines. As tends to be the case in conspiracy theories, the absence of evidence for British or German involvement in Asmahan’s death is presented by some as all the evidence you need to conclude that they did, in fact, assassinate her. In other words: You know a spy agency orchestrated the murder precisely when there is no proof that a spy agency was involved.

It’s worth noting that, when asked, members of Asmahan’s immediate family insisted that her death was an accident. This has done little to slow the proliferation of hot-takes and YouTube videos dedicated to arguing that so-and-so murdered the singer.

Whether accidental or not, Asmahan’s drowning acted as a haunting bookend to her birth. She came into this world on a boat bound for Lebanon; she left it in a car at the bottom of a canal.