Because of a Nightingale on Muhammad Badih Serbey's Balcony, Halim Was Given the Title 'The Brown Nightingale

The editor-in-chief of Al-Mawed published the first issue of the magazine in 1953, when he was a young man in the prime of his youth (23 years old) and at the beginning of his journalistic career. He was able to form many friendships with artists who were also at the start of their path — he dreamed of journalism, and they dreamed of art. Abdel Halim Hafez was a friend of Muhammad Badih Serbey, and they dreamed together. When Abdel Halim began to reap success, success was also on the side of Muhammad Badih Serbey through his leadership of Al-Mawed magazine.

In one of his articles in the 1950s, he wrote a piece about Halim titled "The Brown Nightingale." Halim was delighted with the title and sent a telegram to the magazine's office in Beirut thanking him for it and asking his permission to use it to advertise a concert of his that was to be held in Cairo. From that day on, the title stuck with Halim.

One day I asked my father about the nightingale — its meaning and how this title was born. He told me that on his first day of work at the Al-Mawed office in Beirut, there was a small bird singing on the balcony. When he was writing the article about Halim, he heard the nightingale's song, so he bestowed the title upon Abdel Halim and added to it the description "the brown one." From that day on, Halim became "The Brown Nightingale."

The photograph: The editor-in-chief of Al-Mawed magazine, Muhammad Badih Serbey, arm in arm with The Brown Nightingale, when he received him at the door of the airplane in Beirut in the early 1960s.

— May Badih Serbey