In his recent interview with Anas Boukhash, which sparked significant reactions across social media, the artist Kazem Al Saher described the fame he had enjoyed and lived for more than 30 years — during which he became one of the most prominent figures in Arabic music — as an illusion. Now, on the threshold of 70, he said he is consumed by remorse over his neglect of his wife.
He referred to her during the interview as the "mother of his children," and described his long absences due to his commitment to composing and concerts as amounting to nothing compared to the value of family and its warmth. Remarkably, the internationally acclaimed Egyptian artist Omar Sharif had said much the same thing, using almost the same language of regret and sorrow, in a television interview shortly before his death.
Did these two artists come to see life through a new lens as they stood on the threshold of their final years — at least the final years of their artistic careers — or did age grant them a wisdom and philosophy that led them to express the same conclusion, one shared by many others who have lived through the same experience?
In my view, beyond the melancholy that Al Saher's words about fame, regret, and sorrow left behind — despite all his tremendous achievements — the matter is not about denying what he accomplished, but about reassessing it and reconsidering the meaning of success from the perspective of a long life and hard-won experience.
Success as seen by a man in his 20s or 30s differs in meaning, significance, and purpose from how it appears to a man moving steadily toward 70, as in Kazem's case, or toward 80, as in Omar Sharif's. Both had their fill of fame to the point of satiation, yet they discovered — after so much of life had passed — as Nizar Qabbani wrote in "The Cup Reader," that they had been chasing a thread of smoke, and that they had never been truly nourished by the warmth and tenderness of family.
Needs and desires differ according to each stage of life; every stage carries its own needs, desires, and demands. What a young man at the outset of his life, experience, and ambition strives for with all his energy — turning the tables on difficult circumstances and a miserable childhood, replacing them with success, wealth, and money — is not what that same person wants when he has nearly reached 70 and arrived at the pinnacle of his dreams and ambitions. The needs are no longer the same once he has achieved everything he wanted, and has forgotten that deprived and wretched child who faded behind the passing days, the years, the experiences, and the resounding successes.