There’s a piece of brown brick resting on the shelf of a glass cabinet in NI’MAAT AHMED FOUAD’s dining room. It is all that remains today of OUM KALTHOUM’s fabled villa on Abul-Feda Street in Zamalek. A few years after OUM KALTHOUM had passed away, Fouad was awakened by a phone call from a mutual friend saying that OUM KALTHOUM’s villa had been demolished.

FOUAD, who has written two books on OUM KALTHOUM (the first of which was published in 1952), snatched the brick in a fit of anger and frustration from the ruins of KALTHOUM’s villa the day after it had been stealthily reduced to rubble by bulldozers in the middle of the night. It was a poignant moment for FOUAD, who recalled visiting the singer in her luxurious villa, which had played host to a succession of heads of state, artists and intellectuals. They often sat in her living room beneath a rare carpet hanging on the wall; a gift from the late King of Iraq.

Everyday at sunset OUM KALTHOUM would step out of her home to walk for an hour along the far end of the island of Zamalek, wearing a scarf and sunglasses. The residential island in the middle of the Nile wasn’t as crowded then, and those who passed her by never dared to interrupt her brisk walk.

FOUAD, who had led a campaign with other writers and intellectuals to preserve the legendary soprano’s home as a national museum, was dumbfounded by the way in which KALTHOUM’s legacy had been erased in a matter of minutes to make way for a high-rise building. It took some thirty years after her death in 2001 for a museum to be dedicated to her memory, in a pavilion on the grounds of Cairo’s Manesterly Palace. In an ironic twist, much of her personal paraphernalia (scattered amongst family and friends), were now deemed national treasures worthy of intense public contemplation.

Yet for those who had visited KALTHOUM at her famous villa by the Nile, the museum paled in comparison to what had been lost. Weak lighting, inferior display cases and the lack of a visionary curatorial approach, had rendered a once vibrant and artistic life into a static display of yellowing manuscripts and dusty gowns. Lacking was a compelling narrative to string together these mementos from a bygone era and bring them back to life.

“A new museum is no consolation for the loss of the house,” says FOUAD. “I remember queuing up with countless others to see VICTOR HUGO’s home in Paris. On the other side of the road stood one of Louis XIV’s finest buildings, and there was no one there to see it. Everyone wanted to see the poet’s house. Everything in it was very basic… and yet, at every step, there were security guards watching over the house’s contents, as if these simple things were priceless treasures.”

“Can you imagine what OUM KALTHOUM’s house would have been like,” she says, “full of genuine treasures as it was, all the gifts she was given from all over the world, the jewelry and the medals and everything? They’re all gone now, scattered all over the place. How much of what’s been lost could this museum possibly gather?”

Oddly enough it took a Parisian institution to raise the bar and give the legendary singer a retrospective worthy of her renown. OUM KALTHOUM: The Fourth Pyramid opened last June at the Institut du Monde Arabe to sold out crowds, many of whom were Western. No surprise when one considers the Egyptian artist’s universal appeal; CHARLES DE GUALLE referred to her as “The Lady”, while her contemporary, the opera singer MARIA CALLAS described her as the “Incomparable Voice.” She also had a far reaching influence on a number of artists, many of whom one would have never stopped to consider as fans. BOB DYLAN, SALVADOR DALI, NICO, BONO and LED ZEPPELIN have all cited OUM KALTHOUM in their work at some point in their careers.

A few days before she passed away, Egyptian newspapers made the mistake of announcing her death before it had actually occurred; resulting in millions of people gathering around her Villa in what amounted to a rehearsal of her funeral procession.

“People die and never know what their funerals are like,” she told journalist MUSTAFA AMIN on the phone as she lay on her deathbed. “As for myself… I am confident of people’s love.”