Ziad Rahbani was a Lebanese musician and playwright who died on July 26th 2025, aged 69. His mother is Fairouz, Lebanon's most iconic singer; his father Assi and uncle Mansour were composers and playwrights who wrote songs for Fairouz and helped launch the careers of other Lebanese artists.
Rahbani pioneered a Lebanese twist on jazz. Where his father and uncle wrote lyrics that harked back to an idealised village life, Ziad's language was less grandiose and his themes more modern. One of his best-known compositions for Fairouz, "Kifak Inta" ("How Are You"), is a woman's plaintive confession to an old flame.
His plays were written in the voice of the everyman: the bartender, the baker, the taxi driver. His classic play "Belnesba Labokra Chou?" ("What About Tomorrow?") tells of a young man who moves from the mountains to Beirut and finds work in a bar, but whose wife turns to prostitution because life in the city is so expensive. Its most famous line—"They say tomorrow will be better, but what about today?"—is quoted by every Lebanese. The earliest works were staged in the 1970s; few were filmed. They endured for decades as audio tapes, passed around during and after the civil war like darkly funny samizdat.
On August 5th 2025 the Lebanese cabinet announced it would rename the airport motorway in Beirut—long known as Hafez al-Assad avenue—after Rahbani.
Rahbani was a Communist. His ardent support for the Palestinians was unusual given that he came of age when Christians and Palestinians fought on opposing sides. He said his political awakening came from watching a right-wing Christian militia massacre the inhabitants of Tel al-Zaatar, a Palestinian refugee camp. In later years he supported Hizbullah, even as it assassinated fellow intellectuals, and backed Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war. He was a secular thinker and probably an atheist.
He asked me if I knew what time it was -- I said yes, but not right now.