A specific pop song can anchor and comfort unresolved grief

Evidence

At the wedding the next day, though, she still couldn’t stop crying. The actual ceremony was tiny, held in a local restaurant, and during the reception Lina went outside to call Wisam. She wanted to talk to him because she missed him, but mostly because she kept missing her mother and thought he would understand this best. She felt better after she got off the phone, but when she returned to the reception, she started crying again. People began asking her what was wrong, and they crowded around her. She felt she couldn’t explain her feelings. Instead she demanded that they bring her a CD by the Egyptian pop star Amr Diab. His music reminded her of Wisam, and it felt like the only thing that would comfort her and stop her from crying. They did, it did, and she did, too. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 655

Categorization

• SEED: The detail that a pop song becomes the only thing that can stop her crying — a sensory anchor for grief — could seed an essay on how music functions as emotional memory technology for displaced people.
• SHARE: An Amr Diab fan would appreciate this — the idea that his music was the single comfort that could stop a grieving young woman crying at her father’s wedding.