Urğğaγ win turğğa teryel - I await the one the ogress waits for (most often written Urgiy or Urgigh in English transliteration) is an early love song by the poet-singer Lounis Ait Menguellet

Lounis Ait Menguellet

Lounis Aït Menguellet was born in Ighil Bouammas in Tizi Ouzou Province, is a Berber singer from Algeria, who sings in the Berber language...

. It is a good example of the state of Lounis’s craft at the time of writing and how he incorporates social comment into Kabyle

Kabyle people

The Kabyle people are the largest homogeneous Algerian ethno-cultural and linguistical community and the largest nation in North Africa to be considered exclusively Berber. Their traditional homeland is Kabylie in the north of Algeria, one hundred miles east of Algiers...

 folklore. Lounis combines elements of traditional stories with a modern take on the nature of love.

The song describes the reactions and feelings of two young people in love. The woman’s feelings are expressed in verses one and three and the man replies in verses two and four. Lounis uses the idea of the folk tale of Ali and the ogress to explain the nature of love. The folk tale would be very familiar to Lounis’s audience, most of whom would have heard of the story of Ali and the ogress when they were children. These kind of folk stories are very typical of oral culture and they are handed down, often as stories told to entertain children. Some, like the story of Ali, carry a moral.

Ali and the Ogress.

I no longer know the reasons that Ali annoyed Teryel, the ogress. When Teryel is in a good mood she likes human flesh and when she is angry, she likes it even more! When she is angry she wants only to lay her hands on Ali and devour him. Ali, knowing only too well Teryel and her culinary habits decided to run away and put as much distance between him and Teryel as he could. However, when he ran off Teryel pursued him. And thus begins the frantic chase. Ali ran further and Teryel pursued him. At last, exhausted by all of his exertions, Ali climbed a very high tree and took refuge at the very top where the branches reach into the clouds, so high was he. Teryel could certainly run fast but she didn’t know how to climb a tree so she railed at Ali from the bottom of the tree and threatened him with all kinds of horrible threats.

Ali had no intention at all to climb down the tree just to make a meal for Teryel; while the latter waited at the bottom thinking that eventually Ali must climb down or fall down or be brought down by the elements, by the rain, the snow and the wind. But Teryel is betrayed by the very elements she placed her hope in and she is trapped by the snow and frozen. So Ali, by his patience is able to escape Teryel.

The song

The song picks up the idea of the loved one, stuck at the top of the tree, unable to come down because of the ogress. The woman in the song is waiting for the return of her loved one. She is in despair because she has to wait, helpless. Her waiting is unfair – she feels that she has done nothing to deserve such a dreadful punishment. But although she despairs, her love refuses to decrease. She cannot help but continue to love him.

Kept prisoner by the ogress, the man too thinks about his loved one and what he is enduring for her sake – he is a prisoner because of his love. All the time he is trapped by the ogress he thinks of his loved one, and he can feel her presence, a torment he is unable to forget. He can’t climb down the tree or the ogress will eat him and thus he will die because of his love for the distant woman.

The woman knows that even a madman can return to his own home, no matter how insane he might be. She believes that the heart knows all of the roads to happiness and each time she finds the way to happiness something happiness to prevent it from happening and she is left once more frustrated and unable to be united with her loved one.

Back in the tree the man knows that if he stays where he is he might die or if he lives he will be so old when he climbs down that he and the loved one will have grown apart, they won’t be the people they are at present.

Lounis uses the story of Ali to explain the nature of a doomed love. There is no solution for the pair. He can confront the difficulties they have in being united – personified as the ogress – or he can sit them out and be so old that they won’t be the same people they are now. They will almost inevitably have grown apart. For the man and woman in the song love seems to be inextricably bound up with the ideas of youth and beauty. But for all that there is a poignancy and yearning about the song which communicates the sense of despair and loss.

urğğaγ win turğğa teryel

I await the one the ogress waits for

And my heart despairs with waiting

However unjust the waiting becomes

My love refuses to wane.



Days pass for me as they pass for you

I suffer the most for what I endure for you

Your shade lives on in me

Despite the years that pass



Who said that the madman knows his own door?

He is mad but he knows his way home

The heart knows all the roads to its desires

But as soon as it nears its haven an obstacle blocks the way



I am afraid that when I find you

Time will have wreaked its work

And in your place I shall find an old woman with grey hair

But I too shall have aged

And each of us will go their own way.