The Pianist from Syria

by Aeham Ahmad

  His father, my grandfather, was Palestinian, and had been driven out of his homeland during the 1948 war, along with more than seven hundred thousand other refugees. My family was from Safad, where they had owned camels and sheep, and had grown figs, apricots, lemons, and oranges. They left everything behind, because they believed the war wouldn’t last long. But it became impossible to return. In the end, my family ended up in Dili, a village in southern Syria. They had lost everything.

  From then on, they all had to live in one room. The outside of the house was made of stone; the inner walls were made of dried mud. The women fetched water from a nearby creek, balancing the clay jars on their heads. In the midst of all this poverty, my grandparents married. A year after that, in 1952, my father was born, the first of ten children.

  He knows what the world looks like because for the first eight years of his life he was able to see. If there was a cure, it was out of reach for him. A group of Bedouins tried to heal him by branding the back of his head with red-hot pieces of iron. To this day, he still has the scars. Then my grandmother brought him to a Gypsy tribe, who tried healing it with some kind of kohl pencil that they applied around his eye. My father suspects that the tiny grains of kohl destroyed the rest of his cornea. After all these ordeals, he was left with only five percent of his vision. He could tell darkness from light, but no more than that. He had to learn the world anew. He stumbled around like a toddler, bumping into everything. He was useless.

  Eventually a group of nurses arrived in the village, conducting a vaccination campaign. They told my grandparents about a school for the blind in Damascus. One week later, a car pulled up in the village. The door opened to reveal Radia al-Rikabi—the daughter of Rida Pasha al-Rikabi, the prime minister of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria, as it was known at the time. She had founded the Damascus School for the Blind, inspired by her blind brother, who had not only attended a university, but gone on to play violin on television.

  Mrs. Rikabi spoke to my grandparents—and when she left, she took my father with her. He was petrified. Not only had he recently lost his eyesight, but he didn’t know the place they were going to and had never left his native village before. Two hours later, they arrived at the school. My father was allowed to shower and was given new clothing and a clean bed. There were tables and chairs; everything was neat and well maintained. But for many weeks, his sightless eyes were filled with tears. He missed his parents, and thought they didn’t know where he was.

  Although my grandfather traveled there most weekends, whenever he was able to afford the long journey to Damascus, one of the women at the school had told him he wasn’t allowed to talk to his blind son. He could only look at him from a distance; then he was asked to quietly leave again. But he always left expensive sweets for my father, who would wonder where they had come from.

  He continued to feel terribly lonely. And then, one day, my grandmother came along with my grandfather to visit. When she saw her son, she rushed toward him, taking him in her arms and showering him with kisses. She could barely bring herself to let go of him. Everyone was in tears, and after that my father was allowed to spend weekends at home.

  At the school, my father learned everything a blind person in our part of the world needed to know: how to read Braille and navigate unknown streets, but also how to weave wicker chairs and make carpets, brushes, and brooms. Radia al-Rikabi was like a mother to the students, mending their clothes and letting them sit in her lap. But she was also very stern: every night, she patrolled the dormitory, and if anyone hadn’t washed their feet, there would be a scolding. That was something everyone was afraid of.

  My father was infinitely curious, investigating everything with his hands. At first, he would secretly sneak into the workshop, but later he got permission from the headmistress. He built an airplane, a small carriage, even a pushcart—all made out of wood. Mrs. Rikabi often said to my father, “Ahmad, you have a great future ahead of you,” and her words were an inspiration to him.

  One day, a new teacher arrived at the school. A music teacher.

  “What instrument do you like the most?” he asked my father.

  And Papa replied, “Violin. I love the sound of the violin.”

  “If your parents buy you one,” said the teacher, “I’ll teach you.”

  That was just what my father wanted. So that weekend, when he visited his parents, he begged them to buy him a violin.

  But they shook their heads. They were poor, and Grandfather said that a violin would cost as much as ten gallons of olive oil, about three months’ worth of wages. On top of that, Grandfather didn’t want Papa to become a musician, for in his eyes, musicians were no better than vagabonds or beggars, standing on street corners and playing for coins. “Do you want to end up like that?”

  But Papa wouldn’t give up. He was so intent on learning the violin that he eventually resorted to lying, telling Grandfather that everyone at school was supposed to play an instrument and that if you didn’t have one, you’d be expelled. It worked! Grandfather would never allow his son to be kicked out of school, so he gave in. He borrowed money from relatives and bought a violin for my father—made in East Germany.

  Once my father had his violin, he seemed to never put it down. Some days, he would practice as much as fifteen hours. Soon, he gave small performances, first at school and then in restaurants. He began to save money, and after he had graduated from school, he was able to pay for higher education, studying Arab literature at the University of Damascus. He asked some of his friends to read the textbooks aloud so that he could record them on cassette tapes, and whenever he had to take a test he brought a friend along, dictating the answers to him. Over the years, he accumulated thousands of tapes, which he passed on to other visually impaired students after he graduated. I’ve heard that even today they’re still in circulation.

  For a few years, he worked as an Arabic teacher, but he didn’t take to it. Wanting instead to devote his life to music, he decided to build instruments. A blind instrument maker? Everyone thought he had lost his mind. A blind person shouldn’t even be in a workshop! Surrounded by hammers, saws, drills, and other dangerous tools—even people with two healthy eyes hurt themselves all the time!

  But my father was stubborn. With the help of his brothers, he bought wood, then began asking around at carpentry shops how each part of the process was done. He got himself some tools and started building his first oud—a potbellied Arabic instrument, not unlike the European lute. In fact, the lute is derived from the oud. Papa cut the wood, but his first oud came out crooked and useless. So he bought more wood. He trained himself to cut the sound holes with great precision. He learned how to glue the neck and the fingerboard. But he kept making mistakes, over and over again. Finally, after three years, he built his first functional oud.

  And he kept at it. When his accordion broke, he took it apart to find out how it worked. The Western sound system divides each octave into twelve identical half-tone steps, whereas in the Arabic world, each octave contains eighteen quarter tones. After six months of toil, my father had turned the Western-style accordion into an Arabic one. Then people from all over Syria began approaching him to ask that he refurbish their instruments. There was only one other instrument maker able to do this kind of work, and he lived in Egypt.

  One day in 1985, a young teacher visited him, requesting that he repair her Chinese accordion. A few days later when she returned to pick it up, my father chatted with her for a while, suggesting that she take accordion lessons from him. That woman was to be my mother.

  An excellent soprano, she taught music and art at an elementary school and sang in the school choir. My father was quite impressed with her. At the time, he played in various bands and many women were interested in him, but he was always reticent. My mother, too, was very guarded. Whenever male colleagues approached her, she always declined. But my father impressed her. He seemed to be able to do anything. She almost forgot that he was blind. During
those accordion lessons, they got to know each other, and after a while, they both realized: This is the person I’ve been looking for.

  During one of their lessons, my father asked her if she wanted to be his wife. And she said yes.

  Shortly after, he put on his best shirt and a pair of freshly pressed pants, and went to introduce himself to her parents. Her father was in favor of the match, but her mother was strictly opposed. So Papa left. “You can’t marry a blind man!” her mother said. “He’s handicapped! Do you want to be a nurse for the rest of your life?”

  But my mother insisted. And my father wouldn’t give up—thank God he was so stubborn! One day, he took his violin and played a song for his future mother-in-law. The evening ended with the whole family singing romantic pop songs by Fairouz, a famous singer from Beirut, who was my mother’s favorite. Two months later, she agreed to the engagement.

  One year later, on June 5, 1987, my parents married.

  The following April, I was born.

  * * *

  I have a strong early image of my mother, and it’s surprisingly clear: I’m sitting in a stroller at the farmers’ market in Yarmouk. My mother had taken me shopping with her. People were shouting, vendors were haggling, it smelled of flowers and spices, of fish and overripe fruit—and I was in the middle of it all, a tiny prince on a tiny throne. I watched my mother go from booth to booth, choosing the best bell peppers here and the freshest parsley there. Then she pushed me to a nearby fountain—Damascus was famous for its many fountains—took some grapes, and washed them in the fresh water. Leaning over me, she put a grape in my mouth and said, beaming: “Habibi!” Darling. Then she gave me another grape. And a kiss.

  In the mornings, before going to work, my mother often played a cassette by Fairouz, and would sing along in a cheerful duet before putting on her headscarf and leaving the house. And after lunch, she would often make music with my father. My father listened to pop music almost every morning, and by the afternoon, he had learned how to play the songs on his violin. After all, he was a wedding musician, and needed to be familiar with the popular hits of the day, so that people could dance to them. As my mother washed the dishes or folded clothes, she would sing along to Papa’s music.

  Arabic melodies modulate freely, and my mother was a master in playing with them and improvising variations. She sang when she cooked and she sang when she fed our canary, and the bird would often tilt its head and chirp along.

  One day, after my father had finished building a new set of furniture, a large table with several chairs, my mother invited her colleagues from school over for dinner before he delivered it to his customers. She spent all afternoon in the kitchen, singing as she prepared the meal: hummus, baked potatoes, roasted zucchini, baba ghanoush, tahini, tabbouleh, kafta. She adorned the table with a cloth of Aghabani embroidery from her father, a lace vendor. It turned into an exuberant evening, and it was the first time I sat at a table.

  Each night before I went to bed, my mother would read me books she had chosen from her school library. I enjoyed the stories of Aladdin and the magic lamp, and of Sinbad the Sailor. And I loved listening to her speak in her elegant Arabic.

  When I was three, my brother was born. A few days before his birth, my mother put my hand on her tummy, and I could feel his tiny kicks. “Feel how strong he is,” said my mother. “He’ll grow into a real rascal!” That turned out to be true. My brother’s name is Alaa. Even before he learned to walk, he tried to lunge at me and bite me, pretending to be a lion. Once he had mastered the art of walking, his world expanded and he could pick fights with the neighborhood boys. He never listened to my parents. If he had, things might have turned out differently.

  * * *

  No one had ever done any civic planning in Yarmouk. It had simply sprung up in 1954, when the Syrian government resettled tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees there. Until then, everyone had been living in emergency shelters. An organization called UNRWA—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East—gave each refugee family three hundred Syrian pounds per room, and sometimes three bags of cement and ten wooden pillars. That’s how the patchwork-like settlement grew into a real neighborhood.

  Our building had been built the same way. Our front door, for example, was actually a barn door that my grandfather had bought from a scrap merchant. A smaller door had been cut into it. Our building seemed to constantly grow and change, but no matter what happened, that old door always remained. The small door constantly squeaked when we opened it. Every few years we painted the entire door white, because white doors—as we say in Syria—are a sign of good luck.

  As a small child, I thought the doorknob was made of gold. Later I learned that it was only brass. Still, it must have had some value, because one day I heard a scratching at the door, and when I opened it, I saw a guy with a saw running away.

  We lived on a street corner. On one side was a main road full of traffic, with a vegetable shop nearby. The other road was a small alley, only accessible to pedestrians. When I stepped out, there was a kiosk to the left that sold chewing gum, cola, ice cream, and trading cards. This is where we spent all our allowance. For some strange reason the kiosk was called Istiqama—Honesty. As children, we pondered this for hours. Why was the shop called that? The owner was anything but honest.

  The chewing gum he sold us was old enough to crack your teeth. And since children aren’t yet so good at math, he always cheated us. If you paid for five pieces of candy, he sometimes gave you only four, and you didn’t realize it until later. Of course, if you confronted him, he denied everything. One day, I decided to pay him back for that. He had once again cheated me on chewing gum, but this time I went to my mother and told her everything: “He cheated me!”—“What?” she said, then marched straight out the door to confront him about it. When she came back, she brought me one more piece of chewing gum.

  Our favorite games were Dahhal and Tobbeh. We could play for hours, either in the stairwell or out on the street. Dahhal was played by tossing marbles. We drew five lines and whoever succeeded with a good throw could take his opponent’s most valuable pieces. Tobbeh worked like this: You put a pile of trading cards on the ground, pressed your hand on them as hard as you could, and then pulled back quickly, attempting to thrust them into the air. You were allowed to keep any card that landed on its back. We played this game until our fingers hurt. Which is also why my mother threw all my cards into the trash, afraid I would hurt my hands. I was so mad I threatened to never play the piano again, and finally she relented, going down to “Honesty” to buy me new trading cards.

  * * *

  There were six apartments in our building, one for my grandfather, one for us, and one for each of my father’s four brothers. Right above us lived Uncle Mohammed and his wife, Aunt Ibtihal. My mother never got along with her. The two of them were always arguing! It only took the smallest spark to ignite a fire, and then their voices would rise to a crescendo.

  We lived on the ground floor, and when the doorbell rang, it often fell on me to answer it. “Why is that?” my mother cried out. “Why are we the only ones answering the door? Why can’t the fine lady and gentleman from upstairs be bothered?” She stomped upstairs to Aunt Ibtihal to complain. Crescendo, crescendo . . .

  One time, some wood shavings from my father’s workshop on the rooftop terrace had fallen through the window onto Aunt Ibtihal’s clean white sheets. She showed up at our door, and it all started again. Sometimes one of the two women had claimed all the clotheslines on the rooftop and the other one was unable to dry her clothes. Once, an argument got so out of hand that Aunt Ibtihal took my mother’s laundry and threw it down into the street. Furious, my mother did the same to hers.

  “Hey, have you lost your minds?” someone called from below. “What’s going on up there?” While the two of them were arguing on the rooftop, I had to go down to get everyone’s clothes.

  When I began playing the piano, I would often p
ractice for half an hour before school. Aunt Ibtihal didn’t like that very much. She would take a broom and knock on the floor with it. Stop it! My mother didn’t appreciate this at all. One morning while I was practicing and Aunt Ibtihal was knocking, my mother stormed up, fully enraged. I heard a loud slapping noise and when my mother came back down, her hair was disheveled and her cheeks were flushed. “It’s all taken care of,” she said. Had they really slapped each other?

  The men in the family paid no attention, quite deliberately. There’s a saying in our part of the world: When women are arguing, the men should only nod and smile. Or at least keep out of it. You can only make it worse.

  I think it was stress that made my mother lose her temper once in a while. She really had a lot to do. In the morning, she taught classes at school, then she had to do the shopping, the laundry, the cooking, and other household chores, and afterward she had to prepare her classes for the next day. Her husband was blind, and although he took loving care of us children, he wasn’t able to contribute much else. But whenever my mother was relaxed, she was the most warmhearted and loving person imaginable.

  The storm clouds came and went. The next day, the waters were inevitably calm again. It wouldn’t ever have occurred to any one of us to move away and abandon the family, much less over a silly argument. Family is the most important thing there is. We all stick together. I, for my part, like Aunt Ibtihal very much, especially today. We often spend hours on the phone.

  That makes living in Europe difficult for me at times—I’m so far away from my loved ones. It’s even harder for my mother. It breaks her heart to not have her grandchildren around. Nowadays, I live in the German city of Wiesbaden. A few days ago, an elderly lady from Cologne visited us. She sat on the sofa and played with Ahmad and Kinan, my two sons. I took a picture of the three of them and sent it to my mother. It was meant to be a nice gesture, but seeing the kids just made her sad.