The Pianist from Syria

by Aeham Ahmad

  A few hours later she called me: “So, you have a new grandma now,” she said, and I could hear that she was struggling against tears. I apologized to her. But she began weeping; then she started to curse the war, the bombs, and Assad, who had destroyed her life, who had driven us apart and taken her son Alaa. “This awful war!” she sobbed. “This awful war!”

  * * *

  There were no playgrounds in Yarmouk. My favorite thing was riding my red bicycle through the neighborhood, together with my best friend, Sadek. One day, we saw a toolbox standing by the side of the road. I thought my father could really use those tools, and since it didn’t seem to belong to anyone, we put the toolbox on my bike rack and started pushing the bike back home.

  Suddenly, a man called out, “Stop! Come back here! My tools!” He ran until he caught up with us. He was a handyman working in one of the nearby buildings.

  “Where are your fathers?” he fumed. “I’ll tell them you guys are thieves!”

  “Please don’t!” we called out. “Take your toolbox. It’s all right!”

  “Nothing’s all right!” he yelled. “Where are your fathers? I’ll show you!”

  I knew that they put thieves in jail. Would I be sent to jail? I was scared. We pushed the bike home, followed by the angry handyman.

  When he told my father the story, Papa scolded me: “Aeham! How could you do something like that?!”

  “Papa, please, I took the tools for you!” I cried.

  “Aha, so that’s it!” yelled the man. “You’re in it together!”

  My father was shocked. It took him a while to convince the handyman otherwise.

  Today I chuckle when I think about this story . . . and others like it.

  It’s astonishing: Whenever I think of my childhood, the sun is always shining; I don’t remember a single rainy day. I still remember the scent of the flowering jasmine and the smell of the olive soap that I washed my face with each morning. I remember the heat in the summer, the honking cars, the cries of the vegetable vendor, the sounds of soccer balls getting kicked against our wall.

  Other fathers never had time for their children. They toiled from morning to night, and when they didn’t have to work on Fridays, they were too tired to play with their kids. The next morning, they went to mosque, and after lunch, everyone went out for a walk together. Then the fathers went to a café to meet their friends, brothers, cousins, and when they came back, the kids were already asleep. No wonder that later on, the kids only talked about their mothers. They barely saw their fathers.

  My father was always there for me. He bottle-fed me, changed my diapers, cleaned up, and tidied the room. He answered thousands of questions: Papa, why are we refugees? Why are we Muslims? Is there a God? Later on, he even talked to me about sex. In the Arab world, this kind of conversation is unthinkable between fathers and their sons.

  A lot of other boys were afraid of their fathers, who were strict and would beat their kids. But I remained my father’s helper, and he remained my friend.

  — CHAPTER TWO —

  My father wanted to enroll me at the State School of Music in Damascus. But first I had to pass the entrance exam. As the big day approached, Papa became more and more nervous. “Sixty more days,” he said to me one morning. “Then it’ll be time for your test.” And so began a slow countdown. Thirty days, then twenty, then ten, and so on. He smoked even more than usual, a sure sign that he was tense. With only three days remaining, he enlisted his friend al-Chadra, the keyboard player in his wedding band, to accompany him on a test run, to scout the best route to the school. He left nothing to chance.

  Each year in summer, during the school holidays, when Damascus was glowing with heat, when the night brought no relief and most people spent the day at the beach or dozed in the shade, a man named Solhi al-Wadi held his entrance exams, determining who would be admitted to his school. Solhi al-Wadi was a famous conductor. The heat worked in his favor. He wanted only the most diligent students, the most talented, the most ambitious.

  Al-Wadi had almost single-handedly established classical music in Syria. He was a cellist and had trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1962, he founded the State School of Music in Damascus, or the Arabic Institute, as it was officially called. In 1970, Hafiz al-Assad, the father of Bashar al-Assad, took power in a coup. The regime wanted to appear open-minded, and al-Wadi was in the right place at the right time. In 1990, two years after I was born, al-Wadi opened the State School of Music. From then on, young Syrians could study the piano, trombone, or oboe here at home, without having to travel abroad, to cities such as New York; Montpellier, France; or Heidelberg, Germany.

  Each year, more than a thousand children applied for one of the one hundred openings at the State School of Music. In theory, anyone who passed the entrance exam had a right to be admitted. But in practice, the school was incredibly elitist. Most of the students were the children of government functionaries or millionaires, of well-respected artists and intellectuals. Still, my father wanted to try to get me in. He had plans for me. He didn’t want me to play the fiddle at weddings: he wanted me to perform on a grand piano in concert halls. To him, my entrance exam was the gate to Paradise.

  I knew al-Chadra, the keyboard player. Ever since I was four years old, he had been a regular visitor at our home. He had given me lessons on my father’s old Casio keyboard. We played scales, études, simple chords. And then my father sat down with me for an hour each afternoon and we practiced together.

  On the big day, I put on a clean T-shirt, then my father and I climbed into a minibus and took off. Damascus has a network of small public buses connecting the whole city. Papa and I had left much too early. Traffic in Yarmouk was dense, as always—even the Midan market was full of cars. When we had to switch to another line at Baramkeh Circle, our minibus at first didn’t come. We must have waited half an hour. My father grew increasingly impatient. He wrung his hands and paced back and forth.

  “We have to take a taxi!” he fumed. “But I don’t have enough money. Damn!” I’ve never seen him that nervous before. He constantly opened the glass window on his watch—made especially for blind people—and felt the time.

  Finally, the minibus came. The journey continued, albeit haltingly.

  “Papa, let’s practice at home,” I said to my father. “It’s too far. We’re losing time. I could be practicing the keyboard.” He remained silent and tense.

  I looked out the window and realized I’d never been in this neighborhood. The streets were wider and much quieter than what I was used to. I saw people from different countries on the sidewalks, and more and more women without headscarves. At a tree-lined street, we finally got out of the minibus. Everything was calm and well maintained. We were in Jisr al-Abyad, the embassy district, one of the most exclusive areas of Damascus. I saw villas towering behind wrought-iron fences, framed by fragrant rosebushes.

  Once again, my father flipped open the glass window of his watch, then cursed quietly. We started to hurry, and when I could finally see the school building, he asked me, “Are there people waiting outside?”—“No.”—“Dammit!” We ran the final stretch toward the ivy-covered villa, rushed up the stairs, entered the lobby—and saw that we had come in time.

  A line of people went through the entire building. Fathers and mothers with their children. We took our place in line.

  Now I was getting nervous. On our way here, I had seen something puzzling: A black Mercedes had pulled up and a chauffeur had emerged, opening the back door. A boy, no taller than I, had stepped out of the car. In Syria, you had to be richer than God to afford a Mercedes. Why would a grown man hold the door open for a little kid? I told my father what I had seen. “Probably the son of some government bigwig,” he replied curtly. I was more confused than ever.

  For the rest of the time, we were silent. My father was too nervous to talk to me. One child after the next was called into the examination room. Finally, after almost three hours, it was my tur
n. I opened the door.

  In the middle of the room stood a curved wooden box. It was a grand piano, but I had never seen one before. Three men and a woman sat behind a table. Another man stood by the window, his hands in his pockets—Solhi al-Wadi, the school’s director. I found it odd that he didn’t move. Weren’t you supposed to shake hands when you greet someone?

  One of the men at the table addressed me.

  “Where are you from?” he asked me.

  “Yarmouk,” I replied.

  “Do you play an instrument?”

  “Yes. Keyboard.”

  He stood up, went over to the grand piano, hit a key, and asked me to sing the same note. And again. And again, two dozen times. Then his hand tapped out a rhythm on the table. I repeated it.

  And that was all.

  The woman turned to me. “You live in Yarmouk?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you play keyboard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm . . .” she said.

  What did that mean? I had no idea, but it didn’t seem good.

  The man brought me to the door, opened it—and my father came stumbling in. He almost fell; he only just caught himself. Apparently, he couldn’t bear the tension, so he was listening at the door. It was an embarrassing moment. The whole situation probably could have been handled more gracefully, but this wasn’t that kind of place. “You were listening in?” Solhi al-Wadi scolded my father. “That’s not permitted!”

  “I’m sorry. I’m Aeham’s father,” he said.

  At that moment, everyone seemed to realize that he was blind. Al-Wadi calmed down. “It’s all right,” he said, relenting a bit. “Quite all right.”

  My father asked when the results would be announced, then we went outside and began our long journey back to Yarmouk. Papa was silent. Perhaps he was worried I might have failed. I thought about everything that had happened that day. The chauffeur, all the huffing and puffing, the principal scolding my father. I didn’t like it there.

  A few days later—almost no one in Yarmouk had a telephone back then—my father went to the grocery store on our street and called the school. But the secretary there told him he would have to come by in person—the results were posted inside the building.

  So, the next day, we took another minibus across town. Al-Chadra, the keyboard player, went with us. We needed him. My father was blind and I hadn’t learned how to read yet.

  The results were posted on a noticeboard on a wall. Some thirteen hundred children had taken the exam that year. The list was endless. And for some reason, the names were not sorted alphabetically. Al-Chadra kept searching for my name. My father became increasingly tense; his knees were practically shaking.

  “Did you find him?” he asked al-Chadra. “Did you find him?” Finally, on the seventh or eighth sheet of paper, al-Chadra saw my name: “Aeham Ahmad, sixty percent. Failed,” he read.

  “What?” my father called out. People turned to look at him. The heart of the world stood still.

  “Are you sure?” he asked al-Chadra.

  Our friend took another look.

  “No, sorry!” he said. “I misread. Aeham Hamada got sixty percent. Our Aeham . . . ninety-nine percent!”

  The heart of the world began beating again. My father laughed, a deep, booming sound. It echoed through the lobby, then up the stairs and into the summer sky. Once again, everyone turned to look at us. Ninety-nine percent! Normally, only the children of high-ranking government bureaucrats got grades like that. Certainly not some unwashed Palestinian boy from Yarmouk! On the way home, we were euphoric.

  When we arrived, my father told everyone in the building. “Aeham did it!” he said, cheering. “Tonight we’ll be celebrating!” And when night fell, all my uncles and aunts and cousins crowded into our small apartment. My father called out to each new arrival, “Aeham did it! He did it!”

  My mother served lemon-flavored ice cream and tea while my father stood in the living room playing wedding songs on his violin. Our guests sat in a circle, singing and clapping, and doing little dances with their hands. For the first time since I’ve known him, my father’s eyes seemed to be laughing. But perhaps it was just my imagination.

  I didn’t quite understand all this commotion, but I was happy. I liked ice cream, and that night, I didn’t have to stay at home and practice on my keyboard: I was allowed to go outside and play soccer with my cousins until well into the night.

  * * *

  Classes began in the fall. The first thing we did was solfège, a traditional vocal exercise from France. The teacher gave us music sheets, and we had to sing each note: “Do, do, re, re, mi, mi . . .” The entire first year was devoted to singing. We wouldn’t learn an instrument until our second year.

  But before I could start singing, we had to buy the solfège textbook. It was imported from France and terribly expensive. The book cost five thousand Syrian pounds, around ten dollars, about the monthly salary of an average employee in Syria. My father asked the school personnel if he could simply make photocopies of the book. Out of the question, they said. We were hoping to buy a used copy, but we couldn’t find one. As a result, I wasn’t able to attend the first three classes. I had to wait until the end of the month, when my mother got paid. Only then were my parents able to buy the book.

  Our solfège teacher was a wonderful elderly lady named Nadia, who treated all of us forty children very lovingly, like a mother. She sang in a beautiful, warm soprano. If someone forgot to transcribe their musical notes at home, she didn’t yell. No, she gently reminded them to bring the homework in for the next class.

  “You have a beautiful voice!” she sometimes said to me. I continued singing with renewed confidence:

  Do mi do mi do mi sol fa re do re mi re

  Do mi do mi do mi sol fa mi re do

  Re mi re mi fa mi re

  Mi fa mi fa sol fa mi

  Do mi do mi do mi sol fa mi re do.

  I sometimes talked to Sham, a girl from my class. But she was the only one I knew. The music school was like a club for rich kids. The parents brought their children, then waited for them, and at the end of the day, everyone got into taxis or cars and took off. Only my father and I trudged to the bus stop and took the minibus home.

  On days when I didn’t have music classes, my father practiced solfège with me in the afternoon. He would sing a motif and then have me improvise on it.

  “Why is that important?” I asked him.

  “It’s very important!” he said. “You can turn any humble melody into a sweeping symphony. It’s the language of music. Once you’re fluent in it, you have complete freedom.”

  After half an hour of practice, he made us black tea. Papa always drank his tea very strong and sweet, heaping five spoonfuls of sugar into each cup. He let the leaves float in the pot, turning the tea dark and bitter. When you drank it, you had to pick bits of leaf off your tongue and lips. Normally, I wasn’t allowed black tea. Only during our singing practice did he pour me a cup. Then we sang for another half hour, and then I was finally allowed to go outside and join my friends.

  After the first year of music school, we had to take another test. This time, we had to sing notes by sight and clap a rhythm. Then the teachers decided which instrument we’d be assigned: guitar, drums, flute, cello, or piano. This time, our parents were with us. The lady administering the test asked my father what instrument he had in mind for me.

  “Piano,” my father said with a firm voice.

  “Piano?” the woman asked. “You have a piano at home?”

  “Yes,” my father said. But that was a lie.

  “If your son wants to learn to play keyboard, that’s no problem. There’s another music school that offers keyboard lessons.”

  “No. Piano.”

  “Very well. I’ll send one of our teachers over to take a look at your piano,” the woman said.

  My father nodded.

  There was no way out anymore. Years ago, when Papa had c
onvinced Grandfather to buy him a violin, the instrument had cost three months’ worth of wages. But a piano was even more expensive: it would eat up a whole year’s salary. My father borrowed money from every relative he had and began a frantic search for an affordable instrument. An acquaintance had a lead: The man’s wife was a pianist from Ukraine, and she knew a lady who still had an old Russian piano in her basement, a “Ukraina.” Apparently, it was still in the box it had come in. The lady wanted three thousand dollars for it.

  One of our neighbors owned a pickup truck and drove us to the lady’s home. Six of us went down into the basement—my father, four of my uncles, and myself. We saw a gigantic wooden crate. The men tried to lift it—and started cursing. None of them had ever seen a piano, let alone tried to carry one. When they were moving the crate up the stairs, they started cursing and complaining.

  “Ahmad, you’re insane! What are you going to do with this giant box?” they said. “You’re throwing away good money. What did you say you paid for this?”

  “It’s a piano! For Aeham!” Papa told them in a soothing voice. “And as a thank-you for your help, I’ll play my violin for you whenever you want!”

  The men were arguing so loudly that the Ukrainian lady peeked down and asked if everything was all right.

  Somehow, we managed to maneuver the box onto the back of the pickup. When we arrived in front of our building and lifted it out, a throng of people crowded around us; everyone was curious. We carried the box into our apartment. But when we were inside, we realized that the piano wouldn’t fit through the door to my room. My uncle Mohammed, a bricklayer, had to break open the doorframe. We moved the piano in, then he repaired the damaged wall.

  I tested the keys. They were all out of tune. The piano had never been tuned. The next day, my father managed to get in touch with a piano tuner. There weren’t many in Damascus. “No, I’m not going all the way to Yarmouk,” the man said brusquely. “It’s too far.”