The Pianist from Syria

by Aeham Ahmad

  My father began his work, silently and stoically. I handed him the tools. I could feel his tension. I had no idea who this man was, but judging by my father’s discomfort, he must have been dangerous. My father repaired the hammer and began tuning the piano. He plucked a string, listened to its sound, and adjusted it with his tuning key.

  The red-haired girl kept watching us. Every once in a while, I would look at her, our eyes would meet, and then I would quickly look away again.

  For three hours, my father worked in silence. The blond woman served us orange juice in heavy crystal glasses. Then, as we packed up our things, the girl approached us.

  “Is it your piano?” I asked.

  She nodded and sat down on the piano bench.

  “Where are you taking classes?”

  “A teacher comes to the house.”

  “How long have you been playing?”

  “About a year and a half.” She began playing a song. It sounded amateurish.

  Again, I was surprised. A private instructor, an expensive piano—why wasn’t she able to play better?

  The owner of the house must have heard us talking, and came downstairs and stood behind the girl. My father explained what he had done.

  “Very good,” said the man. “What do I owe you?”

  “It’s all right. Thank you for allowing us to visit you,” my father said.

  “I’m certain your boy could use the money, even if you can’t.”

  The man pulled out his wallet, took out a bundle of bills, and handed it to me. I was surprised, but I took the money.

  We said good-bye, then we were driven back. My father and I were both silent. I didn’t dare give him the money; I was afraid the chauffeur would see it. He might tell his employer, and he in turn might become angry because he had given the money to me, not my father. So I didn’t move. But once we were at home, in our living room, I handed my father the bills. They were moist from my sweat. The man had paid us twenty thousand Syrian pounds, almost four hundred dollars. For us, it was a fortune.

  My father began to pump me for information. He wanted to know everything. What did the man look like? What did the house look like? The two women? The guards at the checkpoints? Did I notice anything else?

  “This man is dangerous. Don’t talk to anyone about this,” he implored me. “Not to anyone! In Syria, the walls have ears.”

  It was a popular saying. We all knew that state security was everywhere. Just one disparaging remark about a minor government bureaucrat was enough to get people arrested. Some victims languished for years in the government’s torture chambers. And there was another saying, “Not even God himself would dare to slander Hafez al-Assad.”

  I asked my father what the man’s name was.

  “One day I’ll tell you. But not now,” my father said.

  Years later, I learned his name, Mustafa Tlas. From 1972 to 2004 he had been Syria’s secretary of defense, one of the old Assad’s closest confidants. He was known to spread hideous anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and was said to have made a fortune smuggling weapons and antiques.

  Our visit to his villa had intimidated me so much that for months, I believed government spies were watching us. After all, we had been in the boss’s house. Had we made a mistake? Had we become suspicious? Every time I stepped outside, I kept an eye out for anyone observing us. But I never saw anyone.

  — CHAPTER FIVE —

  For more than six years my father accompanied me to the music school. The bus left Yarmouk and drove through a new development called Zahira, then past the gigantic Midan market and the junkyards of Senaa, an industrial part of town. At Baramkeh Circle we switched to another bus, continuing through the downtown area, past the university, changing buses again at the President Bridge, crossing the Barada River—no more than a thin trickle in summer, but in winter a mighty stream. Finally, on our third bus, we entered the elegant embassy district, where the music school was located.

  We were used to traffic jams. Often, the bus moved at a snail’s pace. On some days, nothing moved. If, for example, there was an accident somewhere, then all the drivers were stuck, furiously leaning on their car horns. The heat made the road seem blurry, and we would be sitting in our minibus, drenched in sweat, wedged between other sweaty passengers. Everyone was getting more and more nervous, because everyone was missing their appointments. In my mind, I could already hear my piano teacher scolding me. The minutes were ticking away ever so slowly.

  Then we decided to get out. We had to somehow get around the traffic jam. We pushed open the bus door and snaked our way through the sea of cars. Sometimes it took us half an hour to reach the source of the traffic jam—the accident. Usually, we saw dented cars, bystanders, and two men screaming at each other. The traffic police always took the side of the man paying the highest bribe. Sometimes the opponents even attacked each other with their fists. We hurried on to the next bus.

  At the end of each semester, students at the music school had to give a recital. You could only fail it once. My father and I tried our best to be on time. But one time, I must have been eleven years old, traffic was more hellish than ever and we moved forward inch by inch. When the bus arrived, I jumped out and ran into the school building, then bounded up the stairs.

  A lady was descending toward me, elegantly dressed. I knew her: Colette Khoury, granddaughter of the former prime minister. She was a famous writer of feminist novels as well as a board member of the school.

  “Why are you running like this?” she asked as I tried to rush past her, flushed and sweating.

  “I have an exam, I’m much too late,” I said, wheezing.

  “You need to catch your breath.” She looked me up and down. “You can’t play like this. I’ll talk to your teachers.”

  She went into the examination room and announced that Aeham Ahmad—A.A., always first in the alphabet—would play after the letter C today. Then she smiled at me and left.

  There weren’t many days when I liked being at the school, but that was definitely one of them.

  * * *

  At age eleven, I was assigned a new piano teacher at the school, my third one. Like my earlier teacher, her name was also Irina and she was from Russia, but her last name was Boloushouk. Ever since Syria’s independence in 1946, our country had had close ties—diplomatic, military, and cultural—to the Soviet Union, and later to the Russian Federation. I liked Ms. Boloushouk. She was very friendly. Her Arabic was terrible, but she always smiled at me. Sometimes she asked me to write down what she said on a notepad, and she thanked me by giving me pieces of Russian chocolate. Just like Irina Ramadan used to do.

  One of the first things she did was this: She hung a clock above the piano in her practice room. She didn’t like it when people were late. In the Middle East, time is a flexible thing. Someone says they’ll visit sometime in the afternoon, but then doesn’t arrive until 6 p.m. I never liked that. Irina Boloushouk wouldn’t accept it either. On the other hand, if the Damascus traffic had once again collapsed completely and I rushed into the room covered in sweat, then she told me in a kind voice, “It’s all right, Aeham. Take a deep breath and tell me how you are today!”

  Because it wasn’t easy to get my bearings after a journey like that. Playing the piano is hard work, even for the most talented musicians, and I never was one of those. If you’re tense, you just can’t get the sound right. Then your playing becomes robotic and dry; you stumble through the music with stiff hands. Each attempt to wrestle with a piece of music is doomed to failure.

  So. Once more, from the beginning. Take a breath. Relax your joints, let your hands go soft, let them hover above the black-and-white landscape of the octaves, loose and free. Let your fingers gently descend. Find the right moment, let the current of the music take you. Let it become your heartbeat. Throw your fingers onto the keys like an artist splashing paint.

  By that time, I had learned to play more sophisticated pieces. For six months, Irina Boloushouk had me prac
tice Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G minor, op. 23, no. 5, a difficult piece with a complex rhythm. The prelude seemed to dance across the keyboard from bass notes to treble, through all keys and tonalities. My hands had to perform countless seamless transitions, and it was exhausting just to hit the right keys, like mastering a high-wire act.

  Day by day, I worked on the piece, line by line. First, I only sang the notes. Then I worked on the left hand. Slowly. Then a little faster. Then the right hand. Then both hands, very slowly. A little faster. If I made a mistake, I had to start over. And over, and over, and over. Twenty, thirty, a hundred times. Then on to the next line. Then the next sheet. Then I had to put it all together. Another mistake! Start over. Try making it sound more alive. Week in, week out. It was like building a house from pebbles.

  * * *

  When I was thirteen, my father bought me a cheap mountain bike, fairly sluggish and with small, twenty-inch tires. Most of the time I had to ride standing up, and that is how I got to school from then on, 7.5 miles across the city. Riding a bike in Damascus was extremely dangerous. Cars and minibuses were jostling all around, and I was right in the middle of it all. It was glorious.

  Because from then on, I didn’t have to sit idly in the bus anymore, sweating nervously. From then on, I could just keep pedaling and have a good idea when I’d arrive. It took me an hour and forty minutes to get there. My father still gave me money for the bus fare. He said to keep it, a bit of extra pocket money.

  Only once did I miss school—when a minibus cut in front of me and I ran into it. The bus’s rear light was damaged, and so was my front tire. But I was unharmed. The driver was angry. I gave him all the money I had on me, then I pushed my bike back home. There was no point in going to class after this. But apart from that, I was always on time. During the last year of school, a teacher named Vladimir Tsaritzky asked me if I wanted to be his student. He taught at the conservatory as well. I felt honored, and I happily agreed. He was a hulking giant, around sixty, with green eyes and blond hair and the build of a wrestler. He wore his shirts partially open and I could see a white wooden crucifix buried in his chest hair. He was an Orthodox Christian. And he had a weakness for women. Whenever Sandybell came clicking past in her high heels, he stared after her with hungry eyes.

  I liked him. He was an excellent pianist and was very direct, wearing his heart on his sleeve. He wasn’t as two-faced as many of my countrymen. In Syria, people will smile at you and stab you in the back. With Tsaritzky, I began enjoying classical music again, sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, and études by Czerny. There was no getting away from Czerny. Tsaritzky made me start from scratch, beginning with my basic technique. We played scales and arpeggios, and we worked on my articulation. Too much staccato on your left! Try using it like a bow. Place your hand lower, put your thumb and fingers a little higher. This way, you can lower your arm, you don’t have to keep hovering as you play. And lighter on the keystroke! Lead with your arms, the hands will follow. Things of that nature.

  One time, we had our class at the conservatory. I could hear Tsaritzky from far away. He was hammering ecstatically at the keys. I knocked. The fortissimo continued; he didn’t seem to have noticed me. I pushed down the door handle, went in, and took a seat. Tsaritzky was playing a Steinway piano, deeply and passionately. It was as if he was devouring the instrument. Each time he leaned forward, his wooden crucifix clicked against the piano. After a while, there was a loud snapping noise: one of the strings broke.

  He stopped, then turned to me, as if awakening from a dream: “Hello, Aeham.” And we began our class.

  One time, I heard an announcement by Solhi al-Wadi, the school’s all-powerful headmaster, coming over the loudspeakers: All students report to the lobby, please.

  I went and took my place amid the crowd. Al-Wadi stood in front of a wall. I could see a footprint on it. Someone must have been standing there and leaning his foot against it.

  “Who did that?” al-Wadi hissed. “This isn’t your home! It’s not my home either! This is the Damascus Music School! You have no right to ruin the walls like that. Who did this?”

  No one came forward.

  One after the other we had to step forward and lift our feet. Al-Wadi compared the soles of our shoes with the print on the wall. And he found the culprit, a young violin student, who turned pale with fear.

  Al-Wadi delivered a long tirade—and expelled the boy.

  * * *

  In my tenth year at the music school, I had to take a final exam. Everything went wrong, absolutely everything. But in the end, it turned out all right. Or at least well enough. I learned a lesson from that.

  The disaster began to unfold two days before the exam. Two of my uncles had a huge fight. I could hear them from my room, their angry, never-ending argument. Aunt Ibtihal still didn’t like it when I practiced for hours. She no longer thumped the broom against my ceiling, but she stomped down the stairs and slammed the large door downstairs shut—so hard that the whole building shook. Then she stomped back up again.

  It was summer. My exams were always in the summer. At around noon, the power sometimes went out, because everyone turned on their air conditioners. The light in my room went out, and the fan stopped working.

  The bus drivers of Damascus always put towels around their necks, drenched in ice water, to cool down. I wasn’t allowed to do that. My father had forbidden it, for fear of ruining the piano with water.

  And then the old carpenter down the street, Abu Fathi, died. The funeral lasted three days. On the first day, hundreds of plastic chairs were carried outside and placed on the sidewalks in front of our buildings, so that everyone could see the body wrapped in a white shroud. Loudspeakers were set up, a sheikh read the obituary, and all day long, friends and neighbors came to pray. On the second and third day, they started playing prerecorded suras from the Quran over the loudspeakers. You could hear them throughout the whole neighborhood. It was unthinkable, of course, to interrupt a funeral with music. It was all right to play when a child was born, but music at a time of mourning would have been inappropriate.

  On the fourth day, my father went over and explained the situation to Abu Fathi’s son. He told him that I would have my final exam at the music school in a few days—would I be allowed to practice? He allowed it. My father closed all the windows and fastened the right pedal. Which meant that I was playing a muted piano in sauna-like conditions. It was impossible to practice the articulation of the pieces, and that would be a large part of my final grade.

  In other words: I was miserably ill-prepared.

  On the day of the exam, I left an hour early on my bicycle. I didn’t want to arrive sweaty and out of breath.

  But on the way there, the bicycle chain popped off. What could I do? I had to put it back on by hand. It popped off again. And again. When I finally arrived at the school, I hadn’t only lost a lot of time—my fingers were now covered in oil.

  As always, I parked my bike a few streets away; I didn’t want anyone seeing it. Then I ran toward the school—and into Vladimir Tsaritzky, my teacher. He said hello and asked me if I felt ready. I shrugged. Then he noticed my fingers.

  “Aeham! You can’t go into an exam like that! Quick, wash your hands!” he called, and gave me a paper towel.

  That was what I had been hoping to do! In about ten minutes, it would be my turn to play—I was always first. I ran through the building and into the bathroom. When I opened the faucet, nothing came out!

  In the summer, the water was regularly turned off for a few hours each day. It could happen at any point. But did it have to happen now! I took the paper towel that Tsaritzky had given me and rubbed my fingers with it. But the oil wouldn’t come off. So I rubbed my fingers on my pants, because you couldn’t play with oily fingers. You’d leave oil on the keys.

  Other kids came to their final exam freshly showered and in black suits. I entered the room dirty and sweaty. Six instructors were waiting for me.

  “Aeham, what happene
d?” the new headmaster asked me.

  Solhi al-Wadi had suffered a stroke several years ago. The new principal didn’t just look like the old one, he was also just as stern.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “That’s not true!” he said, sounding irritated. “Are you a mechanic now?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Well?” he went on. “What happened?”

  So I told him. I explained that I had come here on my bike and my chain had popped off. That I had been biking here for the past three years.

  For a moment, everything was silent. Then he stood up and approached me. I took a few cautious steps toward him, having no idea what to expect, and prepared for anything. But not this: he hugged me.

  He must have been touched that I had biked for years all across town, just to be able to go to class. He must have understood how much effort it cost me just to be here. I was certainly not the most talented pianist, but I never gave up. Other kids took this school for granted. But my father and I had to fight for the privilege to come here. It seemed like at that moment he understood.

  I was touched as well. All too often, I had felt rejected here. All too often, I had been made to feel like I didn’t belong. Why hadn’t someone hugged me earlier? I would have loved the school. I would have loved music.

  The headmaster gave me a box of tissues. I continued cleaning my fingers, then I began playing my pieces. Czerny, Beethoven, Sibelius. In truth, I wasn’t particularly good that day. But I did it. A few days later, I was surprised to learn that I had gotten a grade of 80. I couldn’t believe it. There were other students who were better than me, and they had scored only 65. Was my grade a belated welcome?

  On the way back home, I was in a great mood, feeling that something had ended and something new was beginning. I cheerfully worked the pedals of my bike as I made my way through the Damascus traffic. I felt free.