The Pianist from Syria

by Aeham Ahmad

  I aimlessly wandered through the streets with nothing to do. I was depressed, haunted by questions. I knew my family only stayed because of me. Was I asking too much of them? Should we try to escape? Was there any chance we could make it out of here, in the midst of this war? Had we made the right choice? What would become of us now?

  For now, Yarmouk was in the hands of the FSA. Every day, I saw their fighters marching through the streets, their faces hidden behind black bandannas. They didn’t want to be recognized; perhaps their wives and children lived in Damascus. Like everyone else, they had their own routine. One of their leaders would deliver a speech, then they’d all wave their Kalashnikovs around and shout, “God is great!” after which they’d pile into their beat-up cars—like something out of a Mad Max movie—and drive to the front. Usually, that was the Watermelon, where the worst battles were raging. We were lucky—our shop was at the other end of Yarmouk.

  With each passing month, the siege got worse. Eventually, only women and old men were allowed to go through the checkpoints, but just at certain times, and they were always thoroughly searched. They were still allowed to bring shopping bags into Yarmouk, but it was getting harder. At first, the army allowed each person ten pounds of food, then only a “one-day ration.” And with each passing day, the rations got smaller.

  We had heard the reports coming out of Homs, Daraa, and Duma. Hundreds of thousands of people had been encircled by the army and starved to death. In the end, people had been reduced to eating clover and leaves, hoping to stall the inevitable. Was that to be our fate as well? As Palestinian refugees, we were supposed to be neutral, and grateful to the government for allowing us to settle here, back in 1948. So why would our own government, this “fortress against the Zionist occupation,” want to starve us?

  There were still some shops that sold whatever was available. Hungry mothers could still go to Damascus to buy rice or oil, which they then sold. But they always kept a little for themselves, to feed their own children. With each week, everything became more expensive. Soon, we were starving.

  All our relatives had left Yarmouk as fast as they could, including Uncle Mohammed and Uncle Sadik.

  Each of the two owned a small general store where they sold beans and rice, sugar and tea, chickpeas and spices. One day around noon, Uncle Sadik made his way through the checkpoints to visit us in Yarmouk. He handed me a set of keys.

  “I want you to sell everything we have,” he instructed me. “But don’t you dare overcharge! That’s haram.” Under no circumstances would the two of them charge exorbitant prices for their food—that would be against our faith. Uncle Mohammed’s shop was relatively empty; his business hadn’t been going well lately. But Uncle Sadik still had eight tons of food left, including seven tons of red lentils, which he had originally bought as pigeon feed.

  I nodded, agreeing to do it, but frankly, it took me a while to get started. I just didn’t see myself as a bean merchant.

  One day in February when I happened to pass Uncle Sadik’s shop, I saw that the iron gate at the entrance was bent up, damaged by a grenade that had exploded nearby. The shop must have been open for days. Anyone could have gone in and looted it. We had to do something. However, we didn’t dare move the food during daylight, for if a soldier happened to come by, he might confiscate everything.

  So we came back at night, my father, my brother, and I. We loaded the sacks onto a large dolly that we had found in the store, and we began pushing. We went back and forth the whole night. We rested during the day, and in the evening, when darkness fell, we went out again, pushing one load after another through the empty streets. At one point, a man approached us. Of course, right at that moment, a sack fell off the cart and burst open.

  “What’s this? Beans?” he asked.

  “They’re my uncle’s,” I said. “We’re about to sell them.”

  “Give them to me.”

  “We’ll sell them at a fair price. Everyone should get their share. You’re welcome to come by.” I told him where the shop was, and he left.

  What could I do? There was nothing else to keep me occupied, so I started selling the beans. And so, for the next month and a half, I spent every afternoon in the front of our music store, selling rice and wheat instead of violins or guitars. I charged twenty-five Syrian pounds, around five cents, for a half pound of sugar. But prices kept rising, and before long, people paid as much as twenty-five hundred pounds for it. In the end, the price even rose to twenty-five thousand pounds! I was probably naïve, but I just couldn’t imagine a siege being effective, especially not in the middle of an urban metropolis like Damascus. I was wrong.

  Soon, word of my good prices began to spread. Whenever I opened the store at 1 p.m., there was already a line of ten people. I made sure to give each customer the same amount: I didn’t want anyone reselling the food at a higher price. In the beginning, everyone got four pounds. Then two pounds. Then one pound.

  The customers were watching each of my gestures with hungry eyes. Everyone was driven half-mad by fear of starvation. Sometimes arguments broke out. “You’re giving the others more!” someone complained.

  “No,” I said. “Look at the scale. Everyone gets exactly the same.”

  By May, I had sold everything—the sugar, the rice, the cans of tuna, the bulgur, and the clarified butter. The only thing I couldn’t get rid of were the red lentils. Even now, no one wanted them. But there was one exception: “I have a pigeon coop,” one of my customers told me one day. “I’d like to buy the lentils for my birds.” I said no. People were starving. And this fool wanted to feed the lentils to his pigeons? No way!

  * * *

  The only ray of sunshine in those days was little Ahmad. He squeaked and laughed and babbled, and he grew bigger with each passing day. Soon, he would be walking. We had gotten him a baby walker, and now he could roll through the store, propelled by the tips of his toes. He loved digging his fingers into the rough linen sacks. Each day, when I put him on my lap and played piano for him, he swatted at the keys with his tiny hands. Sometimes my father played the violin for him, or my mother would sing to him. But she sang so quietly that none of the adults nearby could hear her.

  My brother, Alaa, continued working as a carpenter. In those days, he had plenty of work. Yarmouk was largely depopulated, and that meant ample opportunities for burglars and looters. Entire buildings stood empty. Countless doors had been pried open, and then the owners, who had briefly stopped by to assess the damage, would call my brother. Sometimes he repaired windows that had been shattered by the pressure of nearby explosions. Alaa lived and worked in his carpentry shop, our old music store. He cooked his meals there and hung out with his friends. He rarely visited us.

  He still continued working in Jaramana, a new development east of Yarmouk. Many of his friends lived there. Early in the mornings, he went through the checkpoint and then, during the day, he worked on construction sites, building doors. At night, he slept at his friends’ places. And when he came back a few days later, he brought us bread and tomatoes.

  My father implored him to stay put. “Please, please, please, Alaa, there’s enough work for you in Yarmouk,” he pleaded. “The checkpoints are too dangerous. Don’t go, I beg you!”

  “Oh, come on!” my brother said, dismissing his concerns. “I’m not afraid of the soldiers. What could possibly happen to me?” It was true: He had completed his military service. He had served in the army for two years, right after school. And he had never received a draft order.

  “No one is safe,” my father said. “You know that. They can pin all kinds of things on you. You’ve heard the stories!”

  My brother shrugged. He had never listened to my parents. Why start now?

  On June 22, 2013, a Saturday, Alaa left Yarmouk early to go through the checkpoint toward Jaramana. The day before, he had stopped by to say good-bye to us.

  Around eleven, a man came to see us.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said to my father
and me. We were standing at the front of the store. “But you have to promise me never to tell anyone my name. Never!”

  We promised.

  “Alaa has been arrested.”

  My father collapsed. It was as if all strength had left his body. “What happened? Tell me, please!”

  “Dozens of men were arrested at the checkpoint this morning. I was one of them. I was thrown into a prison transport. But I was lucky, I have an uncle at the General Command. He begged the commandant to release me. At the last moment, Alaa shouted, ‘Tell my parents!’ ”

  My father was trembling. “Umm, Aeham, come quickly!” he yelled in a high voice toward the back of the room.

  My mother stepped through the curtain, closing her headscarf. “What’s going on?”

  “Alaa was arrested.”

  It took a moment for her to comprehend. Then she began to sob.

  “Quick, quick, let’s go to the checkpoint!” my father cried. “Maybe there’s something we can do!”

  The four of us hurried there. As we were walking, we learned that the “man with the mask” had singled out my brother.

  The man with the mask. There was one at each checkpoint. A man with a black balaclava who scrutinized everyone. But every once in a while, he would point at someone and say, “This one.” And then the soldiers would grab that person. For whatever reason. It could mean anything. It could mean that you were a suspected FSA member. It could mean that you were drafted. It could mean that you would vanish in the government’s torture chambers. It could be your death warrant. The man in the mask was judge and executioner in one.

  It could be anyone under that hood. A man from state security. A denouncer. Or maybe just some prisoner. Maybe it was someone they had tortured with electric shocks and then given a black hood to, forcing him to stand at the very checkpoint where he had been arrested. And then, indiscriminately, he singled out people to fulfill his daily quota, hoping that they wouldn’t torture him any longer.

  So the man in the black mask had pointed at my brother and said, “That one’s Alaa.” He must have known him. But how? Alaa had often gotten into fights with the guys in our neighborhood. Maybe one of them had denounced him. Who could have taken such brutal revenge on him?

  I went with my parents as far as I could and wished them luck. Then they went on without me. I sat down in the shade. Everything collapsed around me as I thought about Alaa. Where could he be? What were they doing to him now? Why hadn’t he listened to my father? At least this one time? Why did he always have to have the last word?

  I remembered how Alaa had run out into the street one evening when he wasn’t yet twelve. The neighbors had complained about me playing piano, and he had shouted, “The next person who complains will get a beating!” I remembered how, during his short stint at the music school, he had fallen into a fountain, ruining his expensive solfège textbook. How he had pushed me to the floor when we were renovating the store. How he had fought with my father, endlessly, it seemed. For five tedious hours, I waited in the shade.

  Finally, my parents came back. Without Alaa. They had gone to the checkpoint. A soldier had told them to wait for the commandant.

  They had waited for two hours. Finally, the man arrived. My parents were permitted to see him.

  “I am blind, I need my son,” my father complained. “He is my only consolation, please give him back to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the commandant replied.

  “He was arrested this morning.”

  “We haven’t arrested anybody.”

  “But I’m sure. Somebody told me.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “You’re a liar. Go away, or I’ll arrest you.”

  So they gave up. However, checkpoints are laid out like one-way streets. Once you’re in line, there is no turning back. So they had to leave Yarmouk and line up again, this time in the opposite direction.

  We headed home, my mother crying softly to herself. When we got there, Tahani was waiting for us, out of her mind with worry. In all the excitement, no one had thought to tell her what had happened. My father immediately began working the phone. The landline was still working. Did anyone know someone at the General Command? Has anyone heard anything? Was there anyone who might know something?

  Early the next morning, my parents went to Damascus to speak to the authorities, hoping to find out more. Alaa Ahmad, born on February 13, 1991, arrested on June 22—do you know anything?

  And because the lines at the checkpoints were unbelievably long, they didn’t come back until late at night. Then they left again the next morning.

  They would be searching for years. Looking for a trail. Just as tens of thousands are doing in Syria every day, on the desperate quest for some trace of a loved one.

  Their last shreds of hope and happiness were gone now. At night, my mother lay awake, and when she got up, her eyes were red from crying. My father, normally a cheerful, talkative person, sat brooding for hours on end, smoking cigarettes. Until he suddenly jumped up and said, “Oh God. Oh God, I can’t stand it. It’s too much. What can I possibly do?”

  Five times a day, my parents prayed, the way they always did. They often prayed together. I could hear them loudly begging God to return Alaa to us. To help him in his time of need.

  — CHAPTER SIXTEEN —

  It happened on July 18, 2013: Yarmouk was completely sealed off. From one day to the next, the checkpoints were closed. No one got out. Nothing got in. No rice, no oil, no milk powder, no sugar. The siege began. The electricity was turned off. Food prices exploded.

  I suspect that the siege had been carefully planned. And Yarmouk’s particular geography made the task even easier, as if the neighborhood had been designed to be cut off from the rest of the city. It was simple. The army set up a checkpoint near the Watermelon and positioned a few snipers on Palestine Street, the linear eastern border of our neighborhood. And with that, Yarmouk and the southern suburbs were completely isolated.

  Soon, people started dying of hunger. On August 18, a six-month-old girl died while her mother was crisscrossing Yarmouk in a desperate search for baby food. The next victim was a man with kidney disease. Their deaths unsettled everyone. “Do I look sick?” people would ask each other. “My eyes are red, what does that mean?”

  Perversely, it was a sudden advantage that my father was blind. He was given preferential and respectful treatment. One day, for example, we were told that a small grove of trees in our neighborhood was going to be cut down. If you managed to sign up in time, you could get your share. So we ran to the FSA headquarters and got permission to cut down a tree. It weighed one and a half tons. We had to push our cart back and forth three times to bring all the wood home.

  In front of our building, we cut the pieces into smaller chunks, and then we split them with hammer and chisel. I piled the logs around the oven so that they would dry quicker. Now our store smelled pleasantly of tree sap.

  Every day, we could hear artillery fire and rifle salvos in the distance. In the midst of all the fighting, Yarmouk was descending into darkness and silence. Without electricity, we had to improvise. Since the washing machine didn’t work anymore, I put Ahmad’s dirty diapers in a large metal tub, put on some rubber boots, and waded around in the water. When we ran out of dish soap, we began cleaning our plates with ash. There was hardly any shampoo left. We showered with cold water only. We had hardly any soap, so we washed our hands only once a day. There was no coffee or tea left, so we started brewing hot water with cinnamon, since there was plenty of cinnamon. We almost never had milk, so we gave Ahmad water with sugar. There was no more tobacco, so I used dried mint to make cigarettes for my father.

  He smoked them in front of our store, and it smelled terrible. But he just couldn’t quit, even if it meant that he—and the rest of us—would have to endure the lingering stench. Whenever he took Ahmad on his lap, our baby ended up smelling like mint s
moke.

  One day, Tahani had had enough. She griped loudly about Ahmad smelling so badly. Now she’d have to wash him again!

  “He’s still my grandchild,” Papa shot back. “I’ll put him on my lap however often I want.”

  Tahani fell into shocked silence, realizing that she had hurt his feelings.

  In the evenings, we went to bed early. What else could we do? What could we talk about? We were living like cave dwellers now. We sat around by candlelight and indoor campfires, our faces blackened with soot.

  I couldn’t bear this lethargy any longer, this lingering sadness. I had to do something. One day, I had a crazy idea. I said to my mother, “What if we used the lentils to make falafel?”

  “What?” she asked, astonished. “Falafel?”

  That being said, I had never cooked before. Impossible, not my thing, I had no talent for it. As a child, I had burned myself with hot oil, and my mother had banned me from the kitchen. When I moved in with Tahani, I cut my finger slicing tomatoes, so she, too, had told me to stay out of the kitchen.

  For weeks, I’d been walking past those sacks of lentils, and all that time, people were starving. I had to do something.

  Falafel are normally made from chickpeas. You let them soak overnight, then add baking powder, parsley, garlic, and onions. You can add some coriander and cumin to taste, then salt and pepper. You put everything through a meat grinder and end up with a thick paste, which is then shaped into medium-size balls that are fried in oil. But I only knew all that from watching. I had never made a falafel in my life.