The Pianist from Syria

by Aeham Ahmad

  But now I was convinced it could be done with the red lentils. They were hard as rocks, so I soaked them for two days. Then I added some clover that grew in the meadows of Yalda, and seasoned it with the only spice still available: a premade Asian spice blend from a nearby ramen factory that had recently been ransacked by a few militiamen. I put everything through the meat grinder, shaped a few falafel, and fried them in oil. When I tasted one, I noticed that the spice blend added a hint of curry to my falafel. But other than that—excellent! Now it was my mother’s turn. “These are good!” she said.

  I beamed. Finally, I had something to do. A few days later, I opened my makeshift falafel stand. I sat down on the ground a few yards outside our shop, with a small burner in front of me and a tub of lentil dough beside me. Then I got started. I charged ten Syrian pounds for two falafel, the regular price in Damascus. It never occurred to me to charge more, just because people were hungry.

  Soon, the locals started lining up at my falafel stand. Driven by hunger, people came from as far as Yalda, and they didn’t seem to mind standing in line for an hour. Even FSA fighters stood in line, their Kalashnikovs casually slung over their shoulders. I politely asked them to return unarmed. They agreed.

  Tahani and I made at least fifty-five pounds of dough every night. Into the meat grinder we put the red lentils, the clover, and the spice mix—that’s all we needed to make our siege-falafel. Tahani asked me not to sit outside all day because it was too dangerous. But I didn’t listen. During each shift, I must have made about three thousand falafel. Samer, a distant cousin, helped me. He was the only relative I still had in Yarmouk. He would fish the falafel out of the oil, take the money, and hand the falafel to the customers.

  I had plenty of oil. The militia had also looted a potato chip factory; the frying oil was sold on the black market, in lots of fifty-five pounds. I bought ten blocks, to stock up.

  All I needed was gas for my burner. But that was available, too. You could simply burn some plastic and then let the black smoke cool down in a flue. You ended up with a liquid resembling gasoline. All you needed to do was burn plenty of furniture, doors, or carpets. Plastic items were the first things people burned. Entire apartment blocks were gutted. After all, plastic pipes were sticking out of the walls, and those pipes made for valuable fuel.

  On some days, I made falafel from eight in the morning until seven in the evening. My starving customers were beaming with joy when they bit into the hot falafel. They were singing praises for me. God help me!

  Still, I felt miserable. I was angry. What had I become? Not too long ago I had dreamed of a music career. I had thought I’d be an entrepreneur. I had been a regular guest of Feisal Jamal, one of the best pianists in the country. And now I was crouching on the ground, frying lentil dough, my clothes full of oil stains. It felt like a punishment. What had I done to deserve this?

  I heard people whisper: He’s the piano player. And they nodded toward our store. I saw the surprise in their eyes, the spite. I heard the whispers, the hissing.

  “Ah, who have we here?” an acquaintance called out one day as he passed by. I had heard that this man entered empty apartments, searching for food. “If it isn’t Mr. Piano Player!” he said. “You have a calling for frying falafel now?”

  “Yes!” I said briskly, fuming with rage. “I am a pianist and a falafel salesman! At least I’m feeding my family and not stealing food!” What had become of me?

  On one of those evenings, I sat with a few neighbors around the fire in front of our store. It sounds quaint, but it smelled terrible, since all we had to burn were plastic bottles. Wood wasn’t worth burning for just a campfire. But at least the plastic bottles gave off a good amount of heat and light.

  We sat there exchanging the usual gossip. So-and-so has died. What happened to so-and-so? Who’s handing out soup to the needy these days? That soup, by the way, was made with nothing but water and the Asian spice mix.

  At one point Tahani came out and asked, “Why don’t you play something for everyone? Come, I’ll bring you the accordion!”

  “Really?” I asked. “Out here, in the middle of the street? At this hour?” After all, it was eleven at night.

  Tahani threw me a loving and determined glance. She seemed to say: Who cares? She went inside and brought me the accordion. She could no longer bear seeing me so downcast.

  I began to play. A song by Fairouz that everyone knew. The depressed glances brightened; the boys began to sing along. And then another song. And another. Our mood brightened, and the fire from the plastic bottles didn’t seem to stink quite as badly. It turned into a beautiful evening.

  * * *

  One day at around noon I was crouching on the ground, as always, ceaselessly frying falafel, with Samer by my side. The line seemed endless: somewhere between fifty and a hundred people stood in a row—I hadn’t counted. Suddenly, there was an explosion. The pressure knocked me over, unconscious.

  When I came to, my ears were ringing. I saw people running through the swirling dust. I could hear their screams, but everything sounded dull, as if it were happening far away.

  Samer shook my shoulder. “Aeham, Aeham,” he said, “are you okay?” His pants were covered with oil.

  “Yes, I’m okay,” I murmured. I was dazed, and there was no pain. I could feel something wasn’t right. But what?

  “Are you sure?” he cried. “Your hand is bleeding!”

  I looked down. Blood was pouring from my right hand, pumped out to the beat of my heart. “What’s going on?” I murmured.

  “We were hit by a grenade.”

  He took a small towel and pressed it against my hand to stop the bleeding. Then he helped me to my feet, saying, “Can you walk?”

  I tried. Yes, I could walk. But I still was in a daze.

  “Quick, let’s get you to the hospital!”

  We took off. The grenade had struck the corner of a nearby building. Just a few yards closer and we all would have been dead, dozens of people. Like me, the bystanders had been hit by grenade splinters or debris. Ahead, people were carrying a man on a blanket. His face was covered in blood; his body dangled left and right as if it were made of rubber. I knew him—he often bought falafel from me. He was dead.

  I examined my right hand. My index finger and my middle finger were hanging down. When I tried to move either finger, something at the back of my hand moved as well, right under the skin.

  That’s it, I thought. It’s over! My tendons are cut, I’ll never play piano again. Just a few days ago, I had been improvising with a piece by Mozart. Had that been my farewell performance? Still, my left hand continued to work. Perhaps I could play with only my left hand, and my three remaining fingers on the right. I remembered a YouTube video about a man who played extravagant piano pieces with only two fingers. And another one where a guy played with only his toes. If I practiced with my remaining fingers . . . And so, with me wrapped in my thoughts, we entered the makeshift hospital in al-Hajar al-Aswad, right behind the men carrying the dead man.

  It took me a while to get used to the murky light in there. Back in the old days, this had been a banquet room for weddings, but now the hall had been sectioned with linens and blankets into twelve stopgap exam rooms. The dead man was gently placed on the front left cot. I sat down one cot over. The leather had dark spots that looked like dried blood. There were not many other patients, since there hadn’t been as much artillery fire lately.

  After a few minutes, a man came to see me. His white coat was full of bloodstains.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I was selling falafel on the street and a grenade exploded. A splinter hit me.” I showed him my right hand.

  “Okay, I’ll take a look,” he said. He put on his magnifying glasses and pointed a pen light at my hand, asking me to move the fingers. He tested my reflexes, observing which parts were numb and which were in pain.

  “The grenade splinter separated the part of the finger connecting the finge
r extensors of your index and middle finger. I saw a doctor sew something like that back together once. I could try it.”

  “You’re not a doctor?”

  “No, I’m a carpenter.”

  “A carpenter?”

  “But I’ve worked with our doctor here for the past six months. I’ve done many operations. Under normal circumstances, I would suggest amputating both fingers.”

  “Please don’t! I’m not really a falafel salesman. I’m a pianist.”

  He smiled. “I’ll try. We’re not very busy today. But I can’t make any promises. You might not be able to feel those fingers anymore.”

  “Please, give it your best.”

  “Close your eyes,” he said. “Relax, don’t move, and don’t look at your hand.” He held a piece of cotton with an anesthetic on it under my nose and I drifted into unconsciousness.

  Samer later told me that the carpenter had lifted the two severed pieces of tendon with pincers and sewn them back together. Then he had sewn up the wound and bandaged the two fingers, placing a splint inside the bandage. The whole procedure had taken about two hours.

  Once I woke up, he asked Samer to take me home. And he told me, “Don’t you dare play piano! You have to wait at least two months before you can move your fingers again. Good luck.” I nodded and stumbled out of the room. The dead man was still lying on the front cot.

  When I got home, Tahani was furious. She had heard the explosion, seen the puddles of blood, and asked everyone about me. But no one had told her I had been wounded. By now, people hated giving bad news. No one wanted to be confronted with another’s grief. They preferred to say nothing at all, or they pretended they didn’t know.

  After four weeks, I took off the bandages to look at my wound, and to check out the black nylon stitches. My fingertips were cold, but the flesh under the fingernails was bright pink. The area was completely numb.

  I sat down at the piano and began to play. One—three—two—three—three—four—one—four. And again. Scales. It was painful, but I was able to do it. In the first two days, I played for half an hour, later a whole hour, and then an hour and a half. Years after that, in Germany, I went to a doctor who x-rayed my fingers and examined them. “Your fingers couldn’t possibly work,” he said. “And you want to play concerts?” He told me that the nerves in both fingers were seventy percent damaged. I had no idea how I was able to play.

  Within a week of the operation, I was able to sell falafel again. We set up shop a few streets away, away from the bloodstains. Samer and I switched places. Now he was frying, and I took care of the sales. And again, the line went almost around the block. If your stomach is empty, you don’t care that you might be hit by a grenade.

  People were so hungry that when it was their turn, they took the hot falafel and looked at them with something akin to love. They smelled them and nibbled a little bit. Then they gently took the first real bite. And finally, they joyfully pushed the whole falafel into their mouths. Some had picked some bitter greens somewhere, a little bit of dandelion, wild arugula, or clover, and they added it to their meal. They ate like it was their only meal that day. And it probably was.

  — CHAPTER SEVENTEEN —

  One day, when Samer and I were selling falafel, I saw a small, plump woman rush past. She was wearing a headscarf and a lot of makeup, and was holding her son and daughter by the hand. The three of them looked pretty, with a healthy dark skin tone. But something about them was odd. They seemed from a different time, the time before the siege. They didn’t fit here.

  Two or three times, I saw the woman come by with her children. Always well-dressed and made-up, she walked in a proud, upright manner. She always came from the same direction, passing our line of customers and then turning right. I started wondering why she was wearing so much makeup and where they were going. Finally, the fourth time she appeared, she lined up for some falafel.

  “Hello, Teacher Aeham,” she said when it was her turn. Oh, my goodness! My jaw dropped. She must have known me from before. “Three falafel, please.”

  The children had nice clean faces and looked like perfectly normal children on a perfectly normal school day. Which made it all very strange. When she called me “teacher,” she reminded me that underneath all those layers of lentil dough I wasn’t just a falafel salesman.

  “Do you know me?” I asked, smiling.

  “Of course,” she said. “You’re Aeham, the teacher. I know you. My husband, Raed, knows you, too.”

  I was bursting with curiosity. “Where exactly are you going every day? Why do you keep calling me ‘teacher’? And who is your husband?”

  She told me that a professor named Abu Saussan had opened an elementary school around the corner, in the former al-Andalus Wedding Hall. The woman worked there as a teacher; her husband was the school’s technician. That’s why she was always dressed up every morning. As we were talking, I forgot to take the falafel out of the oil, completely absorbed in our conversation. I decided that I wanted to see that school.

  I closed our falafel stand earlier than usual that day and went to the old wedding hall. When I knocked on its metal door it opened a crack. I pushed it all the way open and stepped into a dark corridor. There was a generator on the floor that didn’t seem to be working, and I could hear children’s voices in the distance. I followed the voices and pushed a second door open—and found myself on the gallery level of the wedding hall. The room below me was full of children, dimly illuminated by tiny dots of light. When I came closer, I saw that they were LED lights, the kind you can find in some plastic lighters. Whoever had thought of this?

  Throughout the banquet hall, bedsheets had been hung over clotheslines, dividing the room into different “classrooms,” with one grade on one side of the bedsheet and another grade next to it. The problem was that everyone could hear everything. Ethics classes, math classes, it was all one big mess.

  In one of the makeshift classrooms, I saw a man dressed up as a clown, joking around with the kids. He was wearing a colorful woolen toupee and had pushed a pillow under his shirt. He pretended to be eating air. “Oh my God, I’m so full!” he sighed, and patted his big belly. “It’s so delicious, all this air. You should try it, too. Fill your bellies with it!” The children giggled and played along. They sucked in the air and rubbed their stomachs. I grinned. This was a lot better than the daily despair.

  And then I had a thought: Damn, I have to play piano here! I’m a pianist, not a falafel salesman! I decided to ask Abu Saussan if I could teach a music class for the kids.

  I asked around, and when I finally found his office, I knocked on the door. A voice from inside called out, “Come in!” I opened the door—and found myself in a public bathroom. There was a lot more light in here, but I didn’t see any toilets. Apparently, they had been removed. Abu Saussan was working on his laptop. His desk was an odd wooden construction that was shared with another colleague.

  Abu Saussan was past fifty, small and thin, with curly black hair. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, and had a stern look on his face. He was in the middle of a tirade: “. . . who the hell is downloading from the internet? I’ll change the password if this doesn’t stop. I can’t work if the internet is this slow!”

  Internet? Light? Laptop? In days like these, when most of Yarmouk was without power? Unbelievable!

  Finally, Abu Saussan greeted me. “What can I do for you?”

  “I would like to work here,” I said. There was no point beating around the bush.

  He looked at me quizzically. “What are you talking about? And how did you get in here?”

  Oh, right, I had forgotten. I laid it on a bit thick, telling him that I’d been aware of his school for a long time, and that I’d like to contribute and play piano with the children. Abu Saussan’s face brightened.

  “Can you come by on Fridays?” he asked.

  “Fridays? Why not during the week?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he said. “We’re a scho
ol, we have to stick to our class schedule. Music isn’t on the schedule.”

  I was taken aback. When I had first seen this place, I’d thought people here would be more open-minded and would want to brighten the kids’ days a little with music. But I would only be allowed to come on Fridays?

  “How about Saturdays?” I suggested.

  He shook his head. Fridays or not at all.

  I was perplexed. How could he be so pedantic, with all the chaos around him? I didn’t want to do it on the holy day. On Fridays, I accompanied my father to the mosque. And I knew that no one would show up for school on a Friday, since it wasn’t a school day.

  We were both silent for a moment. There seemed to be no compromise in sight. So I addressed a more fundamental problem: Would there be electricity for a keyboard?

  “Ask Raed,” he said. “He’s the technical assistant.” The term technical assistant could mean anything here in Yarmouk. The job description included not only finding alternate power sources in case of a blackout, but arranging chairs, making coffee, and peeling onions. Basically, a technical assistant was a servant.

  After leaving Abu Saussan’s office, I asked someone to help me find Raed. I was told that he was working on a video in a small room in the back of the building. I knocked on the door and went inside. Behind the camera stood a broad-shouldered man with a mustache and a happy grin. Raed. I asked if I could speak to him for a moment. No problem. He stepped out of the classroom.

  “I know you, you’re the falafel guy,” he said in a friendly voice.

  Under normal circumstances, it drove me up the wall when people called me “falafel guy.” But Raed had such a friendly smile, I couldn’t be upset.

  “I’m also a pianist,” I insisted. I told him that I had met his wife and that she’d told me about the school. “I would like to teach music here.”

  Raed hesitated, and then he said, quite intently, “You better forget about that.” He sounded oddly determined.