The Pianist from Syria

by Aeham Ahmad

  I’m a pianist. I’ve never waved flags. My revolution is music. And the world began to listen. It was a miracle.

  — CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE —

  In late August 2014, with Yarmouk still sealed off from the rest of the world, the bombs continued to fall and snipers were hiding on the rooftops. It was impossible to leave the neighborhood, and we remained cut off from supplies.

  On one particular day—the worst day of my life—I had once again gone out to get water, together with my friend and neighbor Marwan. Afterward, I lay down again to get some more sleep.

  I had a dream. I was sitting on a stool by the side of the road. People were running past me, panicked. To my right, a short way down the road, was a wolf. It was howling, and its head was stretched upward. That’s what people were afraid of. They wanted to get away, but they couldn’t. They ran back and forth, a strange and rigid look on their faces. And I sat on my stool, unable to get up. I kept staring at the wolf, watching it as it howled. The panicked crowd swarmed all around me. It was eerie. . . .

  Then I woke up. A small stone hit the window. I heard the voices of little children calling from downstairs: “Teacher Aeham! Teacher Aeham! Come on down!”

  I got up to look, and saw six girls standing on the street, jumping up and down and waving at me. “Teacher Aeham! Come on down! We want to sing!” That’s how they always did it.

  Zeinab stood to the right. I had met her a few months ago at a cultural center where I had made music with the kids a couple of times. Zeinab played the drums. She was twelve years old, more cheerful and a lot cheekier than the others. “I like rap music,” she once told me in a serious voice, drumming a hard beat on the table with her fingers. I liked her at once, and invited her to join the Yarmouk Kids.

  From then on, she came by all the time, and we would all sing together, in my store or out in the streets. With most songs, the kids all sang the chorus together and Zeinab would rap. For her, music was a weapon. That was her idea.

  She’d told me that her father was sick and had to leave Yarmouk, and that he’d come back as soon as he felt better. One day, when we were singing out in the streets, Zeinab’s mother came by. After I said hello and asked about her husband, she took me aside, telling me he’d died in a bombing attack. But she didn’t want Zeinab to know.

  On this morning, the girls were looking at me expectantly. I rubbed my eyes, still dazed by that terrible dream.

  “Not today, kids. I’m too tired.”

  “No!” they said. “We want to sing! We’re bored. We don’t want to sit around at home anymore!”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Marwan looking out the window of his building. He, too, had heard the girls. I waved at him. He shrugged his shoulders. Why not? he seemed to say. I relented—I still curse this day—and went downstairs.

  Together, we got the piano and began pushing it. Zeinab told us that she wanted to make a video for her grandmother, who had left Yarmouk. So we decided to shoot our video near the building where the old lady had lived.

  We pushed the piano into the middle of the street. The children waited near the building, where it was safer. I opened the piano lid. Marwan was ready and nodded. I closed my eyes and started to play a song. Marwan walked around with his video camera, filming us. At the end of the song I looked up. He gave me a thumbs-up. I closed my eyes again and began playing a second song. Marwan continued filming. Everything was normal.

  Then it was time to get the kids involved. Marwan grouped them around the piano, giving a signal when he started filming. I began playing the first few bars of “Yarmouk Misses You, Brother.” I nodded at the kids, giving them their cue to start singing. Their clear, bright voices echoed through the street. It felt good, and I closed my eyes for a moment.

  Then I heard a shot. I opened my eyes—and saw Zeinab lying on the ground, to my right. Blood was seeping from her head.

  I jumped up and bent over her.

  “Zeinab, Zeinab, are you all right? Oh God, what happened?”

  Marwan and the other kids had dashed away, crouching in front of a store.

  “Aeham, come!” Marwan yelled. “The sniper is going to kill you.”

  I ran for cover. “Maybe she’s still alive!” I cried. “We have to get her!”

  The other girls sat there, frozen, staring at us with big eyes. Marwan ran into the building and came back with a long pole. We managed to push the pole up Zeinab’s pant leg and pull her toward us.

  I cried out to Marwan, “Get the kids to safety!” Then I took Zeinab in my arms and started running.

  The blood was still seeping from her head. It ran down my left arm. I was sobbing. People were everywhere, but no one paid us any attention. Sights like this were commonplace. It took me ten minutes to reach the hospital in al-Hajar al-Aswad. This is where the carpenter had fixed my fingers, and where we had dropped off the dead man from the radish field. I stormed in, placed Zeinab on a stretcher, and called for help.

  A man in a white coat approached. I didn’t know him.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “She was hit by a sniper.”

  He checked her pulse. Then he shone a flashlight into her open eyes. “She’s gone.”

  The world seemed to crumble around me.

  “Do you know the girl?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, sobbing.

  “Would you like to notify the parents?”

  I shook my head. I asked for pen and paper and wrote down the address of Zeinab’s mother.

  “Who are you?” the doctor asked.

  “I’m nobody,” I said, and left.

  * * *

  I staggered through the streets in my bloodstained clothes. What had I done? This was all my fault! I never should have brought the children out onto the streets! I should never have led them into this world of rubble!

  I went to Marwan. He had brought the other girls home safely. I washed off the blood and he gave me clean clothes. We sat together in silence, hardly daring to look at each other.

  “It wasn’t our fault,” he said. I didn’t respond.

  After a while, I went back to my apartment.

  “What happened?” Tahani asked. I must have looked terrible.

  “I don’t feel well,” I said, and lay down on the sofa. Turning toward the wall, I began to silently cry, all the misery pouring out of me, incoherent and unstoppable. I felt as if this, right here, was the end of it all. Everything was over.

  The hours passed slowly. How could I live with this guilt?

  That night, I slept on the sofa, not going back to our bed. Sometimes, sleep came over me, but a few seconds later I flinched and in my mind’s eye, I saw Zeinab lying in her own blood as I stared into her lifeless eyes.

  The next morning, I felt as if someone was choking me. As if my heart was made of stone. I went over to Marwan’s. His face was lined with sorrow. We decided to go look for the piano.

  No one had touched it. The right-hand side and the dolly were covered with bloodstains. I thought that I would never play it again, vowed never to touch an instrument again.

  I had an acquaintance nearby. We pushed the piano over to him and asked if we could leave it there for the time being. I didn’t need it any longer. The hell with it.

  He saw the bloodstains. “Those are from a cat,” Marwan said. “Can you wash them off?”

  In a daze, I went back home and lay down again on the sofa.

  On the second day, I went up to the rooftop terrace. I didn’t want to live. It was over. Yes, I had meant well. And I had put so much effort into it all. I had wanted to sing with the children, to laugh, to forget the war. And now a girl had died, and it was my fault.

  I went to the edge of the terrace. I’d been courting death for too long. I had kept playing piano, even though I had known the risks. At any point, a grenade might have killed me. There are videos where you hear shots in between the piano chords. Death was everywhere. And I would have been ready for it. Why hadn’t tha
t dilettante of a sniper aimed better? Why hadn’t he shot me? Why Zeinab? She was twelve! A young girl!

  I sat down on the balustrade, feeling as if my life was over, as if I had died along with Zeinab. I didn’t want to keep on living. I couldn’t bear this guilt. . . .

  At some point, I gathered myself and went over to Marwan. We greeted each other with silent nods. And then we sat down and cried together.

  “Dammit!” he yelled, jumping up and punching his fist against the wall. “Why the kids? We were only singing!”

  Marwan lived with his mother, who had heard the shouting. She came in and wanted to know what was going on.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  For a week, I could hardly speak or eat. Tahani was worried. I had told her nothing.

  But at long last, the pain started loosening its iron grip.

  Marwan and I went to get the piano. There was water damage. We had stored it with a friend of mine who had hosed it down to wash the blood off. My friend Raed used to be a housepainter, so I asked him to paint the piano white. Another acquaintance painted the Palestinian colors on it, with a calligraphy in black, red, and green. I sat down at the piano and started playing. It was more out of tune than ever. I played “Yarmouk Misses You, Brother,” the song that Zeinab never finished singing.

  But I had to keep on living.

  Two weeks after Zeinab’s death, a few children stopped by my store again; they wanted to sing. I said yes. We made music, but we stayed in the store. And then, a few weeks later, it was September already. We pushed the piano back out into the street. But from now on, we only played in narrow, crowded streets where the snipers couldn’t reach us. I sang with children again. With different children. At a white piano.

  My chest was so constricted that I could hardly breathe. You can see my frozen gaze on the videos we made in those days. My face was like a mask. The children were singing cheerfully, laughing and jumping around. They sang with passion, but I was distracted. I had struggled and lost. I no longer believed in the power of music.

  Back in those days, I never talked about Zeinab’s death. What could I have said? And who was to blame? Assad’s henchmen? The snipers of the al-Nusra Front? Perhaps. They had targeted me for a while, irritated by our music. But I couldn’t dare accuse them publicly. Only Marwan and I knew what really happened. We knew the debt of blood we owed. And we pledged never to tell anyone.

  Zeinab’s mother never came to see me. I’m not sure she knew that her daughter had died next to my piano. I didn’t dare approach her. What could I possibly have said to her?

  Not a day passed when I didn’t think of Zeinab. And whenever I did, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. Every time I closed my eyes to sing “Yarmouk Misses You, Brother,” I saw it all again, as if it were happening right here, right now.

  But all that came later.

  Much later.

  When I arrived in Europe, when the fear and the terror were slowly subsiding—only then was I able to talk about it. Only then was I able to articulate the awful truth. At first fleetingly, without any details. Then more and more often. Finally, I told the story to every journalist, whether they wanted to hear it or not. I thought perhaps my confession would help me atone for my sin. But no one was interested.

  Sometimes people told me that it wasn’t my fault. That it wasn’t me. That it was a war crime. It’s a crime to shoot at little girls singing in the street.

  That might be true, but I didn’t believe it. I would have to be reborn a hundred times before my guilt was paid off. I am condemned to live always with this guilt.

  — CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO —

  As the fall of 2014 advanced, we continued to line up for our food rations, I kept composing, and Tahani’s baby bump grew larger and larger. Zeinab had been killed in August, but I had to go on living. Tahani was nearing the end of her pregnancy. The midwife had calculated October 25 as the due date. And with each passing day, one particular question became ever more pressing: Where could Tahani go for the delivery?

  We asked at the field hospital in al-Hajar al-Aswad. Yes, they could do a C-section there, provided we brought a drip and three doses of Rocephin, a liquid antibiotic. In Europe, each dose cost fifty euros. In Yarmouk, it was worth more than gold. Not to mention that it simply wasn’t available anywhere. No one had any antibiotics left, since medicine was vital to the war effort. The regime had cut off not just our food supply, but our medical supply as well.

  So there was only one remaining option—we had to bring Tahani to Damascus for her delivery. That summer, a cease-fire agreement between the rebels and the government had gone into effect. Any sick or elderly people, as well as pregnant women, could get registered in Yalda and receive transit papers for Damascus. But no one knew if they’d be allowed to return.

  Tahani refused to even think about it. She told me that countless families had already been separated. And the thought of a difficult birth made her nervous. She insisted that I be there.

  I would have none of it. Instead, I insisted that she go to Damascus, to a proper hospital. If anything were to happen to her, I’d never be able to forgive myself. We argued for weeks.

  “I want to stay. I’m so afraid,” Tahani moaned.

  “You have to get out of Yarmouk!” I insisted. “There are no antibiotics! They’ll need to make an incision, and you can bet they don’t even disinfect the scalpels at the field hospital here. Tahani, you have to go!”

  She finally agreed. Two weeks before the due date she packed a small bag and said good-bye to my parents. I put Ahmad on my shoulders, and we left for the checkpoint to Yalda. Tahani walked very slowly, stopping every few yards, saying, “Aeham, let’s turn back. God will protect us. We’ll make it. I need you.”

  “There are no antibiotics! Please act like a grown-up!”

  We continued on our way.

  “Papa, where are we going?” Ahmad asked, perched on my shoulders. He knew something wasn’t right.

  “To visit your great-grandmother. You’ll be surprised! She’ll have sweets for you, and fruit!” I raved about how delicious chocolate was.

  But Ahmad burst into tears. “I don’t want to leave you!” he said, crying.

  “You see, he doesn’t want us to be apart either,” Tahani said.

  “It’s going to end in disaster!” I called out. “I don’t want you to risk your life, just because we have to be separated for a few days!”

  “What if I’m not allowed to return? I’m so scared.”

  “I beg you!”

  We continued in silence. At the checkpoint, we hugged. As my family walked away from me, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I saw Tahani show the soldiers her passport and transit papers. I saw them nodding at her, then I saw my wife and son turn around and wave at me, and then they were gone.

  In the evening she sent me a message: “I can’t stand it here. I want to come back to you. Tomorrow I’ll apply for transit papers for my return.”

  I called her up. We argued.

  She went to the hospital. They did an ultrasound, and we were told that the midwife had miscalculated the due date. The actual date was a month from now. Tahani called me at once. She didn’t want to wait that long. She was coming back.

  “Are you insane?” I said. I was fed up. “You’re a pregnant woman—what are you going to tell the soldiers at the checkpoint?”

  “I’ll just have to try,” Tahani said.

  “Please just wait. It doesn’t matter if you come back in a month or two. Your health is more important.”

  But Tahani wouldn’t change her mind. Every night, she wrote me the same thing: “I want to come back. I’m so unhappy. I need you with me. I’ll come back.”

  “Don’t risk your life just because of how you feel right now,” I wrote back.

  Tahani stayed with my maternal grandmother. Once upon a time, Papa had played cheerful violin music for her, to convince her to let him marry her daughter. I knew she was a wonderful person. So I called he
r.

  “Please, please, try and make Tahani happy. I insist that she stay in Damascus.”

  “I’m treating her like a queen. But she doesn’t care. She just wants to get back to you.”

  What was I supposed to do?

  Tahani called me. “I need you.”

  “Think of Ziad’s wife,” I warned her, referring to the pregnant woman who had died at a checkpoint.

  “It’ll be all right. I’m a strong woman.”

  “In Damascus, you have everything you need. Enjoy yourself! Eat! It’s good for the baby!”

  “I’d rather eat grass with you in Yarmouk.”

  “Please, I beg you!”

  And then she left for Yarmouk, in secret. I had no idea. She left two weeks before her due date. Her stomach was gigantic. She took little Ahmad by the hand, got into a minibus, lined up at the Beit-Sahem checkpoint where the representatives of the UNRWA, the Red Crescent, and the Syrian Army were standing guard. It was unbelievable: they let her through.

  She went to the second checkpoint. This one was managed by rebels. Normally, they’d never let a pregnant woman into Yarmouk, since it would be a drain on limited and valuable resources. The field hospitals were barely sufficient for the fighters.

  Tahani burst into tears. And they let her pass.

  Now it was just an hour’s walk. She continued, holding little Ahmad by the hand. She over-exhausted herself and could have gone into labor at any moment.

  I was in front of our apartment, frying falafel. Raed was filming me; we were working on a documentary about our lives.

  “Hello, Aeham, how are you?” she said nonchalantly.

  I almost keeled over. “How the hell did you get here? How did they let you through?”

  She told me the whole story.

  “Are you insane? You’re playing with your life! And the life of our child!”

  People stopped on the street and glared at us as we were arguing.