Quotes / The Pianist from Syria - A Memoir

• Everything came together for me—the chirping of birds, which I hadn’t heard in so many months; the aroma of the coffee, which I had been longing for; the rage born out of hunger; my aching eye where my son had poked me; the lingering taste of cinnamon; my exhaustion from getting water that morning; and the haunted gaze of Ziad al-Kharraf when he’d asked me to make his poem into a song. Ziad’s pain, the starving children of Yarmouk, and my brother’s disappearance were all tearing at my heart. I was angry that the piano was out of tune, angry at my wounded hand. Closing my eyes, I began to sing, pouring all my despair into Ziad’s poem.
  My song became a cry, the cry of a man plunging into an abyss and giving voice to his descent into hell.

  I Forgot My Name

  I have lost my name

  Its letters and its meaning

  I have lost the words

  That I need to sing my song

  That was when Niraz must have snapped the picture.
• Today people sometimes ask me: When you lived in that Palestinian camp, what color was your tent? Although Yarmouk was officially a “refugee camp,” it was in fact a real neighborhood with real buildings. I used to own an apartment, a nice spacious apartment. I sold ouds, and my business had been thriving. But the war had destroyed it all. A grenade had cut the tendon between two of my fingers. A girl who had been standing next to my piano one day had been shot to death, and finally, the Islamic State had burned my instrument to the ground.