by Aeham Ahmad
My father didn’t like it when someone talked down to him. But what could he do? He began pleading, until the man finally relented.
“All right, I’ll make an exception,” said the piano tuner. “My next opening is in six months.” In addition, he asked for a fee of fifty thousand Syrian pounds—about a hundred dollars. My father almost dropped the receiver. He didn’t have that kind of money. Also, we couldn’t possibly wait that long. So he hung up and tried calling other piano tuners. To no avail.
Then, my father did what he had always done in situations like that: he taught himself how to do it.
He carefully removed the wooden sound box and felt around until he found the wrest plank, which held the piano’s tuning pins. He asked a welder to make a tuning key for him. He worked at night, when the noise in our building and on the street had quieted down. He gently plucked the strings with his fingernails, then listened, then made adjustments. He canceled all his performances and guzzled countless cups of sweet black tea. Meanwhile, I slept peacefully in my parents’ bed. And then, one day, he was finished.
Soon, it was time for the school’s piano tester to come. People who don’t know Yarmouk sometimes think that it’s a dangerous area. There are many Palestinian groups like Fatah and Hamas, always marching around, shouting slogans, pumping their fists into the air and waving flags. The man from the music school said he wanted to park his car outside Yarmouk. My uncle Amin had to go pick him up.
The man greeted my father, nodded at me, and took his seat at the piano. He played every key, all seven octaves, going note by note, first playing every C, then every D, then all the Es, and so on. After that, he tested the pedal. Meanwhile, my father stood in the doorway, listening.
“Very good,” the man said at last, then he closed the lid. “It’s well tuned.”
My mother had prepared a meal for him: tabbouleh, a finely chopped salad of tomato, parsley, bulgur wheat, and mint; maqluba, a dish of meat, rice, and vegetables; and kibbeh, made with lamb and bulgur wheat. We all lounged on pillows in the living room. The man ate with gusto.
“I want to apologize to you,” he suddenly burst out, directing this to my father. “I’m the piano tuner you called a few weeks ago. I was arrogant and treated you unkindly. I’m sorry.”
My father smiled. As I said, he hated being condescended to. Now he was enjoying his victory.
“The piano is tuned wonderfully,” the man added. “Who did that?”
My father smiled and shrugged, but he said nothing.
* * *
At last, my piano lessons could begin. Three times a week, my father and I went all the way across the city to the music school. If traffic wasn’t too heavy, it took us ninety minutes each way. My father dropped me off with Rana Jneid, my first teacher. Later we both took the minibus back.
I didn’t like Rana Jneid. She never smiled at me, she never gave any praise, and it was impossible to please her. If I was ever late, if my bus had been stuck in traffic, she would always yell at me. But if she was the one who was late, which happened often, she floated into the room, all dolled up as if she were going to a dance. Then she curtly said, “Go ahead.” Not a word of apology.
At each lesson she wore a different dress, scuttling down the corridors in her high heels. Back in those days, everyone had Nokia cell phones with interchangeable cases, and there were dozens of colors and themes to choose from. Rana Jneid always color-coordinated with her dress. Whenever she wore a blue outfit, for example, she had a matching blue cell phone case.
Normally, pianists don’t have long fingernails. It makes it harder to play. Except, of course, for Rana Jneid. Her fingernails were long and blue—like her dress—and they scratched across the keys.
One day I played an étude by Czerny for her. Carl Czerny was a student of Beethoven and a teacher to Liszt. His pieces were particularly hard to master. Generations of piano students have struggled with his compositions, and I was no exception. Rana Jneid was standing behind me as I played. Then I heard the beeping of a cell phone. I turned around and saw my suspicions confirmed: while I was toiling away at the piano, she was playing with her phone.
It had taken me two hours to get here, and now my teacher wasn’t even listening to me. I played louder, hoping to gain her attention. Forte, fortissimo . . .
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Rana Jneid. A girl named Sandybell came in. She was older than me, a proper young lady. She wore a dress and high heels. I had heard that her father owned a paint factory. Sandybell was one of the privileged kids who were dropped off here by a chauffeur. Her parents had been nonchalant enough to name her after a cartoon character: Hello! Sandybell was a popular manga show.
Out of nowhere, Rana Jneid acted like a completely different person. She smiled at Sandybell. “How nice to see you,” she gushed. Then she discussed Sandybell’s next private lesson with her.
Sandybell left, and at once, Rana Jneid’s warmth was gone. She motioned for me to keep playing while she turned her attention back to her cell phone.
I was deeply annoyed. What gave her the right to treat me like a second-class citizen? To act like I was worthless? Why did I have to deal with her status issues?
I remember running into Sandybell one other time. Again, I had a lesson with Rana Jneid in the small practice room. But I kept making the same mistake, always at the same place. Rana Jneid lost it. “You’re an idiot!” she called out. “You just don’t understand! C major! Not C minor!”
She threw the music sheets off the music stand. The sheets hovered in the air for a moment, then they gently slid to the ground.
I began gathering them. As I was crawling on the floor, there was a knock at the door. Sandybell entered. At first, I only saw her expensive pumps. She gave no indication that she even noticed me. She only wanted to know when her next private lesson was scheduled. Then she left. By then, I had collected all the sheets. But Rana Jneid ended the lesson. “You need to practice more!” she snapped at me.
For two years, Rana Jneid bullied me. I never heard a single word of encouragement from her. On several occasions, she told me to simply quit the piano, that I just wasn’t good enough. I told my father. He went with me to the next lesson. He wanted to talk to her. He even brought her a little gift.
“Please be understanding of Aeham,” my father said, oozing charm. “I promise you, he will practice more.” But even his efforts only improved her behavior for a short while.
The music school made me unhappy. I didn’t like going there. I simply didn’t belong in that world.
After two years, my father gave in and sought a meeting with the school’s deputy principal.
“Please don’t misunderstand,” he began. “Rana Jneid is an excellent piano teacher. But somehow, she and Aeham don’t click. Would it be possible to assign him a different teacher?”
The music school charged no tuition, which meant that you couldn’t make any demands. The man pondered what my father had said.
“Really, it’s entirely our fault,” my father cooed. “My son simply can’t understand her, but he so desperately wants to continue his musical education.”
I was assigned a new piano teacher.
Her name was Cosette Bakir—I wondered if her parents had named her after the character in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. She was no better. Bakir had studied in France, but she was a terrible pianist. She played choppily, like a child. On top of that, she was condescending and unfriendly. One time, while playing a piece by Mozart, I made a mistake, and she hissed at me, “Again!” I made the same mistake. Her voice grew harsher: “You don’t understand. Again.” I made the mistake a third time. “Why do you keep making the same error?” she snapped at me. “What are you, some kind of parrot?”
No small wonder that I was grateful for Irina Ramadan. She was the piano player who was married to my father’s friend and through whom we bought the piano. Irina had studied at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy in Kiev, before
she met her husband and moved to Damascus with him. She was tall, blond, and elegant. She didn’t work and had no children. Maybe that was the reason why she treated me like her own son. “Chhhhhabibi,” she called me lovingly, drawing out the “ch” with her thick Russian accent.
She taught me the true meaning of music. She taught me how to listen to the pieces, how to find their exuberance or melancholy. With her, I forgot my joyless Syrian teachers who only paid attention to my mistakes, who seemed intent on smothering any joy I might take in music. Her fingers rushed playfully and boisterously across the piano keys. Music that had seemed stifling suddenly became free of heart. With her, I felt my playing become lighter and unconstrained, like the effortless flow of a Mozart sonata.
“Bach is like our daily bread,” Irina Ramadan impressed upon me. “He’s the foundation of everything. Without Bach, something is missing.”
Another time, she told me, “You can’t own Beethoven. You can only explore Beethoven.”
Or: “Keep playing Czerny, you’ll learn a lot about composition.”
One day, when I came to her, I saw her drinking a red juice.
“Irina, may I have some of that juice?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s not good for children.”
“Then why do you drink it?”
“Because I like it. Let’s get started now.”
“But if it’s not good for children, it can’t be good for grown-ups either.”
“Enough. Let’s play.”
Now I was curious. I kept asking her about the mysterious juice, but she always evaded my questions. Finally, I asked my father about the red juice. Why was it so alluring to grown-ups but bad for children? He laughed out loud. “Aeham, she was drinking wine! Alcohol!” So that was it! Alcohol. My father never touched that mystery juice.
I visited her every Monday for five years. When you’re that young, your teacher is everything to you. If you like your teacher, you give it your best. If you don’t like your teacher, you lose your passion. “Very good, Aeham,” Irina Ramadan said, full of praise. Then she rewarded me with a piece of dark Russian chocolate. “Chhhhhabibi, before your next test, eat a piece of chocolate, it will make you happy.”
At long last, she had to return to her home country. During our final lesson, she had tears in her eyes. “Promise me that you’ll never give up music,” she said. “Music is a miracle; it will always be there for you.” I nodded.
“And promise me that you’ll never forget me.” I promised.
— CHAPTER THREE —
Every day, my mother and I went to the same elementary school. She was a teacher there, and I was a student. For me, this was highly problematic. I stuck out. Is he dressed properly? Did he comb his hair? Did he do his homework? Ugh! I wanted to be just like the others. But it was impossible. Whenever I misbehaved in class, my teacher would scold me: “I’ll tell your mother.”—“Why can’t you tell my father?” I would say. “Like the other kids?”
Syrian schools had an almost military feel to them. If you forgot your homework, if you disrupted class or if you caused any trouble, you had to hold out both hands, palms up. Then you were given a few whacks with a small cane. After each recess there was a muster. We had to line up and stand straight while the principal made an announcement.
And each Saturday morning—the first weekday in Syria—we all had to gather to salute the flag and sing the Syrian national anthem. I would sit at a keyboard on a small stage and play the melody. Fifteen hundred boys were singing:
The great blossoming plains of Syria are like noble towers
They touch the highest sky
Such a land that blossoms in its glowing suns
Is like heaven itself
I didn’t like this kind of music. All that clanging brass reminded me of military marches. But what could I do? I was the only keyboard player in the school, not to mention the son of a teacher. I couldn’t very well back out.
One day, during recess, I got into a fight with another boy. He pushed me, I pushed him back, and soon we were both tussling. He ended up falling down and hurting his face. He touched his bleeding lip—and pulled half a tooth from his mouth. Crying, he ran to a teacher.
At the end of the next recess, we were standing in line, and my mother got on the small stage, held up my opponent’s tiny piece of tooth, and said, “Aeham has hurt one of the other boys. As you know, he is my son. Therefore, it is up to me to punish him.”
I stepped forward, tears in my eyes. “But he started it,” I said pleadingly. “If someone pushes you, you come to me,” my mother replied. “But you can’t just start fighting.” Then I had to hold out the palms of my hands, and she administered three short strokes with a small cane. In front of everyone.
I went back to my class, crying. It didn’t hurt much at all, but I felt humiliated. How could my own mother do this to me?
In the afternoon, when we were home, I cried and asked her why she had done this. “I had to, Aeham,” she said. “Or they would have thought that I favor you. And that would have been very bad for both of us.” Wait, what? I had no idea what she was talking about.
The next Sunday, everything was as it used be. The boys were singing, I sat at the keyboard, the flag was raised. When the final chords had faded, my mother went to the microphone and said, “Aeham has been accompanying us on the keyboard for two years now, and he’s been doing a very good job. We should thank him for playing.” She began to clap. Fifteen hundred boys joined in.
For the first time in my life people applauded me. Did I enjoy it? I’m not sure anymore.
* * *
After sixth grade, I went to middle school. The principal was a terrible man, quick-tempered and always eager to yell at people. The teachers were afraid of his explosive rage, and the students were terrified of his punishments. The school was financed by the UNRWA, which meant there was no compelling reason to play the Syrian national anthem. But the principal insisted. He was Palestinian, but he was so eager to assimilate that he had even joined Assad’s Baath Party. Each Saturday morning, the students stood ramrod straight in the schoolyard, singing the national anthem, accompanied by a trumpeter, a drummer, and a keyboard player—me. It seemed I just couldn’t escape the marching music I hated so much.
One morning I came too late. I had bought sweets by the school gate and had forgotten about the time. Then I saw that the gate was closed. Any other student could have simply climbed over the wall and discreetly taken his place in the row of pupils. No one would have noticed. But not me. “Where is Aeham Ahmad?” the principal called from the stage. He summoned my homeroom teacher, but he could only shrug his shoulders. “How dare he come late!” the principal said, enraged.
That’s what the others had told me. While all this was going on, I was still outside, banging against the school gate. Finally, the groundskeeper came. “I’m the keyboard player,” I said. “Please let me in!” He reluctantly opened the gate and walked me toward the stage. The principal glared at me, his eyes gleaming with rage. “How dare you come too late!” He nearly leapt at me. “This is an affront! The hymn celebrates our country!”
“It’s not our country,” I murmured.
“What?” the principal snapped. But he had heard me loud and clear. And probably the others had as well, because the microphones were turned on. A second affront in one day. He launched into a lengthy discourse. Syria! Homeland! Acceptance! Integration! Fatherland! And so on and so on. When he was finished, he ordered us to sing the hymn. He led with a forceful voice:
Guardians of our homeland, peace be upon you
Our proud spirit can never be conquered
The native home of Arabism is a sacred shrine
As the throne of the sun is an invincible kingdom
Two hours later I heard an announcement on the PA: “Aeham Ahmad, please come to the principal’s office.” Was I afraid? No. What could possibly happen? The worst-case scenario was that he would ask my father to come in an
d that he would complain about me. Other children might shake in their boots at the thought, because their fathers would let them have it. But I knew Papa would be on my side.
Just as he had been before. One time, during music class, I had refused to play Middle Eastern music. That afternoon I had an exam at the music school, and it was just too much to try to squeeze these two completely different musical systems into my brain. Like I said: In the Western world, an octave is divided into twelve half tones, and in the Eastern Hemisphere into eighteen quarter tones, which is why classical Arabic music can’t be played on a piano or a guitar. In my view, it was very reasonable to not play Arabic harmonies that day. But my music teacher was irate, and the principal summoned my father.
A short while later, Papa was in the principal’s office. He agreed with the music teacher on all points. “Yes,” he said. “Aeham has made a mistake. He shouldn’t have refused, and it won’t happen again. Thank you for teaching him Arabic music.”
But when we walked home together a little later, he said to me, “You can do what you want, but be respectful to your teachers.”
This kind of support was an incredible gift. I was allowed my own opinion, and I didn’t have to fear his wrath.
The door to the principal’s office was open. I went in and stood in front of his desk. Of course, no one offered me a seat. The principal launched into yet another political lecture, and it was considerably longer than the first. Hospitality! Gratitude! Friendship between nations! And so on. Once again, I wasn’t paying any attention.
On the principal’s desk were three small flags: the Palestinian flag, the Syrian flag, and one more flag that I didn’t recognize. It was dark blue, with a circle of yellow stars in the middle. Whose flag was that?
When the principal had finished his tirade, I asked him about it. “Oh, that’s the flag of the European Union,” he told me. “Our school receives funding from Europe.” Europe? “Great!” I said. “I should play the European anthem next time!”