The Pianist from Syria

Starred review from October 22, 2018
Pianist Ahmad shares a powerful account of his escape from Syria and the music that ultimately saved him. Ahmad became known worldwide after a photograph of him playing a piano in the rubble of Damascus in 2014 appeared in newspapers around the world. A second-generation Palestinian refugee, he was raised to love music by his blind violinist father. The 30-year-old musician grew up in a suburb of Damascus in the 1990s, and later attended the Damascus Music School. Ahmad describes the difficulty of living as a Palestinian in Syria, writing about how beginning in July 2013 the refugee camp of Yarmouk was without electricity or hot water. (“I suspect that the siege had been carefully planned. And Yarmouk’s particular geography made the task even easier.”) While delivering food to his neighbors, Ahmad was hit by a grenade, his hand irreparably damaged. Yet Ahmad retained his love for music, wrote songs, and fitted his piano with wheels in order to play on the streets. His performances were uploaded to Facebook and YouTube, which made him a target for radical groups yet also drew the attention of foreign journalists who covered his many performances. With the help of German musicians, Ahmad emigrated to Germany with his wife and children in 2015. This is a deeply moving account
of one man’s struggle to survive while bringing hope to thousands through his music.

November 1, 2018
The moving story of a Palestinian musician and his family suddenly thrust into the perilous vortex of the Syrian civil war.In a book originally published in Germany, Ahmad, a humble pianist and cherished son in his Palestinian refugee family, chronicles his young life and early ambitions as a new husband and father in Yarmouk, Syria, before the Arab Spring and subsequent war shattered his adopted land. The author was born to a teacher mother and a blind violinist and carpenter father, who essentially raised the boy, taking him to school and compelling him to apply to the State School of Music in Damascus. Ahmad was a talented pianist, but his status as a poor refugee son rendered him a charity case at the music school; at public school, he was bullied "because I was so small and skinny." Moreover, as a child of parents with torn loyalties, he could not adequately demonstrate the necessary obsequiousness to the Syrian state of Bashar al-Assad. Remarkably, the author and his father opened a thriving music store in Yarmouk, where they gave lessons and built ouds to be shipped all over the world. With the coming of the civil war in 2012, the author was in his early 20s, engaged to be married, and increasingly aware that the Syrian regime was using the Palestinian refugees as pawns in a game involving the "alleged Zionist conspiracy" with Israel. Entrenched in their hometown and determined to stay despite the bombing and snipers, Ahmad used his musical prowess to galvanize his community, organizing gatherings for young people and videotaping his efforts to export hope to the besieged Syrians at large. Ultimately, the town was sealed off, overrun by the government and rebels alike, forcing the family to flee. Ahmad's dangerous solo journey to Germany forms the last part of the book, as his story aroused the concern of Western aid and refugee groups.Well-rendered and affecting, this is a fine delineation of the plight of an unwitting protagonist in the Syrian conflagration.

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December 15, 2018
Ahmad's memoir follows him building his life as a musician before the crisis in Syria rips it apart. Ahmad attracted international attention through YouTube videos of him playing piano amidst the rubble of his city in 2014. The child of Palestinian refugees, he traveled across Damascus daily to study piano at the State School of Music. He was very close with his father, a blind and accomplished violinist who encouraged Ahmad's musical studies. When he finished school, Ahmad taught piano lessons and sold musical instruments with his father. In 2012, soon after the birth of his first son, Ahmad's neighborhood, Yarmouk, fell under siege. His family struggled to survive until he fled to Germany in 2015. His memoir provides a look at day-to-day life during the siege. He brings readers inside Yarmouk, where passing through a checkpoint means risking arrest, and snipers shoot starving people as they wait for UN aid boxes. His is a unique and affecting viewpoint on life in Syria before and in the midst of extreme violence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)