bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Three years of siege, famine and bombing of his Damascus refugee camp didn’t kill celebrated musician Aeham al-Ahmad, but something died inside him the day jihadists burned his beloved piano in front of his eyes.
It was then that Ahmad, whose music had brought consolation, even a bit of joy, to Yarmuk camp’s beleaguered residents, decided to join thousands of others and seek refuge in Europe.
“They burned it in April, on my birthday. It was my most cherished possession,” Ahmad said, which is following his odyssey online, step-by-step.
“The piano wasn’t just an instrument. It was like the death of a friend.”

WATCH: Musician Aeham al-Ahmad play piano for children in Damascus refugee camp
For 27-year-old Ahmad, whose songs of hope amid the rubble of Syria’s largest Palestinian camp became a social media sensation last year, “it was a very painful moment”.
Since Syria’s civil war struck Yarmuk in 2013, the once-thriving neighbourhood saw its population dwindle from 150,000 Palestinians and Syrians to barely 18,000 people.
The camp was caught up in fighting among government forces, rebels, and jihadists and suffered a devastating siege by the Syrian army. About 200 people died from malnutrition and a lack of medicines.
Ahmad became a symbol of hope, helping Yarmuk’s people - particularly its children - forget for a moment the brutal war raging around them with every note he played.

“The days when I felt the most helpless were when I had money, but I could not get milk for my year-old baby Kinan, or when my older son Ahmad would ask me for a biscuit,” he said.
“It was the worst feeling.”
But after Islamic State group militants attacked the camp in April, Ahmad’s gentle, tentative ray of light was engulfed in flames.
He was in a pickup truck, trying to move his piano to nearby Yalda, where his wife and two boys were living, when he was stopped at a jihadist checkpoint.

“Don’t you know that music is haram (forbidden by Islam),” a gunman asked, before torching his beloved instrument.
Ahmad had stayed in Yarmuk until the day IS reduced his battered but precious upright piano to ashes: “That’s when I decided to leave.”
He would make for Germany, from where he would then try to get his family out of Syria.
He began the dangerous journey out of Damascus “as rockets rained down”, heading north through the provinces of Homs, Hama, and Idlib until he reached the Turkish border.
“At every step, I would meet another trafficker of human flesh,” he recalled.
With the help of smugglers, he avoided Turkey’s increasingly watchful security forces by crawling through barriers of barbed wire and spending nights sleeping fitfully in dark forests.
With other Syrian men, women, and children, Ahmad trekked through mountainous terrain to reach the Turkish coast.
“Once, we went 24 hours without eating a thing; the children were so hungry they would cry. It was horrible,” Ahmad said.
On September 10, he began posting pictures on Facebook to document his journey.
The first was of his emaciated face. When he was in Yarmuk, he weighed a mere 45 kilos.
When he finally arrived in Izmir on the Mediterranean, Turkey’s second port, Ahmad was shocked to see refugees “sleeping on sidewalks as they couldn’t afford a hotel room”.
A trafficker arranged for him to spend the night in an apartment “full of rats and insects”.
Then, he and some 70 others were crammed into a tiny van heading to the coastline, where they would take a dinghy to the Greek island of Lesbos.
They each paid smugglers $1,250, as thousands of others had done, knowing they might not survive.
Suddenly gripped with fear, Ahmad took to his Facebook travel journal, “Diaries of a Traveller in the Sea”.
“Dearest Mediterranean, I am Aeham and would like to safely ride your waves,” he posted on Monday.
When the first rays of sunlight struck the sea at dawn on Thursday, Ahmad found himself on a Greek beach.
Tapping along on his knees, he sang a tragic tune about the “death haunting” his country: “Tragedy has crossed the seas/ Syria implores its displaced children to return.”
Dreaming, like so many others, of reaching Germany, Ahmad made his way to Macedonia, then Serbia, and was on his way to Zagreb Saturday night “if they let me in”.
“It has been non-stop,” he said. “I haven’t slept for the past three days; I am exhausted. I hope I will reach my destination soon.”
“I want to play in the streets of Berlin like I played in the streets of Yarmuk,” he said.
But his dream doesn’t end there.
“I would love to play in the most famous orchestras, touring around the world and conveying the suffering of those that are besieged in (Yarmuk) and of all the civilians still in Syria.”


Spain to buck Trump trend and legalise thousands of migrants

Hundreds feared missing or dead in Mediterranean shipwrecks, UN says

Farage’s Reform UK attracts another high-profile Conservative defector

Britain’s surging Reform UK party draws big-name Tory defector

Europe’s refugee crisis

His beloved piano burned by Islamic State thugs, a Syrian musician joins refugee tide to Europe

Aeham al-Ahmad, a former resident of Damascus' Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp, plays the piano in the middle of the street. Photo: AFP

Palestinian and Syrian residents of Yarmuk Palestinian Refugee Camp crowd a destroyed street as food is distributed, in Damascus, Syria. File photo: EPA

Islamic States militants have captured large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. Photo: Reuters 

Thousands of desperate migrants pour into Austria as Europe’s refugee crisis intensifies

Migrants crush the Austrian side of the border between Hungary and Austria, near Heiligenkreuz, Austria. Some migrants were injured when they were pushed by others and fell over a wall at the checkpoint. Photo: EPA

Refugees wait at the border entry point in Nickelsdorf, Austria. Photo: EPA

Migrants queue up for buses after they arrived at the border between Austria and Hungary. Photo: AP

Kick starter: Tripped refugee is offered chance to resume football coaching career in Spain

Osama Abdul Mohsen (right) and his son Zaid (left), 7, a Syrian refugee who was filmed being tripped up by a camerawoman as he fled police in Hungary, in front of their new home in Getafe, outside Madrid. Photo: EPA

Mohamed Labrouzi carries Zaid, the son of Osama Abdul Mohsen, a Syrian refugee who was filmed being tripped up by a camerawoman as he fled police in Hungary, arrive in Madrid. Photo: Reuters

The refugee father, fleeing police in Roszke village, falls onto his son after being tripped by a Hungarian camerawoman. Photo: Reuters 

The camerawoman was fired from her job at the right-wing N1TV online channel. Photo: Reuters

Canada to accept 10,000 Syrians within one year after being criticised for moving too slow

Canada could accept 10,000 Syrian refugees within one year by simplifying and speeding up the immigration application process. 

Canada's Conservative leader Stephen Harper. Photo: AP

Croatia says it's 'forcing' Hungary to take in refugees as thousands of exhausted people pour over their borders

Migrants crowd the border crossing between Rigonce in Slovenia and Hamica in Croatia today. Photo: EPA 

Refugees gather at the Hungarian - Austrian border in Heiligenkreuz, Austria yesterday. Photo: EPA

News

World

Ahmad became a symbol of hope, helping Yarmuk’s people - particularly its children - forget for a moment the brutal war raging around them with every note he played.


His beloved piano burned by Islamic State thugs, a Syrian musician joins refugee tide to Europe

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Ahmad became a symbol of hope, helping Yarmuk’s people - particularly its children - forget for a moment the brutal war raging around them with every note he played.

Ahmad became a symbol of hope, helping Yarmuk’s people - particularly its children - forget for a moment the brutal war raging around them with every note he played.