5년째 내전이 계속되는 시리아에서 가장 참혹한 곳인 야르무크에서 희망을 노래해 세계를 감동시켰던 '피아노맨'이 결국 시 리아를 떠나 난민으로 전락했다.
미국 NBC방송은 20일(현지시간) 시리아 피아노맨으로 알려진 아이함 아흐마드(2 7)씨가 독일로 가려고 시리아를 떠나 터키로 넘어갔다고 보도했다.
아흐마드는 시리아 수도 다마스쿠스 외곽의 팔레스타인 난민들이 정착한 야르무 크의 폐허가 된 길거리에 피아노를 놓고 지난해부터 노래와 연주를 시작했다.
그가 어린이들과 함께 '내 형제여, 야르무크는 당신을 그리워합니다'라는 곡을 부른 영상을 보면 이들은 "야르무크로 돌아와요, 당신의 어머니 야르무크를 버리지 말아요, 당신을 기다리고 있습니다"라고 노래했다.
아흐마드는 정부군의 오랜 봉쇄로 야르무크의 주민들이 굶거나 병들어 죽는 현 실도 노래로 만들어 세계에 알렸다.
그러나 지난 4월 수니파 무장조직인 '이슬람국가'(IS)와 알카에다 시리아 지부 인 알누스라전선이 야르무크에서 충돌한 이후 그는 희망의 노래를 접어야 했다.
지나치게 이슬람 원리주의를 강요하는 두 조직 모두 음악은 이슬람에서 금지된 것으로 규정했기 때문이다.
아흐마드는 NBC에 "4월 17일은 제게 역사적인 날입니다"라며 "제 생일인 그날 그들(알누스라전선)은 가장 친한 친구(피아노 등 악기)를 태워버렸기 때문입니다"라 고 말했다.
그는 가족들이 먹을 것이 전혀 없어 끝내 고양이를 잡아먹었다며, 지금은 처자 식을 다마스쿠스의 안전한 곳에 두고 혼자 시리아를 떠나 독일에서 미래를 찾겠다고 말했다. (연합)
<관련 영문 기사>
His piano burned by IS, Syrian musician joins migrant tide
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 told AFP, which is following his odyssey online, step-by-step.
“The piano wasn’t just an instrument. It was like the death of a friend.”
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 (99 pounds).
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 told AFP. “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.” (AFP)
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