ZIAD IN GAZA

 

Ahmad comes into the room to check on us. He was surprised I got out of the room today. We talk about music. He speaks about his favourite singers and songs. He loves an Egyptian song called My Beautiful Country. He thinks that a current singer is the owner of the song, but I tell him that it is a cover. He surprises me when he tells me he does not know the original singer.

“Dalida? Who is Dalida?”

“Dalida is a world-famous singer and actor born in Egypt, but who rose to fame in Europe in the 70s. Then she went back to Egypt and started singing in Arabic.”

I search in my mobile and find the original song. It is a nostalgic one about the home country, the first love there and hoping that one day she will return. It was the first time I listened to the song in the last five months, and this time, it felt completely different.

I think of my apartment, which is less than an hour away from me by car, as a far place that I wish to go back to one day. I scroll through my photos to see pictures of a life I used to have that no longer exists. It breaks my heart.

After Ahmad left, I started looking for other songs by Dalida on my mobile. I played my favourite one – a French song called Je Suis Malade – which she covered after Serge Lama. Such songs made me believe in the importance of the written word; how the writer was able to describe the extreme sadness they were going through after losing their loved one. In the song, she says that being away from her loved one is similar to when her mother left her in the evenings, alone with her despair; that being away from him is like being an orphan in a dormitory.

In a weird way, I related to the lyrics more than ever. I do feel left alone, like a little boy, scared of what the future is holding for me; missing a home and a complete life full of friends and beautiful details, in a blink of an eye.

But unlike the song, which starts by saying, “I do not dream any more”, I do still have dreams. I dream of taking a hot shower, of eating strawberry ice-cream and being safe.

It is that seed of hope. That stubborn little, strong seed of hope.