1
00:00:39,920 --> 00:00:43,524
THE PIANIST OF YARMOUK

2
00:00:47,920 --> 00:00:50,968
My name is Aeham Ahmad.
Born in Yarmouk refugee camp

3
00:00:51,049 --> 00:00:54,490
on 17th April 1988.

4 
00:00:55,880 --> 00:00:58,067
My grandfather and family 
fled Palestine

5
00:00:58,121 --> 00:01:01,302
and came to Syria to Yarmouk.

6
00:01:02,202 --> 00:01:06,986
Yarmouk camp is called a camp,
but it is a city in the heart of a city.

7
00:01:09,328 --> 00:01:11,920
I owned a music store in Yarmouk

8
00:01:12,361 --> 00:01:15,200
selling musical instruments 
and teaching music

9
00:01:15,241 --> 00:01:16,937
to the children of Yarmouk.

10
00:01:18,682 --> 00:01:20,207
It was pumping with life

11
00:01:20,284 --> 00:01:23,898
until 17th December 2012,
when the siege began in the refugee camp.

12
00:01:32,162 --> 00:01:33,981
Now they are without food.

13
00:01:34,361 --> 00:01:35,207
No water.

14
00:01:35,796 --> 00:01:36,931
No electricity.

15
00:01:37,360 --> 00:01:38,406
No medicine.

16
00:01:39,041 --> 00:01:42,293
People are dying of hunger in Yarmouk.

17
00:01:42,721 --> 00:01:44,366
The situation is catastrophic there.

18
00:01:45,680 --> 00:01:51,770
But people want to live
and go on for the future.

19
00:01:53,160 --> 00:01:57,152
My loyal friend, the piano, 
gave me hope

20
00:01:57,198 --> 00:02:01,073
to play its keys so that I can sing 
and talk to the outside world

21
00:02:01,119 --> 00:02:04,237
about the tragedy, through music.

22
00:02:04,521 --> 00:02:08,737
I was playing the piano in the streets 
of Yarmouk, telling people to return:

23
00:02:09,681 --> 00:02:11,368
"Displaced come back!

24
00:02:11,441 --> 00:02:14,860
You who explain that death
overwhelms my country...

25
00:02:14,920 --> 00:02:16,937
the Damask rose 
is waiting for you."

26
00:02:18,124 --> 00:02:20,168
I played the piano for hope

27
00:02:20,841 --> 00:02:25,661
for Yarmouk's children
and for love and peace.

28
00:02:26,922 --> 00:02:33,035
I saw the solution being that we return 
and Yarmouk would go back to how it was.

29
00:02:33,080 --> 00:02:35,087
Yalla! Let's go home!

30
00:02:35,163 --> 00:02:37,103
Let's remember when we were small…

31
00:02:37,162 --> 00:02:39,343
We played on the roof of the house…

32
00:02:39,401 --> 00:02:41,383
And we hid behind the walls.

33
00:02:41,440 --> 00:02:43,423
Yarmouk, her eyes are weeping…

34
00:02:43,481 --> 00:02:45,463
She asks: "why did my people leave me?"

35
00:02:56,440 --> 00:03:02,720
On 17th April 2015, 
my birthday…

36
00:03:02,761 --> 00:03:05,480
my piano was burned.

37
00:03:07,321 --> 00:03:12,921
I left Yarmouk with 
my wife and children

38
00:03:13,082 --> 00:03:16,529
because I was threatened like the piano.

39
00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:19,876
As the piano has gone,
Aeham Ahmad will go.

40
00:03:20,600 --> 00:03:23,950
I stayed in Damascus for
about five of six days

41
00:03:24,001 --> 00:03:26,041
then continued the 
journey on to Homs

42
00:03:26,960 --> 00:03:30,298
I realised that it is extremely difficult

43
00:03:30,361 --> 00:03:33,244
to go on with my small children 
and my wife.

44
00:03:33,320 --> 00:03:36,332
So they returned to Damascus.

45
00:03:37,120 --> 00:03:41,212
I continued on the road which was full of 
bloodtraders and warmongers.

46
00:03:45,366 --> 00:03:51,743
We entered the Syrian-Turkish border,
walking on foot for 5 km

47
00:03:51,800 --> 00:03:54,131
crossing wild, mountainous terrain.

48
00:03:55,320 --> 00:04:00,332
The majority of us were Palestinians,
as well as many Syrians.

49
00:04:01,044 --> 00:04:03,250
And they don't give
visas to Palestinians.

50
00:04:07,042 --> 00:04:12,029
From Antakya, there was a
bus waiting for refugees

51
00:04:12,081 --> 00:04:15,480
to take us from Antakya to Izmir.
And there our problems began.

52
00:04:16,279 --> 00:04:17,935
Basmane Square…

53
00:04:19,921 --> 00:04:22,441
I spent five or six days in Basmane Square.

54
00:04:22,526 --> 00:04:24,481
The situation was miserable.

55
00:04:24,550 --> 00:04:26,201
People slept on the streets.

56
00:04:27,005 --> 00:04:31,560
Some lost everything because
smugglers cheated them

57
00:04:31,628 --> 00:4:35,560
and took their money, 
so they sleep in the streets.

58
00:04:36,680 --> 00:04:40,061
I stayed for about five days in Izmir,
waiting for the sea.

59
00:04:41,025 --> 00:04:48,218
And then we were carried like animals
to the slaughter in a sealed van.

60
00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:57,297
We boarded a rubber boat that
had a capacity of 20 or 30 people

61
00:04:57,361 --> 00:04:59,173
but we were 62 on board.

62
00:04:59,682 --> 00:05:06,360
We passed about 500 meters in the water,
then the engine stopped working.

63
00:05:07,162 --> 00:05:11,848
The children are crying, the women are crying,
saying “we’ll drown, we’ll die!”

64
00:05:12,040 --> 00:05:14,181
Everyone was saying,
"I don't swim, I don't swim."

65
00:05:14,242 --> 00:05:16,141
There's nobody that swims.
I will swim.

66
00:05:16,640 --> 00:05:19,461
So I took the rope,
tied it to the dinghy

67
00:05:19,515 --> 00:05:22,181
to return the boat to shore.

68
00:05:26,721 --> 00:05:29,954
We stayed for 
24 hours in Izmir.

69
00:05:32,362 --> 00:05:34,982
Then we attempted the journey 
a second time.

70
00:05:36,561 --> 00:05:38,027
And the journey was safe.

71
00:05:38,322 --> 00:05:41,339
But I heard about lots of journeys before us.

72
00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:48,875
We arrived on the shore and walked 20 km.

73
00:05:50,416 --> 00:05:55,242
It took six hours on foot

74
00:05:55,322 --> 00:05:57,611
to reach, on the island of Lesvos

75
00:05:57,681 --> 00:06:01,156
the big ship that takes refugees.

76
00:06:01,321 --> 00:06:03,634
The ship going to Athens.

77
00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:09,612
We were told that the ship 
will arrive tomorrow.

78
00:06:11,042 --> 00:06:12,894
"You have to stay 
in that camp!"

79
00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:14,992
We went to the camp.

80
00:06:19,842 --> 00:06:22,992
In Greece, people were all over the ground.

81
00:06:23,041 --> 00:06:24,929
There are tents and smells.

82
00:06:25,001 --> 00:06:31,769
People queued to go to the
toilet in their thousands.

83
00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:36,289
My feelings?

84
00:06:37,162 --> 00:06:38,062
Shock.

85
00:06:39,242 --> 00:06:41,342
Yarmouk is more beautiful.

86
00:06:41,840 --> 00:06:44,982
I wish I had stayed in Yarmouk
and not paid all this money.

87
00:06:49,441 --> 00:06:50,855
I witnessed a lot.

88
00:06:52,360 --> 00:06:56,144
I saw women carrying their children…

89
00:06:56,961 --> 00:07:02,247
One woman was walking with three children.
Her husband had drowned in the sea.

90
00:07:02,521 --> 00:07:04,151
She survived with her children.

91
00:07:04,0481 --> 00:07:10,688
I saw a man carrying a three year old boy. He said 
it was not his child, he found him on the beach.

92
00:07:11,240 --> 00:07:14,186
His mum and his dad 
had died on the voyage.

93
00:07:15,081 --> 00:07:21,422
We were running from death, but we were
seeing it in every day, hour, second.

94
00:07:25,040 --> 00:07:27,976
We reached the Croatian-Hungarian border.

95
00:07:29,440 --> 00:07:35,964
We were stunned to see a very long 
queue of around 4000 people.

96
00:07:36,040 --> 00:07:42,244
They were standing and sleeping in lines.

97
00:07:43,160 --> 00:07:48,733
They give you a number: you might be 3100th in line
to be permitted into the Croatian-Hungarian border.

98
00:07:48,800 --> 00:07:52,936
In the meantime, we lay on the floor.

99
00:07:53,321 --> 00:07:59,086
The Hungarian treatment
was very, very bad.

100
00:07:59,162 --> 00:08:02,451
We were searched.
They took off our shoes.

101
00:08:02,520 --> 00:08:05,932
We were searched in our
underclothes, in our clothes.

102
00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:07,827
Everything was searched.

103
00:08:08,200 --> 00:08:11,019
We were searched intrusively.

104
00:08:11,674 --> 00:08:16,684
They took from the guys: combs, nail clippers…

105
00:08:17,721 --> 00:08:21,025
Anyone who had a knife,
anyone who had a mirror.

106
00:08:21,081 --> 00:08:24,272
All these things were taken.

107
00:08:31,402 --> 00:08:36,338
In Austria we started to feel
that we were really in Europe.

108
00:08:37,562 --> 00:08:40,275
A sense of freedom…

109
00:08:40,321 --> 00:08:43,355
and happiness is what I found.

110
00:08:45,360 --> 00:08:50,498
I played a Bösendorfer grand piano
at the music school in Austria.

111
00:08:50,560 --> 00:08:52,203
It was a wonderful day.

112
00:08:55,320 --> 00:08:56,993
Today I'm in Germany.

113
00:08:58,001 --> 00:08:59,546
Germany is a wonderful country.

114
00:09:00,441 --> 00:09:05,399
I was reunited with friends who
I knew from Syria, from Yarmouk.

115
00:09:06,360 --> 00:09:10,883
I’ve had many concerts and
played the piano in Germany…

116
00:09:12,280 --> 00:09:16,473
to share a message that I love
peace, that I don’t like war.

117
00:09:22,161 --> 00:09:28,592
We left to get away from the war 
and to be safe.

118
00:09:30,195 --> 00:09:32,510
We want to live.
That's all.

119
00:09:33,241 --> 00:09:37,927
I wish I could know what happened…

120
00:09:38,881 --> 00:09:45,127
Our Syria is being destroyed…

121
00:09:45,200 --> 00:09:50,678
Our patience has run out…

122
00:09:51,002 --> 00:09:56,962
We've had enough killing and destruction.

123
00:09:57,041 --> 00:10:02,881
I wish I could know what happened…

124
00:10:03,313 --> 00:10:09,583
Our Syria is being destroyed…

125
00:10:09,642 --> 00:10:15,102
Our patience has run out…

126
00:10:15,920 --> 00:10:22,763
We've had enough killing and destruction.

127
00:10:23,921 --> 00:10:28,364
My hope in Germany is to be with my wife
and my two children, Ahmed and Kinan.

128
00:10:29,522 --> 00:10:35,105
My hope in life is to deliver our message
more and more through music:

129
00:10:36,011 --> 00:10:38,907
Not all Arabs and Muslims 
are radicalised.

130
00:10:39,641 --> 00:10:45,895
We are a people who love life,
who laugh like anyone else.

131
00:10:46,812 --> 00:10:48,130
We only love life.

132
00:10:49,601 --> 00:10:52,111
God return Syria as it was.

133
00:10:52,160 --> 00:10:55,612
A place to share life, with all its…

134
00:10:55,910 --> 00:10:58,824
religions, minorities and majorities.

135
00:10:59,802 --> 00:11:01,693
And thank God there's the piano.

136
00:11:12,484 --> 00:11:20,857
In August 2016, Aeham was reunited
in Germany with his wife and two children. 
They are among the 6 million refugees
to have fled the war in Syria.


137
00:11:20,921 --> 00:11:26,688
Before the war, there were over
150,000 Palestinians living in Yarmouk.
Today fewer than 8,000 remain.