GAZA STUDENTS GAZE : HOPE GLOBAL ESSAY

STRINGS of hope in a city of ruins. Gaza's young musicians keep playing through the war's silence.

GAZA : A student's lilting song drifted through a tent in Gaza City, weaving over the soft hum of instruments and the quiet harmonies of backing singers - a fragile melody that seemed almost otherworldly amid streets now more accustomed to the deadly rhythms of bombs and bullets.

On August 4, young students gathered for a lesson led by teachers from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, who have continued instructing from displacement camps and damaged buildings after Israel's bombardments forced the closure of school's main facility.

'' When I play, I feel like I'm flying away,'' said 15-year-old Riffan-al-Qassas, who began learning the oud, an Arab lute, at age 9. '' Music gives me hope and eases my fear.'' Al-Qassas says her dream is to perform abroad one day.

That aspiration resonated during a weekend class at Gaza College, a school battered by Shelling.  Violence returned to parts of the city on August 12, with Gazan health authorities reporting more than  120 deaths over recent days.

The conservatory was founded in the West Bank and has been a cultural lifeline for Gaza since it opened a branch there 13 years ago, teaching classical music along with popular genres. That changed after Israel launched its war on the enclave on October 7, 2023.

Before the bombardments, Israel sometimes granted the best students exit permits to travel outside Gaza to play in the Palestine Youth Orchestra, the conservatory's touring ensemble. Others performed outside Gaza, giving concerts in both Arabic and Western traditions.

After 22 months of bombardment, some students are now dead, said Sohail Khoury, the conservatory's  president, including 14-year-old violinist Lubna Alyaan, killed along with her family early in the war.

The school's old home lies in ruins, walls collapsed, and a grand piano has disappeared.  

Few instruments have survived the fighting, said Fouad Khader, who coordinates the revived classes for the conservatory. During last week's session, more than a dozen students gathered under the tent rustling plastic sheets to practice on instruments carefully preserved during the war.

'' NO FIG LEAF will wither inside us,'' the boy sang, a line from a popular lament about Palestinian loss through generations of displacement since the 1948 creation of Israel.

Three female students practiced the song Greensleeves on guitar outside the tent, while another group of boys tapped out rhythms on Middle Eastern hand drums.

Teachers have bought some from other displaced people for students to use. But some have been smashed during the bombardment, he said. Instructors have experimented with making their own percussion instruments from empty cans and containers to train children/students, Khader said.

This Master Essay continues. The World Students Society thanks Reuters.