There is one image that keeps a Gaza musician going like no other - that of the territory’s only concert grand piano. Khamis Abu Shaban had finally risked returning to the music school at which he taught - and which owns the piano - a few months into the current conflict. What he saw, at the Gaza branch of the Palestinian music school, the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, was “a catastrophe”.
“More than half of the Conservatory was burned. All the instruments were broken, thrown outside. You start seeing cases of instruments as soon as you get close to the Conservatory on the streets.
Violins, we had more than 50, completely smashed. Cellos, more than 40, completely smashed.” Altogether, the Gaza branch of the Conservatory used to have more than 400 instruments - both Western classical ones and traditional Arabic instruments such as the oud, qanun and nay, a type of flute.
Khamis says he felt “completely destroyed”. But then he saw something which lifted his spirits. “The only.
.. instrument that I saw standing was the grand piano.
Honestly, I smiled when I saw it. I smiled and I laughed.” The Yamaha concert grand also withstood bombing in a previous war between Israel and Gaza’s rulers - Hamas - in 2014, and was carefully restored the following year by a French music technician.
It became a symbol for many of aspirations that the territory could develop a flourishing musical culture. “I started talking to the piano,” says Khamis. “I asked:.