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After an Israeli strike on Dahiyeh in 2024, I was filmed playing the cello amid the rubble on Abdel Nour Street in Southern Beirut. I chose John Williams’s Schindler’s List theme – a piece I find tender yet grave and dignified. With the video being circulated again amid the ongoing conflict in Lebanon, it carries a different kind of weight – not only as a reflection of a difficult moment, but of what it means to continue making music in the shadow of repeated violence.
I didn’t grow up in a house full of musicians. There was no inherited discipline, lineage of conservatory training or an expectation that I would build a life around an instrument as demanding and intimate as the cello. It arrived in my life almost like a personal calling. I was the only one who heard it differently. I was drawn to it not as a hobby but as a language I needed to understand myself. What attracted me was not only the sound, but a sense that the instrument could say things I couldn’t articulate yet. Even at a young age, it seemed to offer a kind of emotional precision – a way of reaching my inner self without having to explain aloud.
When I first encountered the cello, its sound and human quality moved me. There is something about the instrument that feels similar to a voice – not the polished one we present to the world, but the inner one that hesitates and breaks you. It has both gravity and warmth and can hold sorrow without exaggerating it. I felt that even when I was young.
For me, taking this path was not an obvious choice. In many families, especially in our region, art is admired, albeit from a distance. However, I stayed with it. Over time, it stopped being a choice and became the core of my days – the discipline through which I understood emotions. I became a full-time musician, playing in an orchestra and participating in concerts at the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music. I also started teaching cello privately and at music academies across Beirut and the south, which gave it another meaning in my life. Teaching is a way of transmitting technique as well as a belief that sound and attention matter, and that beauty is not a luxury but a form of endurance. With students, that idea becomes even more tangible. You are not only teaching posture or phrasing; you are helping someone slow down, listen and understand what they are feeling. In difficult times, this kind of discipline can become a source of steadiness.
War changes the scale of things. Suddenly, what once seemed stable turns provisional and the surroundings become unfamiliar. In such moments, music changes too. It is no longer only performance or even expression; it becomes a way to remain unaffected by what is happening around you. Throughout the last two years of the conflict, art has been my loyal companion – something steady to return to when everything else feels unstable. This time, I felt it more deeply. Some emotions like fear, helplessness, grief and disbelief are too complex to put into words. And sometimes, music is the only form that can carry them without collapsing under their weight.
People often ask me what compelled me to play while sitting atop the rubble. The truth is that it wasn’t calculated. It didn’t come from a desire to create an image or to project symbolism. It came from a feeling I couldn’t contain any other way. When I stood on the street, surrounded by destruction, the silence was unbearable. Not literally, because war is never truly quiet, but in the moral absence that follows. I took the cello there because it was the most honest response I had. I didn’t want to explain the scene or showcase it. I just wanted to somehow stand in it and respond through the only voice I knew to trust. There was dust everywhere and a strange stillness that felt heavier than noise. The street was once familiar, but had been altered beyond recognition, and that dissonance stayed with me. Playing did not resolve the feeling, but it allowed me to face reality instead of looking away from it.
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The piece that I chose carries sadness with a sense of composure that seemed right for that moment. As I played, I kept thinking about the people affected – the lives disrupted, the families forced to leave and the shock of seeing familiar streets altered. In a concert hall, sound is held by its surrounding space, but amid the rubble it meets something far more exposed, and that inevitably changes the way it is heard.
What moved me most was the response of people around me. They watched me play with the expression we have all come to know too well in Lebanon – grief held together by resilience. When the video started to go viral, I was overwhelmed by the response. I received messages from Lebanon, the Arab world and even Europe. Many wrote not about me, but what the image had made them feel – heartbreak, pride, recognition, sorrow, tenderness. I think the video resonated because it was not about one cello player, but a scene many in the region understand instinctively – the persistence of culture in the aftermath of destruction and the refusal to let violence have the final word.
Arabs have always known that music is not separate from life. It accompanies celebration, of course, but also mourning, exile, waiting, prayer, revolt and return. In times of crisis, it becomes even more essential as it protects what war tries to destroy – the spirit. It reminds people that they are more than victims of a conflict. They are human, remembering, meaning-making beings. A song, a maqam, a lament, a bowed phrase on a cello don’t stop the bombs. However, they preserve something that violence seeks to erase – the human capacity to feel deeply and remain recognisable to oneself. Perhaps this is why music travels so quickly through our collective memory. Long after spoken words are forgotten, a melody can remain, carrying with it the emotional truth of a moment. It helps people gather their feelings and sometimes endure what would otherwise feel unbearable.
In our part of the world, a melody can feel especially charged in moments of catastrophe. It isn’t necessarily a form of escape. In a sense, it’s a witness. It says, “This happened and we are here to feel it. Ruin is real, so is memory and resilience. And there is still a pulse under all the debris.”
I don’t think music heals in a simple way. Some wounds never leave you. Some losses simply can’t be translated into beauty. Yet sound can create a space in which grief isn’t denied and dignity isn’t diminished. For me, that’s already a form of resistance. To play music is to hold on to humanity and continuity. To carry a cello in a damaged street is, in a quiet way, to insist that we can rebuild and find beauty again.
If the video continues to stay relevant, I hope it’s not because it was dramatic, but because it captures something true. It means that in Lebanon, and even across the region, art doesn’t wait for peace to become essential; it matters most precisely when the same has been disrupted.
This article was originally published in the May 2026 issue of Vogue Arabia
