Palestinian band escapes horrors of war but members’ futures remain uncertain

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — They stroll Doha’s waterfront promenade and sing softly about kids who at the moment are “birds in heaven,” flying freed from the ache of the struggle in Gaza.

For the Palestinian group Sol Band, it appears surreal that weeks in the past they had been hiding from Israeli shelling.

“I simply need the struggle to finish,” stated Rahaf Shamaly, the band’s predominant vocalist and solely girl. “I need to return to Gaza, stroll and clear up its streets, hug my household, and sing with the band within the place the place we began from.”

5 of the band’s seven musicians returned to Gaza in August to work on their subsequent album.

“We had loads of music and performances deliberate,” stated Fares Anbar, the band’s percussionist.

However on Oct. 7, Hamas, together with different militants, attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 individuals and taking 250 others hostage. Israel retaliated with a army marketing campaign that has thus far killed greater than 35,000 individuals and leveled giant swaths of Gaza.

In April, the 5 bandmates had been in a position to go away Gaza through Egypt to Qatar.

The band — which fashioned in 2012 and performs each conventional Arabic songs and their very own fashionable pop songs — has lengthy served as a refuge for its members who grew up in Gaza amid grinding poverty and different hardships. Their house, a 360-square-kilometer (140-square-mile) enclave, has been blockaded for years by Egypt and Israel. Its inhabitants of two.3 million Palestinians has suffered by means of earlier rounds of struggle between Israel and Hamas, which has dominated the strip since 2007.

“Residing below a siege, an occupation, and residing by means of very tough circumstances … music was my solely escape since I used to be a toddler,” the band’s founder and percussionist, Stated Fadel, stated.

Music formed Fadel’s life. His grandfather was one of many first percussionists within the space and his grandmother performed the oud, a lute-like stringed musical instrument widespread within the Center East and Africa.

Of Sol Band’s songs, “Raweq Wa Haddy,” or “Chill Down,” is their most well-known. The lyrics that promise “nice days coming again,” now appear a lifetime away for people who find themselves transferring from place to position, hiding from airstrikes.

After returning to Gaza in August to report, the 5 members of the band filmed themselves surviving the assaults and shared the movies on-line at any time when an web connection allowed. Music remained their lifeline and their predominant hope; they created songs, usually amid the rubble, with sounds of explosions within the background. They filmed music movies from the place they sheltered, urging individuals to not lose hope and stay resilient within the face of adversity.

Some songs touched on these killed by Israeli airstrikes, significantly kids.

“My kids are birds in heaven, fortunate is heaven to have them,” one music goes. “All my life I hoped to boost them and see them develop up earlier than my eyes.”

In shelters and camps throughout Gaza, Sol Band’s 5 members held actions for displaced kids to maintain their minds off what was occurring. Anbar, the band’s percussionist, even taught some maintain a beat as a drummer.

They posted movies of themselves in tents, taking part in the guitar and drums, with smiling kids who sang alongside.

“The youngsters’s interplay with the music, and the way they forgot every little thing that’s occurring round them … it proved to me the significance of music in our lives and the impact it has within the Gaza Strip,” he stated.

The 5 band members who left Gaza through Egypt to Qatar had been scheduled to carry out on the primary cease of their tour “The Journey Begins” at a Palestinian tradition pageant in Doha. Although the band has achieved fame internationally, like different Palestinians they maintain journey paperwork that usually contain difficult necessities, and at instances they face outright visa rejections.

“Our passports are Palestinian, (and our) birthplace Gaza,” Anbar stated. “This made it very tough for us to get visas.”

With pending exhibits in Belgium and Tunisia, there’s little assure that they’ll make it there. And if their visa state of affairs just isn’t sorted out in Qatar, the 5 will finally must return to Gaza — and an unsure future.

“Would the plans we had earlier than the struggle nonetheless occur?” requested Hamada Nasrallah, a vocalist. “We now have no clear solutions.”