In Syria's starving Yarmuk camp, a pianist conjures hope

In the Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus, the notes escape a piano set in a scene of destruction and the children in Ayham al-Ahmed’s little group sing of hunger and suffering.

The music in the Syrian camp, under siege for a year and wracked by violence, seems at odd with the brutality that is all around.

It is almost reminiscent of the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish pianist in the World War II, immortalised in the film “The Pianist” directed by Roman Polanski.

“I loved that movie, which I saw in 2007, but I never thought that I would come to embody such a character,” Ahmed told AFP, contacted by the Internet.

In photos posted on Facebook, the 26-year-old plays the piano in streets littered with debris, his face growing thinner with each passing month.

Once a thriving neighbourhood home to 150,000 Palestinian refugees and Syrians, Yarmuk has been reduced to a shell of its former self in the conflict that began in March 2011.

Caught in fighting between rebels and the regime, just 18,000 residents remain, suffering under a government siege that has caused the deaths of some 200 people in a year, including 128 of hunger.

“I weighed 70 kilos between the siege, today I weigh 45,” says Ahmed.

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In Syria’s starving Yarmuk camp, a pianist conjures hope