Lyrics: Mary Kouyoumdjian
Music: Mary Kouyoumdjian
[all words are spoken as documented in interviews]
A new voice, AKIL.
AKIL
We have a really wonderful childhood especially in wintertime. Like those days we have we go out and play and we getting wet and we see all the pigeons coming out.
Old friends, and everybody there. And I remember we go and we buyâwe call it over there [Arabic word]âis just like a bagels. We build a small fire and just heat them up and eat them while it's raining outside. It's a really great memory.
My name is Akil and I work at uh Catholic Family Center as a job counselor.
I'm from Iraq, south of Iraq.
I have two brothers. One of them a doctor and the other one he is a math teacher. And my older brother, the doctor, he started working in some ⊠some hospital and at night the Baath Party, they bring somebody, they beat almost to death. And they tell him: âOk, you haveââ. And they give him [my brother] a shot.
They told him you have to inject him with this shot. He know what the shot is. So, it's going to kill him right away. So, he said: âI spent all my life studying medicine to help people but not to kill people.â
He said: âI know what youâre doing, but I know my job and I cannot do that. And he left the room.
Next day they come into the hospital and took him, and we don't know that, like, for about six months, we don't know what's going on.
They call my father and, back there in our culture if you say "dog" it mean really like a âbitchâ here, so: "Come in and take your dog.â
And they told him to bringâ
And they told him to bring the money forâ
And they told him to bring the money for the bullet that they shot him with.
A moment here.
Few months after, they took my other brother.
They took him and he got killed becauseâŠ
MILAD
Most of the time the Taliban, if they've been hear the news from anyone that they have musical instrument, they ⊠they used to come and then they used search for it.
AKIL
They said: âYou start to create a kind of underground party and you planning to do uprising and all of that.â
MILAD
The people used to afraid of the Taliban and they used to dig and bury their instruments under the ground. And there was a family who was burying their piano under the ground.
AKIL
And you know my dad always told me you know just keep your mouth shut. Do not say anything.
Keep your mouth shut
Keep your mouth shut
MILAD
And then, when the Taliban left in the Karzai time, they took it out.
They took the piano out of that yard.
But it was under the rain and snow and sand for two years and there's a lot of things that were broken.
And then, finally, I could convince my father to buy that piano for a couple of hundred dollars. I mean, we have no hope that I could fix that one day. The piano was like 60 percent destroyed.
There was a guy who was making harmonium and living in Pakistan, and I could find him, finally, and he could fix the keys for me, and it could sound like a piano. It was not professionally in a good situation, but at least it was the piano.
AKIL
You know in college and in every class, there is somebody who is writing to the government what's happening in class. So, I have someone in our class that he hate me.
And the end of the third years of college, they came in and they took me from classroom. So, they come and knock the door, say: âAkil Aljaysh.â They took me like that ⊠even ⊠I couldn't take my books and stuff.
So, I've been tortured.
They used to put us in one meter corner. About 17 people, standing, all the day all the night.
MILAD
It was a dream come true. I couldn't sleep. I've been practicing all the time. Iâve been cleaning my piano, and I've been sleeping under the piano.
I used sleep under it. It was a dream come true. But at the end of this story, I sold it because of my mother.
AKIL
So, I've been tortured in prison. Those, um, my two fingers. This one been chopped because this isâI used to be left-handed ⊠so, like, that this metal doorâthey closed the door for two or three hoursâso, this one survive. But this one is being chopped off.
MILAD
And because we had to buy a LED TV for our house.
AKIL
They closed the door for two three hours.
MILAD
I could notice the, sort of the sadness in my mother's face when guests were coming and we didn't have any TV.
AKIL
I never thought that a human being can take this much.
MILAD
That is a very common thing to have TV in our house. And I sold it for a few hundreds. And then we bought a TV. And then I lied to my mom, and I said I can find much, much better than this piano. She didn't know that there is no pianos in the country like that. I knew it was one of the very few that could survive from the war.
AKIL
You will think nobody will survive. But we stillâ
And because my father he has some influence, so he pay bribe. And after about six months and half I just got out of jail, and he said âYou know what? Youâre not going to stay here. I donât want to lose you just like I lost your brothers.â
Becoming fractured.
I donât want to lose youâ
This metal door they closed.
I lost your brothersâ
Because in the beginningâ
This metal door they closedâ
Youâre not going to stay hereâ
You cannot imagine howâit's not aboutâ
Just the feelingâ
They closed the doorâ
Your family they will never see youâ
You're sitting with yourself; this what happened to meâ
And I have toâ
And I have toâ
I have to deal with it.
After⊠when they start beating you, you feel it in the beginning and then something is like stone inside you. You don't feel it. I mean you feel it but it's just like you donât. You will think nobody will survive.