DOHA, Qatar – They stroll along Doha’s seafront promenade and sing softly about children who are now “birds in the sky,” flying free from the pain of the war in Gaza.
For the Palestinian group Sol Band, it seems surreal that weeks ago they were hiding from Israeli bombings.
“I just want the war to end,” said Rahaf Shamaly, the band’s lead singer and only woman. “I want to return to Gaza, walk and clean its streets, hug my family and sing with the band where we left.”
Five of the band’s seven musicians returned to Gaza in August to work on their next album.
“We had a lot of music and performances planned,” said Fares Anbar, the band’s percussionist.
But on October 7, Hamas, along with other militants, attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Israel has retaliated with a military campaign that has so far killed more than 35,000 people and leveled large areas of Gaza.
In April, the five bandmates managed to leave Gaza via Egypt for Qatar.
The band — formed in 2012 and playing both traditional Arabic songs and its own modern pop songs — has long served as a refuge for its members who grew up in Gaza amid extreme poverty and other hardships. His home, a 360-square-kilometer (140-square-mile) enclave, has been blockaded for years by Egypt and Israel. Its population of 2.3 million Palestinians has suffered in previous rounds of war between Israel and Hamas, which has ruled the strip since 2007.
“Living under a siege, an occupation and living in very difficult circumstances… music has been my only escape since I was a child,” said the band’s founder and percussionist Said Fadel.
Music shaped Fadel’s life. His grandfather was one of the region’s first percussionists and his grandmother played the oud, a stringed musical instrument similar to the lute, common in the Middle East and Africa.
Of the Sol Band songs, “Raweq Wa Haddy” or “Chill Down” is the most famous. Lyrics promising “great days coming back” now seem a lifetime away for people moving from place to place, hiding from air raids.
After returning to Gaza in August to record, the five band members filmed themselves surviving the attacks and shared the videos online whenever their internet connection allowed. Music remained his lifeline and his main hope; they created music, often amidst the rubble, with the sounds of explosions in the background. They filmed music videos from where they took shelter, urging people not to lose hope and to remain resilient in the face of adversity.
Some songs addressed people killed by Israeli airstrikes, especially children.
“My children are birds in the sky, lucky for heaven to have them”, says a song. “All my life I have waited to raise them and watch them grow before my eyes.”
In shelters and camps across Gaza, the five Sol Band members held activities for displaced children to keep their minds off what was happening. Anbar, the band’s percussionist, even taught some how to keep time as a drummer.
They posted videos of themselves in tents, playing guitars and drums, with smiling children singing along.
“The children’s interaction with the music and the way they forgot about everything that is happening around them… proved to me the importance of music in our lives and the effect it has on the Gaza Strip,” he said.
The five band members who left Gaza via Egypt for Qatar were scheduled to perform at the first stop of their “The Journey Begins” tour at a Palestinian culture festival in Doha. Although the band has achieved international fame, like other Palestinians, they have travel documents that often involve complicated requirements and sometimes face outright visa rejections.
“Our passports are Palestinian (and our) birthplace Gaza,” Anbar said. “This made it very difficult to obtain visas.”
With shows pending in Belgium and Tunisia, there is little guarantee they will make it there. And if the visa situation is not resolved in Qatar, the five will eventually have to return to Gaza – and an uncertain future.
“Would the plans we had before the war still happen?” asked Hamada Nasrallah, a vocalist. “We don’t have clear answers.”
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
