Doha, Qatar — They stroll along the Doha seafront and sing softly about the 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 vocalist and only woman. “I want to return to Gaza, walk and clean its streets, hug my family and sing with the band in the place where we started.”
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 retaliated with a military campaign that has so far killed more than 35,000 people and devastated large swaths of Gaza.
In April, the five bandmates were able to leave Gaza via Egypt to Qatar.
The band, which formed in 2012 and plays 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. Their 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 endured previous rounds of war between Israel and Hamas, which has ruled the strip since 2007.
“Living under a siege, an occupation and experiencing very difficult circumstances… music was 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 area’s first percussionists, and his grandmother played the oud, a lute-like stringed musical instrument 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 to return” 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 as long as their internet connection allowed. Music continued to be his lifeline and his main hope; They created songs, often in the rubble, with 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 referred to those killed by Israeli airstrikes, particularly children.
“My children are birds in the sky, I am lucky to have them in heaven,” says one song. “All my life I waited to raise them and see them grow before my eyes.”
In shelters and camps across Gaza, the five members of Sol Band held activities for displaced children to take their minds off what was happening. Anbar, the band’s percussionist, even taught how to keep time as a drummer.
They posted videos of themselves in tents, playing guitar and drums, with smiling children singing along.
“The children’s interaction with the music and how they forgot everything that is happening around them… showed me the importance of music in our lives and the effect it has on the Gaza Strip,” he said.
The five members of the band who left Gaza via Egypt for Qatar were scheduled to perform at the first stop of their “The Journey Begins” tour at a Palestinian cultural festival in Doha. Although the band has achieved international fame, like other Palestinians, they possess travel documents that often involve complicated requirements and sometimes face outright visa rejections.
“Our passports are Palestinian and our birthplace is Gaza,” Anbar said. “This made it very difficult for us to get visas.”
With shows pending in Belgium and Tunisia, there’s little guarantee they’ll get there. And if their visa situation is not resolved in Qatar, the five will eventually have to return to Gaza… and to an uncertain future.
“Would the plans we had before the war still be carried out?” asked Hamada Nasrallah, a vocalist. “We don’t have clear answers.”
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