Excerpt from The Pianist from Syria by Aeham Ahmad, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Ziad had loved his wife more than anything. They had married for love; it wasn't an arranged marriage. His wife had been his best friend. They had three daughters. Their new baby was their first son.

As the photographer was setting up his camera, a woman appeared carrying a tray. She had decided to make coffee for us, using the last bit she had, which she had saved for a special occasion. She wanted to share it with us and listen to the music. "What you're doing is very important," she said, pouring me a cup. I smiled at her with immense gratitude, savoring the wonderfully bitter taste of the coffee.

Then I noticed a chirping sound, and looked up to see three birds perched on a second-story balcony right across from me. It seemed a miracle, for normally birds vanish as soon as the shooting begins. Only very few of them find their way back to Yarmouk, and those are usually shot down because people are hungry. When I began to play, the three birds started singing again.

Everything came together for me—the chirping of birds, which I hadn't heard in so many months; the aroma of the coffee, which I had been longing for; the rage born out of hunger; my aching eye where my son had poked me; the lingering taste of cinnamon; my exhaustion from getting water that morning; and the haunted gaze of Ziad al-Kharraf when he'd asked me to make his poem into a song. Ziad's pain, the starving children of Yarmouk, and my brother's disappearance were all tearing at my heart. I was angry that the piano was out of tune, angry at my wounded hand. Closing my eyes, I began to sing, pouring all my despair into Ziad's poem.

My song became a cry, the cry of a man plunging into an abyss and giving voice to his descent into hell.

I Forgot My Name

I have lost my name

Its letters and its meaning

I have lost the words

That I need to sing my song

That was when Niraz must have snapped the picture.

Today people sometimes ask me: When you lived in that Palestinian camp, what color was your tent? Although Yarmouk was officially a "refugee camp," it was in fact a real neighborhood with real buildings. I used to own an apartment, a nice spacious apartment. I sold ouds, and my business had been thriving. But the war had destroyed it all. A grenade had cut the tendon between two of my fingers. A girl who had been standing next to my piano one day had been shot to death, and finally, the Islamic State had burned my instrument to the ground.

I would soon be exiled from Yarmouk, forced to leave my world behind. I would become one of those miserable gray figures, one of the millions who were now streaming into Europe. Some people think we only came to get a share of the wealth. But they don't understand us, don't know why we're forced to come. They're afraid of us.

And that is why I want to tell my story now in these pages. I want to raise my voice to dispel some of the fear and the lies. For pictures, too, can lie. Even if they contain a trace of the truth.

Excerpted from The Pianist from Syria by Aeham Ahmad. Copyright © 2019 by Aeham Ahmad. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.