I listened to the Piano piece for the first time, and then five other times in the following days with my father who thought it was amusing how engaged I was with the piece. I loved “Clair de Lune” because of its the simplicity and delicate piano that allowed to drift to vast worlds of my own imagination.

Through the years, I would listen to it on my balcony, and instead of imagining and daydreaming “Clair De Lune” started to make me feel more tuned with the happenings of the neighborhood. The sounds of the streets of Damascus at night, our neighbor talking to his kids on the ground floor, and my mother’s daily conversations about the recent gossip in the family. Years passed, and listening to Clair de Lune became a ritual of mine, I would play it on my mp3, and later on my phone, to embrace and reflect on my surroundings.

Neighbors decorating their houses with colorful lights and tapestries to announce the arrival of the holy month of Ramadan. The beautiful smell of Jasmine engulfing the capital in the spring. The purr of a small cat, a regular visitor to our neighborhood, especially when one of the neighborhood kids sneaked out to fed it some kind of meat. Even in the holy evenings of Ramadan, I listened to “Clair de Lune” because it became even more beautiful when everyone else was praying and silence fell on the city for a couple hours. I would do it with my family, as my mom put out delicious dishes of fresh fruit, my dad hummed along with the music, and my pious grandmother complained about how it’s a sin to listen to music during the holy month.

As I entered my teenage years, I branched out of the realm of classical music and switched my music taste to fit my friends and their pop obsession, and soon enough “Clair de Lune” was forgotten for awhile. This estrangement lasted until, one lonely night, when I was mere 15, and the rebels started to approach Damascus through my neighborhood. The first night when I heard bombs and bullets right outside my window, I hid under my blanket, too scared to move. That night I listened to “Clair de Lune” for the first time in what seemed like forever. It’s beautiful piano allowed me to imagine myself far away once again, but this time I did not dream of the possibility of new adventures, I dreamt that I was safe. “Clair De Lune” comforted me through the longest night of my life, acquiring on a whole new meaning. As the war continued to spin me and my family around, and we left our home and moved to different houses in different cities, I listened to “Clair de Lune” to numb the world surrounding me as it gradually became increasingly bleak and brutal.

Now, I listen to Clair de Lune in my dorm room in college, thousands of miles away from where I was first introduced to it’s melody. It does not comfort my anymore. The musical piece changed along with me. Through the years, it has become a way for me to process. I listen to it during long winter nights or summer evenings as I continue to reflect on my life. Being Syrian, Arab, and if I will ever be able to go back to those innocent nights on my Damascus balcony. Even if I go back to my balcony now, it will never be the same. The music will not be able to break the now permanent silence in my somewhat empty neighborhood. The jarring silence, honoring its former resident, and their attempt to find a safer place to live somewhere else.

Claude Debussy’s masterpiece represents my personal nostalgia and a wish to return to a place that only lives on in my most precious memories. It enables me to reflect on my journey to adolescence, surviving a collapse of my home, and my travel to foreign country, that I always dreamt of visiting as a kid. Yet, a younger version of myself would be shocked to know that I am not truly happy, and that my current residence has not treated me well either. After all, it is not perfect, just like Syria is not and never was. The only glimpse of perfection I have witnessed was during the beautiful somber balcony nights, listening to “Clair de Lune” and admiring Damascus’s eternal beauty.

By Hadia Bakkar

Hadia Bakkar is a junior majoring in political science with a minor in media and film studies. Her many passions include creative writing, journalism, and social activism on campus! She can be best reached at hbakkar@skidmore.edu.