Facing the constant threat of airstrikes and shelling, 15-year-old oud player Youssef Saad from Gaza rides his bicycle through the war-torn streets of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, his instrument strapped to his back.
Saad sings to children who have suffered daily horrors in 11 months of conflict, trying to offer them a little joy or distraction.
“The houses in my city were once full of dreams,” Saad said, looking at the rubble of the decades-old urban refugee camp, which was built up and densely populated before the war. “Now, they are gone.”
Saad was studying at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in nearby Gaza City before it was reduced to ruins in the war that devastated much of the enclave.
Now living with relatives after his own home was destroyed, he is one of five siblings whose future has been destroyed.
His father, a Palestinian Authority government official, has always supported Saad’s dream of becoming a musician.
But now, Saad’s focus has shifted. He spends his days at a day center in Jabalia, playing his oud and singing to children traumatized by war.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli records.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza killed more than 40,800 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, displaced nearly the entire population and destroyed the besieged enclave.
“Every house holds a tragedy,” Saad said. “Some have lost a mother, others a father, a neighbor or a friend.”
Despite the danger, Saad is determined to continue his mission.
“We try to help improve their mental health, even if it means putting myself at risk,” he said. “That’s my duty to the children.”
And he refuses to give up on his dreams for the future: “We, the children of Palestine, strive to remain resilient, even in the face of genocide.”
Saad says he lives by a saying that helps him get through the darkest days: “If you live, live free, or die standing like the trees.”
This content was originally published in Gaza teenager sings for children facing daily horrors of war on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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