THESSALONIKI, Greece â One afternoon in August, a group of 12 schoolchildren gathered for a music lesson in a converted shipping container in an abandoned paper-towel factory on the outskirts of Thessaloniki, Greece. Most were from Syria. The girls sat on one side of the narrow aisle running down the length of the classroom, the boys on the other. They ranged in age from about six to 13.
They took turns coming up to the front of the classroom to sing a song of their choice. Their teacher, a furniture decorator from Damascus, accompanied them on the oud, a traditional Persian and Middle Eastern string instrument.
Some sang nonsense rhymes in English, or garbled renditions of the ABCâs; Most sang in Arabic. About half an hour into the lesson, a boy of about eight stood up and started to sing a song every student appeared to know by heart.
Most of the class joined in. So did one of the schoolâs headmasters, leaning in the doorway to observe the lesson. I donât speak Arabic but could pick out the names of European countries in the lyrics. When the lesson ended, I asked the headmaster, a resident of the camp who was a journalism student before the war, about the song.
He smiled and said it was a very sad song written by a Syrian refugee, which tells the story of the refugeesâ journey to Europe. He pulled it up for me on YouTube using my phone.
How come all the kids know the lyrics? I asked.
âEvery Arab refugee in the world knows this song.â
The song is called Safarna Ala Europa, I learned, which means âOur Journey to Europe.â It was written by Nidal Karam, a Syrian refugee living in the Netherlands.
If you donât understand Arabic, the recording, which has dance-y, synthetic instrumentation and a reverb-heavy vocal track, sounds like an upbeat pop song. But this impression is belied by the profound sorrow of the lyrics:
We suffered so much, so much, on our journey to Europe
We entered many countries
I canât count them all
I canât count them all
From one train to another, the eyes did not rest
My journey was all on loans, I canât pay it back
I lived in Syria, at the edge of my nerves, my brother
Afraid of a bomb that would fall and kill us â¦
This one wants Belgium; this one wants Germany; I am going to Sweden
Oh Syria, gather us, weâre tired of exile
Itâs our fault, we will repay your debts
Over Skype, Karam told me that before he left Syria, he sang Dabke songs three nights a week at a nightclub called Tal al Sahar, which my translator â a Palestinian refugee in Syria turned Syrian refugee in Greece â identified as one of the most famous in Damascus.
Dabke is an Arabic folk dance, usually performed by men. Dancers form a long line, hold hands and dance in step. Even when performed in refugee camps, where the pervasive mood is generally one of despair, the dance looks and feels celebratory, communal and joyous.
One of Karamâs foremost musical influences is the Egyptian singer and movie star Abdel Halim Hafez, who became famous throughout the Arab world in the 1960s. Another is George Wassouf, a contemporary Syrian pop star and prominent supporter of the Assad regime. Karam is 27, boyish and handsome, and he smiled sheepishly when discussing the popularity of Safarna Ala Europa, which he attributed to its honesty. The song simply described his own experience of traveling to Europe, an experience he would wish upon no one else.
It was not an easy journey, he told me. Accompanied by two brothers and hoping to eventually reach Sweden, he traveled through Lebanon and illegally crossed the desert between Sudan and Egypt before finding a smuggler to take them to Italy by boat.
The crossing took the brothers 16 days, eight of which were spent waiting for other passengers to join them. They changed boats twice. The smuggler accompanied them until they reached Italian territorial waters, then returned to Egypt. Karamâs boat was stranded on the water for eight hours without food or drinking water before they were rescued by a Red Cross vessel and taken to Sicily.
[Karam] wants to record another song, and make a video to go with it. Further down the line, he hopes to open a restaurant with a live music show.
But their journey was far from over. After 10 nights spent in a train station in Milan they made it to Nice, only to be caught by French police and sent back to Italy. On a second attempt, they made it to Nice, and from there to Paris, where they slept in a park before taking another train to Amsterdam. There, they surrendered to the police and were taken to an overcrowded refugee camp, where Karam spent a month until he was granted an interview by the Dutch asylum agency and eventually given permission to spend five years in the country. He now lives in an apartment in Utrecht.
He wrote Safarna Ala Europa in the Amsterdam camp, where he shared it with fellow refugees. He didnât have enough money to produce it, but a friend from Aleppo, who had owned a record store in Syria, now lived in Germany and had set up a studio. Karam sent him a recording of the song via the messaging app WhatsApp. His friend mixed it, added instrumentation and published it online.
The popularity of the song has not changed his life, he told me, except that people now sometimes ask him whether he was the singer.
What are his plans for the future? I asked. He wants to record another song, and make a video to go with it. Further down the line, he hopes to open a restaurant with a live music show.
At another refugee camp near Thessaloniki, I met a 10-year-old Syrian Kurdish girl named Ileen, introduced to me by a volunteer as one of the campâs best singers.
I asked her what the song is about, and she responded simply: Itâs a sad song.
I asked her if she knows Safarna Ala Europa, but she didnât recognize its name, so I pulled out my phone and played it for her.
She instantly started to sing along. She knew all the words and had a clear, confident voice. Her uncle taught it to her before leaving Syria, she told me, and she sang it for many people in Turkey before coming to Greece, and has since performed it at events organized by the campâs volunteers.
Later she gathered a group of friends and they all sang the song for me together once more, without the accompaniment of the YouTube video.
What does she like about the song? I asked her through a translator.
She liked the melody, she said.
I asked her what the song is about, and she responded simply: Itâs a sad song.
Gautama Mehta is a writer based in Chicago.