The Dead Guitar

In The Noise of War, Memory, and Broken Dreams

A single state-run television channel broadcast horrible programs in Syria in the 1980s, as in most totalitarian countries (it was a mixture of Orwell’s 1984 and animal farm). In order to wash our brains, they repeatedly talked about the glory of the party ruling the country and how important it was to be against global imperialism and to continue the struggle till the great victory….etc

The only program I was keen to watch was a weekly music program. It was called “the language of the world”. During the last five minutes of that program, short videos of famous guitarists were broadcast. The program introduced me to Paco Peña, Paco de Lucia, Francisco Tárrega, and other notable guitarists.

It astonished me to hear what Nicolo Paganini the greatest violinist of all time (and the one who was rumored to have made a pact with the devil) said about the guitar “ The violin is my mistress, but the guitar is my master.”

When I was 11, my parents bought me a guitar for kids, and I spent perhaps thousands of hours imitating those guitarists and pretending to sing in Spanish ( The language that I learned after). The school and the sport made me too busy to follow my passion to learn how to play the guitar, even though I always listened to a lot of flamenco music.

When I became 21, I decided to reconnect with my passion after attending a concert that transported me to another dimension of beauty and serenity. I felt lighter, happier, and nicer. To take other people to a similar place where they can feel different and close to themselves, I wanted to create my own “vehicle” and learn the guitar professionally.

I was lucky to have one-to-one lessons offered by the best guitarist in Syria. The most expensive guitar on the market is what I bought. YAMAHA was the brand.

I began my guitar lessons in the hot summer of 2001 with all the passion in the world. For two months, I trained hard for 4–5 hours a day. I performed poorly. I was told by my tutor that we should do different exercises in order to create a better sense of time for me.

Approximately two months later, we had a regular meeting. He was a bit more tough than usual and said, “I have been teaching for more than 15 years, and I have taught many students, but you are the worst by far. You lack any sense of time, so maybe it is not going to work out for you”. The message was sharp, direct, and to the point( It was also a good preparation for me as I went years after to the Netherlands where people are direct and to the point). This meant the end of my attempt to have a happy long guitar journey ( and the world lost great potential..hahaha). Leaving the music center, I held my guitar as a corpse of a sweet childhood dream. I walked for hours in the dark night of the city, trying to distract myself from this failure. The only fruit of that journey was a small piece that I learned called MODERATO.

I kept my guitar in my living room for years after and tried to look at it every day, even though it became a symbol of failure and lack of accomplishment. My motto was “ Soon, I’ll deal with it and I’ll play the most beautiful melodies”. In every year’s resolution “trying with the guitar again” item was a permanent guest. This weird “breakup” between the guitar and me did not deter me from listening to great guitarists.

During the war in my country, my neighborhood was turned into a conflict zone, and I did not know what happened to my apartment and stuff, including my guitar, for years.

During my first years in the Netherlands, I worked hard to study, find a job, find love, and to re-establish my life from zero or even below. Thinking about a new chance with the guitar was an expensive privilege I could not afford.

The news coming from Syria was always filled with death, pain, and more death. I lost many colleagues and friends, including my strict tutor.

Three years ago, the battles in Damascus were over, and my father was able to go to my house to discover horrific chaos. There were traces of battles and bullets everywhere, and in an isolated corner, there was the guitar, lonely and broken.

Syria was destroyed by a long war in which half the population was scattered throughout the world and one million people were killed. Every now and then, you hear this story in the media. Additionally, this war destroyed many dreams, memories, and aspirations of ordinary people like you and me. That broken guitar was more than only wood and strings. It was one of the many dreams of tomorrow. It told the story of a generation and a country.

As I am trying to reconstruct the puzzle of the scene where the tutor tells me how bad my performance was while holding my guitar, I find that all the pieces of the puzzle belong to another world with different dynamics. War has a certain ability to transform many things towards that mysterious world of bitter death.

The only dynamics that have not changed are the dreams where I am sitting holding my guitar in an intimate way and playing the purist melodies of all times.

“ Could you possibly learn how to play the guitar after all those years?” I use to ask myself in the mirror and my answer comes always sharp, direct, and to the point: “ Maybe” with a smile full of life despite the story of the dead guitar.

Subhi Najar is an Alchemist of words, Little Prince, Public Speaker, storyteller, content Creator, and war survivor.

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