(by Elisabetta Stefanelli)
The song Romagna Mia breaks the
silence at Za'atari, in Jordan, near to the border with Syria,
where 80,000 refuges are surrounded by darkness.
But a few hundred of them get to attend a concert staged by the
Ravenna Festival's The Roads of Friendship project on a football
pitch.
Groups of young people from the camp playing traditional Arab
music with the voices of Syrian artists Mirna Kassis and
Francois Razek-Bitar, alternate with the brass quintet of the
Luigi Cherubini youth orchestra playing Volare and Azzurro to
great enthusiasm.
And in the front row is Maestro Riccardo Muti, who at the end
donates the instruments to the musicians.
"Music shows its capacity to unite and to speak directly to the
heart, beyond any barrier," says Muti.
The young people tell us that they learned to play on Youtube,
some the guitar, some the violin, and now they have stopped
studying or don't have the money to pay for university and they
dream of getting out of here thanks to music.
They all smile, the women on one side, the men on the other, all
with the dream of taking their existence away from there.
"This is just a safe place," one of them tells us, "where we
spend our lives basically without doing anything," adds another.
As they speak, beyond the soccer-field-turned-concert hall with
gold and red velvet chairs, various makeshift means of transport
- bicycles, rickshaws made out of old armchairs, wooden carts
pulled by donkeys - are in movement because it "closes" here at
4pm.
Around it there is a wall decorated with murals with barbed wire
and a few low buildings, as well as a rocky desert.
Inside there are houses made of metal sheets, tents,
prefabricated units.
All of them are rigorously painted white, like the elegant
buildings of Amman that is only an hour and a half away by car
but seems very far away.
They come from all over Syria, half are under 18 and 23,000 were
born here where, they tell us, no one new is admitted.
If you ask the children they say they are Jordanian.
There are two sisters who have been here 12 years; they came
with their mother, who has died.
Life is difficult for them, and for the other women who are
alone.
They are afraid because they feel unprotected and do not have
much ability to move around.
There is a widow with her 16-year-old daughter who studies art.
Everyone has a story to tell.
"We are just happy to have seen you," they say to the Italian
journalists.
Some are courageous enough to ask: "take me away".
They give their email addresses and account names because their
social life takes place via social media, even at Za'atari,
where there are schools, hospitals and even a market called the
Champ Elysee where they go to exchange the fruit of their
labours within the walls, dreaming of Europe, America, Canada.
Italy, which they know from the films, seems like a dream too.
"They have a sweetened, unreal idea of what is outside of here,"
says Maestro Muti
"They see the best side. As if it were only a happy world.
Rather than just receiving them, it would be good to give them
the chance to really have a life.
"As I often say, governors and Beethoven have deafness in
common".
A ring is formed in his honour in which, dragged into the dance
of the village elders, everyone comes together in a magic circle
of hope.
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