In the Land of Peace, Peace is Dead

By Ayesha Ali

Cover image by Palestinian art teacher Heba Zagout killed on October 13th by airstrikes.

Here’s a tale of two countries. In 1917, a letter of just sixty-seven words would prompt the beginning of decades of bloodshed. In 1948, Arabic remained the co-official language alongside Hebrew in Palestine, despite its use since the seventh century. Meanwhile, the government of then East Pakistan declared Urdu as the sole national language, despite the historically Bengali-speaking majority. In 1956, after much protestation, Bengali was recognized as a second state language until Bangladeshi independence in the seventies. Meanwhile, a continuation of the first Nakba, the ‘catastrophe’, was seen with the forced exodus of thousands of native Palestinians. In 1971, Bangladesh was free while Palestine was not. In 2018, Arabic was relegated to an auxiliary language that “enjoys special status” while Hebrew, revived as a spoken language in the mid-nineteenth century, became the state language. 

Every fortnight marks the death of a language. In 2023, a Native American language died with its last indigenous speaker in May. I wonder what specific sequence of historical events caused that to happen. Language itself is a landmark of identity that survives through not just being spoken, but written down, listened to, performed, taught, and even sung. Music itself is a cutting blade that can be honed into a weapon of resistance, and has been used frequently both in the past and right now. 

When it comes to Palestine, the world is used to seeing nothing but its plight and emotional upheaval. Very little about the country’s life and culture that exists is known to us, especially its music. From the work songs of farmers harvesting oil from olive trees that have grown for generations, to the upbeat dabke dances at weddings and other auspicious occasions, music has brought together many communities. There are elders who have passed down traditional folk songs that are revived by today’s singers for new generations. Medical workers in October who steadfastly remained to treat the wounded, despite their own pain and hardship, sang in emphasis of this. There was even a case where a Jordanian hacker interrupted a news broadcast with Palestine’s national anthem. But now, an entire global community of people have united together in mass congregations across the world. 

After the 1967 Naksa, ‘setback’, musician George Totari was displaced from his home in Nazareth along with around 400,000 other Palestinians. He would later form the Swedish band Kofia, recording four albums, three vinyl records and a cassette with them without the backing of any record label or the wider music industry. Their music is a whirlwind of sound, marked by constantly moving piano and oud melodies, soaring vocals and harmonies between male and female voices. The Greek bouzouki can also be heard in their album I wrote your name, with songs in both Arabic and Swedish, as well as a spoken word track performed like a conversation between two speakers of different languages. 

Kofia’s debut album, Palestine My Land, not only included the same beautiful instrumentation and singing but photographs and notes that contextualized their music. These documented the words of a woman close to starvation living in the Jordanian camps after the first Nakba, ultimately commemorating her and so many others like her. Leve Palestina, their best-known song, has been used as an anthem for Palestinian liberation since 1976 and was recently revived during a protest on October 22nd. Though it is fully in Swedish, it served as reconciliation between two distinct cultural groups. The following is a verse about Palestine’s natural and agricultural beauty:

And we have cultivated the earth

And we have harvested the wheat

We have picked the lemons

And pressed the olives

And the whole world knows our soil

And the whole world knows our soil

Another singer who also hails from Nazareth is Elyanna, a Palestinian-Chilean singer who is the same age as me and has already achieved a lot more in life than I ever will. First uploading covers to SoundCloud when she was young, she later moved to the US and settled in Los Angeles to pursue a career in music. She is a prominent figure in the Arab music industry, becoming the first to perform a full set solely in Arabic at Coachella back in April. 

You can hear audience members passionately singing every lyric in clips online, and they probably would have sung louder in Elyanna's upcoming tour. However, she explained on Instagram that she'd decided to postpone it due to what's happening in her homeland, posting part of an unreleased track unofficially called Olive Branch. Known as the tree of eternity, nearly one million of them in Palestine have been destroyed through uprooting or simply burning them. Farmers have planted them for centuries and they can live for thousands of years. The olive tree is known for its regenerative growth; even after the tree itself dies, new life is born from its roots. The olive branch is universally known as an offering of peace, but it is also a symbol of life, rebirth and reclamation:

I’m far away, but I’m praying for you 

And I’m sending peace on an olive branch

In the land of peace, peace is dead

And the world is sleeping on a hurt child

The most famous song that has been absolutely everywhere in both the online and offline world is Dammi Falastini. From TikToks of people throwing away boycotted products with the common caption “me singing this with 0 Palestinian blood in me” to others blasting it on the tube, the song has remained popular since 2015. Mohammed Assaf began singing at weddings and other events before becoming a musical representative of Palestine and the winner of Arab Idol in 2013. The show’s western counterpart is American Idol and it showcases contestants from all over the Arab world, but it was Assaf’s talent that won not just the contest but the hearts of many. After a tiring two day journey from Gaza to Egypt, he had finally arrived at the audition, only to find the doors closed to him. This barrier did not deter him; he went over the wall and into the hotel in which auditions were being held and started singing to contestants waiting to be called. One of them, Ramadan Abu Nahel, gave up his spot after hearing him, telling him he believed that Assaf would make it to the finals.

And he did. His masterful vocal precision of maqamat, ‘modulations’, urab, vocal ‘decorations’, and seamless mix of odes to Palestine with music from other nations impressed many. One judge called him “precise as a ruler” and his tarab, which is a kind of stage presence and charisma, was felt by many of the 60 million voters. Celebrations all across Gaza, Nazareth and Ramallah erupted, fireworks lit up the skies and people called his name in the streets. It was a moment of unity and pride for every Palestinian, articulated in the most famous verse from Dammi Falastini:

On my promise, on my faith

On my land, you will find me

I belong to my people, I sacrifice my soul for them

My blood is Palestinian, Palestinian, Palestinian