A Way to Remain Alive

In 2005, a Belgian NGO came to Ramallah with a truck full of musical instruments to donate to the city’s nonprofit music school, ​​Al Kamandjati (“The Violinist”). One of the boys who helped to unload the violins, violas, cellos, double-basses, and guitars was 15-year-old Shehada Shalalda, who lived in the neighborhood. It was an innocuous moment that changed the course of his life. Growing up during the Second Intifada, he didn’t think he would reach adulthood. When he encountered the work of the luthiers who traveled from Europe to Palestine to repair instruments for Al Kamandjati, he found “a way to remain alive.” 

Now 33, Shalalda still works around the corner from Al Kamandjati as Ramallah’s only luthier specializing in western string instruments (others handle instruments like the oud, but—as Shelalda explains—its rounded body makes it a completely different animal). He’s about an hour-long drive from the Gaza Strip, and while the majority of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attacks have centered on Gaza in the last eight weeks, the West Bank has also faced increased violence even before October 7. In June, the UN estimated that 2023 would be the deadliest year on record for residents of the West Bank since the organization began recording casualties in 2005. 

I spoke with Shalalda from his workshop in Ramallah on a relatively quiet afternoon, punctuated by the mid-afternoon call to prayer and a customer’s visit. 

VAN: How are you doing? 

Shehada Shalalda: I am well, thank you very much. Just focusing on making and repairing instruments; trying not to focus on the news too much. 

What is it like in Ramallah at the moment? 

The situation in the West Bank is stressful. It’s difficult to move from city to city, and it’s difficult to live like we normally do. [The IDF] is arresting a lot of people. If I travel city to city, it’s really difficult with the crossings. Most of the checkpoints are closed, so we have to cross via another road. It takes a long time, and it’s really a very bad road. I’m originally from Hebron. I tried to go there last month, but it was too complicated. It’s difficult; it’s not the same road you [normally] take. I saw them beat one guy. They stopped his car at the checkpoint between Ramallah and Hebron—between the south and the middle of Palestine—and they had two guys take him out and beat him. They cracked his arm. So I turned back. 

They’re also watching all of our phones. They ask for your phone, and if you have a photo or a Telegram [related to] the news, they’ll crack your phone and sometimes arrest you. My cousin is in prison now for that.  

I imagine the music community in the West Bank is pretty close. What’s been going on over the last eight weeks? 

It’s difficult. At Al Kamandjati, we have a lot of teachers who cannot come because they are from another city—from Nablus, from Jenin. We have another center in Jenin, but we stopped going there because of the situation. We’ve had to stop some lessons too, because there isn’t a teacher who can teach the class—we’ve stopped the piano and brass lessons. I work just next to the school, and I can see the difference. In September, I had a lot of people come in to have their instruments fixed—repairing their bows, changing this or that. But from October, it’s changed a lot. People now aren’t focusing on music, because they have to focus on other things. 

VAN interviewed two members of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra shortly after October 7 and they mentioned that they’re focusing on music because it wasn’t the time to focus on politics. 

They don’t have checkpoints. That’s the difference. My children study at a school just next to my house, but the school won’t open. There are too many teachers from the north and the south who cannot come in. They’re studying online now. 

Has it been the same with Al Kamandjati? 

They’re also trying to teach online, but it’s difficult. The students have to be together. But they’re trying. There aren’t any concerts or anything, so they’re trying to have workshops online together to make some music. In my own workshop, I don’t have any customers for repair work, so now I’m just making instruments. 

Before October 7, what was the balance between repairing and making instruments like for you? 

Most of my work was repairing. Let’s say every three to four months, I’d make one violin. I had a lot of restoration and repair work: I work with all of the music schools in Ramallah and the West Bank, and also have many customers from ’48. [“From ’48” refers to Palestinians who remained in the land that became Israel following 1948.—Ed.]

If you want the truth, it’s been a really hard time in the West Bank this year, not just from October 7. There were a lot of problems in Jenin, in the north, and a lot of [structures of the] occupation still exist. [In the first half of 2023, the Norwegian Refugee Council estimates that at least 447 Palestinian buildings, mainly near Jenin, were demolished or seized by Israeli forces, displacing 685 Palestinians and forcibly transferring three communities.—Ed.] There were a lot of demonstrations in the West Bank before what happened in Gaza. Last year, customers in Jordan would send instruments to me to fix. They stopped this year because the situation is too stressful. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Are there other aspects of your work that are harder to do now?

It’s hard to get materials. I was in Belgium and Germany in September and brought some materials with me. I don’t know if that will happen again. I have a little bit of stuff, but there are some tools that I usually order from abroad. Now it’s difficult to bring them in. As a violin maker, it’s better to see the wood, to hear the sound of the wood when you tap on it. The grains, the types… So it’s better that I go personally to Germany or Belgium to choose the wood that I like. Because every violin maker is different. 

Al Kamandjati also has a program that works specifically with the refugee camps in Jenin, right? 

Yes. When a student wants to study the violin, they give that student a violin. So I’m responsible for taking care of this instrument: changing the bow hair, the strings, making it so that the student can use a good instrument. With this situation, it was the beginning of the [school] year. It was a little bit difficult even in September to go there, so you can imagine now it’s worse. So sometimes we try to send [instruments for repair] with people who go there. I’ll repair it in Ramallah, and then send it there. Normally I go and do it with them there. [My colleagues in Jenin and I] always talk, and if they need anything I can explain to them what they can do.

In an interview with The Guardian from 2018, you said: “I grew up in the middle of a war zone. I didn’t think I would survive. Making violins offered me a way to remain alive.” How so? 

Growing up, I was, like, 10 when I saw the Second Intifada. It was everywhere—what’s happening in Gaza was also here, but less bombing. I thought that I would not survive, or that I would die like the rest of the people getting killed in the West Bank. But then I started to study violin [and] violin-making at the music school. I traveled to Italy, my first trip [abroad]. And I saw that the world isn’t the same: People in [other parts of] the world didn’t live the same as we did. That changed a lot for me. 

Most of my friends went to look at the instruments when they invited us to the music school. From the beginning, I was interested in how these instruments were made and how they worked. It was the first thing I thought about when I saw the instruments. I started to study violin playing, but there was also a violin-maker from France and one from Belgium who would come to the music school to fix the instruments. 

Do you remember the first time you watched one of those luthiers repair a violin?  

Yeah, when I saw it, I thought, This is my dream; this is what I want to do with my life. I wanted to have a little workshop with the tools and the wood and the materials to varnish… I like to create things… to make something, to put my name inside of it—and to put my country’s name inside of it. Because when you make a violin, it’s international. It can belong to any player, from the U.S., from Italy, from Germany, from all over the world… And [inside] it has your name and where you’re from. 

You’re also the only violin maker in Ramallah, and working with the school where you once studied, which feels full circle. 

Yeah, it’s really great. They used to bring people in from France, Belgium, the U.S., Italy, to fix the instruments here. It cost them a lot of money. And when they found out they had a student who wanted to study violin making, they were really happy. I got a scholarship from another school, and this is what pushed me to study in Europe. After I trained in Italy and France and England, I came back here and now repair instruments for the school. They have three centers—also one in Lebanon—so I’m taking care of these instruments, plus instruments in the West Bank and from ’48. 

Have you gone to Gaza?

I went in 2019 with the Music Fund, a Belgian organization for technicians and musical instruments. They support the music schools in Gaza and invited me there. It was the first time I went there. It’s a really difficult life. They cannot bring the instruments out [of Gaza] to fix, and it’s really difficult for people to enter Gaza. So I trained two guys there on how to take care of the instruments and repaired some too. They were really destroyed; they needed a lot of work and needed someone to continually take care of them. The students are really intelligent and they need good musical instruments. It’s really difficult to send stuff to Gaza, it’s really blocked, not like how we live in the West Bank. 

Would you go back to Gaza once it’s safe to help with restoring the instruments that were lost?

I was in Belgium in August with the Music Fund. We repaired a lot of instruments, and the Music Fund wants to send them to Africa and to Gaza. We were thinking of going in February to Gaza, but I don’t know—with this situation, maybe it won’t happen. But I want to continue to do that. It’s really great because the Foundation helps the music school there a lot. They’re the only foundation to provide technicians, and I am sure now they will need a technician even more. ¶