Rap music serves as an avenue of expression for one young man caught up in the Israel-Gaza war
AYMAN MGHAMIS is an atypical typical Palestinian youth.
He is also typical because, like many Palestinians, he has led a peripatetic life. His family came from Nazareth but he was born a refugee in Lebanon and raised in Tunisia where his father served in the bodyguard of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Following the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, Arafat established separate headquarters in Gaza and Ramallah.
“My father preferred to serve in Gaza rather than the West Bank,” recalls Ayman (25). “It is socially more traditional.” Traditions serve as a shield from the slings and arrows Palestinians face.
Like many Palestinians, Ayman knows tragedy. His father was killed on January 16th, 2009, two days before the imposition of a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. His house was struck by four Israeli rockets. “My mother, brother and sister were okay, but my father passed away,” he says.
Ayman’s mother now works for Wafa, the Palestinian news agency. For three months, she received his father’s salary from the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, but now gets nothing. “My father worked with Arafat for 12 years,” Ayman notes.
Although he has had typical Palestinian experiences, Ayman is hardly typical. “I don’t fit into the Gaza scene,” he says. “I have lived everywhere and belong nowhere.”
He is studying English and French literature at Fatah-sponsored al-Aqsa University in Gaza. Most Palestinians opt for career-related courses. And he belongs to the vanguard of Palestinian rappers that emerged in 1999.
“Hip hop came to Gaza in 2000. I have been rapping since I was a kid”, he says, even though it is not part of the culture of Gaza.
Ayman teamed up with Muhammad al-Farrah, Muhammad Fayyad and Motaz al-Hwehy to form Palestinian Rapperz (PR). They recorded their first song in 2003, the year the French cultural centre sponsored the first hip hop concert in Gaza. Their lyrics describe life under the Israeli occupation, focusing on besieged and blockaded Gaza.
“Both governments [Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank] hate us,” he says. “We are the voice of the voiceless. Our message is from the street where we get our inspiration. We rap about the situation, conflict, our case, Fatah and Hamas, falling in love.”
PR and four other rap acts star in the documentary film Slingshot Hip Hop, which is directed by Jackie Salloum, a US citizen of Palestinian and Syrian origin. The film was featured at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival in 2008 and won a slew of international awards. Just when PR took off, the Palestinian situation intervened.
Farrah managed to get to Texas and Fayyad to Cairo but Ayman and Motaz remain stuck in Gaza.
“I had invitations to France, Spain, Dubai, the US, Northern Ireland and Egypt,” he shrugged. “We keep in touch, God bless the internet.” He has not given up. He and his friends have started a summer school for break-dancers.
“We are going to open our own studio,” he says. “We got the money from the [Danish] Roskilde music festival.”
Ayman, like most Gazans, is shocked by Israel's commando raid that cost the lives of nine Turkish activists on the Marmaracruise vessel that tried, along with five others, to break Israel's grip on the coastal enclave.
"I wrote a song about the flotilla and the [Irish-owned] Rachel Corrie," he says. He skips through the lyrics. "The people on these boats know we are suffering. Some people in the world believe in freedom and justice, support Gazans' right to live in peace and have freedom to travel. We respect and support these people, no matter what their nationality and religion."