For weeks, 30-year-old Lebanese cellist Mahdi Al Sahily has been sitting amid the ruins of Haret Hreik, a suburb of Beirut, playing his cello. Around him are sliced-open residential buildings, walls hanging at odd angles, wiring trailing across broken concrete, and neighbourhoods reduced to debris. The place has been the target of Israeli strikes for its association with Hezbollah.

Al Sahely, always dressed in black, has sat in what he calls one of his favourite neighbourhoods almost every other day and played Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian’s ‘Andantino’, a tender, evocative piece that once incurred the wrath of Soviet authorities for not being nationalistic enough.

Part protest, part mourning, music, it seems, has decided to stand guard over a conflict-ravaged world. Approximately 50 km southeast of Tehran, in Pakdasht, is the Damavand Power Plant, with the capacity to power 2 million homes, which is where Iranian musician Ali Ghamsari camped on April 7 and played the Persian tar — right after US President Donald Trump’s........

© Indian Express