“A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage”
– William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

There is a piano in Boston that is played twice a day. In the morning: waltzes, tangoes, sonatas, preludes. In the evening: Frère Jacques, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, ABC. The sound it makes is old, untuned, beautifully echoey.

It can be heard trailing down the hall and into the stairwell, down and up the building’s forty-five floors, looking for open air. It cannot be heard in Beirut, where another piano once played waltzes and tangoes too, and the Moonlight Sonata. And some Lebanese folk songs that make some grown men cry. The piano in Boston does not play those. It just… cannot.

The last time the piano in Beirut was played, it made a sound of fine crystal and twirling wedding silk. It was heard across all lands, all seas, frontiers, beliefs. It reached the stars, landed on the moon. On the moon, it is still playing.

There is an Arabic expression:

.بعود عن الشر وغنيلو

Keep away from evil and sing to it. The sound of evil is an explosion. That of a bomb going off is… nothing; the ears go deaf.

Instantly. Not a gasp. Before the eyes, brain, heart register reality, the ears mute it. A reflex of self-preservation; the biggest harm—after death and maiming—of an explosion to the human body is the sudden increase in air pressure.

Silence, stunned, dumb and shocked, as the blast wave passes, through the air and cement walls and paper thin humans. Then, silence, horrified, gutted, over the screams, first short, then longer, louder. Piercing. Not piercing enough.

Only silence can be heard, over the names, names, Names! being called. Silence over the Russian roulette of responses; return shouts, more names, other names. Worse: wails. Worse still: moans. Deafness also shields against the worst: no answer at all.

Breath can be held. The brain can freeze. The eye can close. The ear has no choice, exposed, vulnerable; even silence sounds of heartbeat. Because the heart, though it can burst, rip open, like an eardrum, cannot stop beating,

or stop the sun from rising, topaz, over Boston harbour the next day, glittering. The moon is still there, though. Perhaps it too, is still reeling.

The moon, after high-speed impact with a foreign object, continues to wobble for eight hundred years. The quivering can be studied from Earth using laser reflection techniques. And suffering can be watched, every day, from sofas, using screens. Keep away from evil… and the blast wave passes, the experts say.

They also say sound returns. After the end of the world. According to the Book of Genesis, the first will be birds. It may take eight hundred years but, eventually, even the moon, after disaster, will stop shaking.

But no human heart can survive so much feeling, so long. So, twice a day, in the morning and evening, a piano plays in Boston. The first bars of La Cumparsita. Lately, Do a deer. For two years now, it has been playing Happy Birthday through screens. Keep away from evil, fingers unsteady, playing, in protest: love, loud enough, hopefully, to be heard across all lands, seas, frontiers, in Lebanon.