{"id":30850,"date":"2019-01-28T03:22:54","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T03:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30850"},"modified":"2019-01-28T03:22:54","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T03:22:54","slug":"un-special-envoy-meets-arab-league-chief-for-talks-over-syrias-readmission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30850","title":{"rendered":"UN special envoy meets Arab League chief for talks over Syria\u2019s readmission"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nTAIZ, Yemen: The sound of music fills the halls at a school in the Yemeni city of Taiz, where little Nazira Al-Jaafari sits at a keyboard as a teacher takes her through the notes.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI love music,\u201d said Jaafari, a pupil at the Al-Nawras school where tutors are trying to help students temporarily forget the ongoing war.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhenever I feel sad or uncomfortable, I play music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nShe has built up an eclectic repertoire, including \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d and cult songs by Arab icons Fairuz and Umm Kalthoum.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI just hope that Yemen will win this war,\u201d she said before exhaling deeply, then smiling and adding: \u201cAnd that we can live a new life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nTaiz, a city in the southwestern Yemeni highlands, was once known for its coffee beans, grown at high elevation and exported through the famed port of Mokha.<\/p>\n

\nToday, the city is home to some of the most intense fighting in a war between Yemen\u2019s Iran-backed Houthi militants and government forces backed by a Saudi-led military coalition.<\/p>\n

\nThe UN has urged both parties to open humanitarian corridors to besieged Taiz, where state troops are embedded inside city limits \u2014 surrounded by militant forces.<\/p>\n

\nThe three-story Al-Nawras school was hit in 2015-2016. When it reopened its doors, walls still pockmarked with bullet holes, educators decided to expand the music program, making it part of the core curriculum alongside maths and Arabic, with the hope that it would restore joy to their students\u2019 days.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe psychological state of the students was very difficult when we reopened here, after all the shelling and bombing and fighting,\u201d said principal Shehabeddine Al-Sharabi.<\/p>\n

\nThe head of a university in neighboring Mokha recommended music, loaning instruments to Al-Nawras free of charge.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cMusic is not an extracurricular activity here. We can see how it impacts our students, how they are more responsive through music. It yields purely positive revenue,\u201d Al-Sharabi said.<\/p>\n

\nWhile the lessons are not part of a formal mental health program, music therapy has been used around the world to support those who have experienced trauma.<\/p>\n

\nAnd in the humble classrooms of Al-Nawras, dozens of boys and girls find daily, albeit temporary, reprieve from atrocities in a country the UN says is home to the world\u2019s worst humanitarian crisis.<\/p>\n

\nSmiling and tapping on their desks, a class of bright-eyed students sing, in English, \u201cMy face, my face, this is my nose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nIn a class later in the day, slightly older children sing \u201cEducation is a weapon.\u201d But around 2 million Yemeni children are missing out on school, with half a million dropping out since 2015, according to UN figures published last March.<\/p>\n

\nIn Taiz, teacher Abir Al-Sharabi takes the time to help students \u2014 like Jaafari \u2014 learn to play the tunes themselves.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThere\u2019s a sense that students feel more comfortable here than in their other classes,\u201d Sharabi told AFP. \u201cTheir energy in this class is different.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cAnd some students even have experience in singing! All their voices are beautiful. Singing helps the psyche,\u201d she told AFP.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWar is the cause of so much pain, and sometimes it\u2019s easier to express that through song.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TAIZ, Yemen: The sound of music fills the halls at a school in the Yemeni city of Taiz, where little Nazira Al-Jaafari sits at a keyboard as a teacher takes her through the notes. \u201cI love music,\u201d said Jaafari, a pupil at the Al-Nawras school where tutors are trying to help students temporarily forget the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}