This is shocking, and incredibly sad. Years ago, when Basel started posting here, I realized that he was a well trained harpist who didn’t own a harp. I managed to find a lovely Venus harp that the owner was willing to give to Basel. It needed some work, so I overhauled the action and Wally Krasicki very generously put a new soundboard on at no cost. I put out word here that I was going to be sending Basel a harp, and I wanted to send him extra strings, sheet music, CD’s, etc. Many of you sent me used but still good strings, sheet music, CD’s, to put in the shipping crate. I got a very good price for shipping it and told him he’d have to pay that in advance to get that rate. His whole family thought I was scamming them and his uncle said he would pay the transportation bill, but only once the harp arrived. So they had to make the transport arrangements themselves. When the harp arrived, the whole family was dumbfounded. Basel said he cried on the whole 2 hour trip from Damascus to Homs. He called me when he got home and his mother got on the phone and just said over and over again “Thank you,Thank you, Thank you…” Basel was very soon playing every day in a resort hotel in Homs and for the first time in his life earning a living playing the harp. After 2 or 3 years, he had saved enough money to buy another harp, and I found a second Venus that the owner was willing to sell to him for a few thousand dollars. So then he had 2 good harps and was a real working harpist in Syria.
Then the troubles started. Syria fell apart, and his family, who were Christian in an overwhelmingly muslim country, had to go into hiding. By the time he and his family got out, they had to abandon everything, including the harps. I don’t think Basel ever recovered emotionally from that. I don’t know why he died, but I’m very saddened by it.
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