Four Lives at the Heart of Paper Pianos
Paper Pianos is built from interviews with four people: Milad Yousufi, who fled Kabul; Getachew Bashir, a former Ethiopian high court judge; Hani Ali, born on the road from the Somali civil war; and Akil Aljaysh, who escaped Iraq after torture. Their words, edited from those interviews, anchor every section of the work.
01 / 04Milad Yousufi
Kabul, Afghanistan
Milad Yousufi is the spine of Paper Pianos. As a child in Kabul, he taught himself to play piano in silence by drawing the keys on paper — the gesture that gives the work its name. He survived a suicide bombing inside a Kabul concert hall, fled to New York, and continues to compose and perform here.
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02 / 04Getachew Bashir
Ethiopia
Known to everyone in Rochester as Gee-Gee, Getachew Bashir was a high court judge in Ethiopia before political pressure made his work impossible. He came to the U.S. and rebuilt his life from a hotel room-service job. He now manages refugee resettlement at Catholic Charities Family and Community Services — and frames the bureaucratic refugee system from the inside.
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03 / 04Hani Ali
Somalia
Hani Ali was born into the Somali civil war, in the back of a truck while her family was already in flight. She came of age in a Ugandan displacement camp, walked miles to a school sometimes held under a tree, and now leads programs for newly arriving refugees in Rochester.
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04 / 04Akil Aljaysh
Southern Iraq
Akil Aljaysh grew up in southern Iraq with two brothers — a doctor and a math teacher — both killed by the Baath Party. He was taken from a college classroom, tortured, and eventually freed by his father's bribe. His route out of Iraq passed through Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Italy. He greets every refugee he resettles in Rochester the same way: Welcome home.
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