In a small house on Palestine Street, opposite the Palestinian Arab Club in the Yarmouk Camp in Damascus, Syria, Naima put on the white dress she had always dreamed of wearing. She was 19 years old. Muhammad, 30, tugging uncomfortably at the tight necktie that seemed to be choking him, was sweating slightly when a song suddenly filled the small room.
The wedding was an ordinary one, like any Palestinian wedding held at the time within refugee communities: a man who had been carried out of the Palestinian city of Jaffa at the age of one in 1948, wrapped in a keffiyeh for protection, was marrying a woman whose parents had fled Palestine that same year and who was born in a small camp in Damascus about 10 years later. It was all familiar: refugees marrying so that life could continue. But the song that played during this modest wedding was anything but ordinary.
The song, “By God, I’ll plant you in my home, oh green almond branch; I’ll water this land with my blood so you may bloom and grow,” was unique that night. Its melody was slow and filled with deep longing. The performance alternated between a chorus and two of the most beautiful Syrian voices of that era: Ibtissam Jabri and Samir Helmi. The composer was Hussein Nazek.
This song, “The Green Almond,” would go on to launch one of the most famous Palestinian musical groups within refugee communities, the “Songs of the Lovers” troupe, which soon became known simply as “Al-Ashiqeen.” Later, lyricist Ahmad Dahbour would recount how surprised he was to find his song playing in every home throughout Yarmouk Camp, the birthplace of Al-Ashiqeen, which they would later shape as a cultural identity.
“The Green Almond” both founded and defined Al-Ashiqeen: it was a band of Palestinian refugees, mainly from Yarmouk, a place that became one of the group’s main heroes and rallying cries. The song exploded at a critical turning point in the history of Palestinian exile, offering an answer to questions of memory: a recovery of the intimate Palestinian self, the Palestinian body, and the Palestinian land. At the same time, it marked a new beginning.
It was an act of remembrance:
“And the vineyard, the mountain that stands — always in the free sun, kneaded from my ancestors’ sweat — for the pure soil of the homeland.”
And a call to action:
“From Jarmaq sang the Safadi — Gaza and Al-Bireh are my towns, and Jerusalem cries, my son, do not be late coming back to me.”
Yarmouk Camp was the largest concentration of Palestinian refugees in Syria and the heart of Palestinian cultural life in exile. The deep connection between the band and the camp mirrored the relationship between the camp and its people; it became part of their identity and self-definition, just as it shaped how Al-Ashiqeen defined itself.
When the band formed, Palestinians were still trying to adapt to lives they assumed would be temporary, forced lives in exile until the return to Palestine. They grew accustomed to living in the so-called “camps” and to the new identity imposed on them as “refugees.” After years of trauma and attempted healing, they realized the temporary had become permanent, and that Palestine was drifting further away in time and space. By 1977, this sense of stability felt terrifying. The tents, symbols of impermanence, had vanished, replaced by buildings.
Thus, “The Green Almond” sounded like an alarm bell for memory. The alternating voices sang:
“Oh, green almond, call out! Palestine, the green is my homeland — stretch out your hands to free my land.”
Singing became an answer to profound existential questions: about memory, exile, and return; about the lost homeland and the missing earth; about the self and identity, and about what must be done. “Stretch out your hands.”
With “The Green Almond,” a long musical journey began, culminating in eight full albums by 1993.
In his work “The Palestinian Exodus,” Dr. Walid Saif explains how exile shaped the Palestinian identity:
“Refugees, we did not think of ourselves that way in those anxious, feverish times. Only later would the word leap into our lexicon to become our historical identity and our social frame.”
A Gateway to Refugee Music
Ahmad Dahbour, one of the band’s founders and lyricist behind most of its songs, tells the story of how the group was born, and how he was surprised to hear his song in every Yarmouk home. Syrian theatre director Fawaz Al-Sajer had been preparing to direct Samih Al-Qasim’s play “The National Institution of Madness” for the Culture Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) when he asked Dahbour to write its songs. On his way to deliver the lyrics, Dahbour suddenly thought of writing a song not directly tied to the play, but as an opening piece. That song was “The Green Almond.”
After its enormous success, Abdullah Al-Hourani suggested that composer Hussein Nazek and lyricist Ahmad Dahbour form a musical group. Thus, “Songs of the Lovers” was born from the sons and daughters of the Palestinian diaspora.
The idea came from within the refugee communities: young Arab and Palestinian men and women who wanted to sing for Palestine. The band had an organic bond with the camps, especially Yarmouk, as many of its core members were from there, including the Al-Habbash family (three brothers: Khalil, Khaled, and Muhammad; and two sisters: Amina and Fatima), along with Suha Daghman, oud player Ya‘rub Al-Barghouti, and percussionist Haitham Makkiyah.
Yet there was also diversity. Among the members was Lebanese artist Hussein Munzer, whose identity defied borders: Palestinian in cause and sentiment, Lebanese by nationality, and Syrian in accent and upbringing.
According to Fadi Abdel Hadi, this diversity enabled Al-Ashiqeen to transcend political factions, drawing on poetry and lyrics that crossed ideological and organizational boundaries rather than adhering to a single political line, as documented in Lifilastin Nughanni…1977–2016 (لفلسطين نغني… أغاني الثورة والعاشقين والتراث). They sang works by Palestinian and Arab poets such as Mahmoud Darwish, Samih Al-Qasim, Tawfiq Zayyad, Ahmad Dahbour, Abu Al-Sadiq Salah Al-Husseini, Nizar Qabbani, Youssef Hassoun, Sulaiman Al-Issa, and Mikhail Eid, among others, making the band a cultural and revolutionary icon of the Palestinian movement.
Al-Ashiqeen thus became the first gateway to refugee music, a band composed initially of Palestinian refugees. They marked the beginning of a musical path that would later stand on its own. Yet their approach remained distinct; they did not lament or weep over the refugee condition. Instead, they restored the refugees’ dignity and turned suffering into purpose and artistic expression.
To understand this, one must recall Palestinian folk music before Al-Ashiqeen, usually divided into three pre-1948 stages: the traditional, the romantic, and the realistic.
The traditional stage reflected feudal society, centered on religion, fate, and passive acceptance.
The romantic stage emerged with the fall of feudalism and the rise of a new affluent class, offering emotional release without social challenge.
The realistic stage appeared with the rise of the Palestinian national struggle in the early 20th century, producing songs of revolt against British colonialism and Zionist settlement.
After the Nakba, songs shifted to focus on refugee suffering, lamenting loss, mocking aid organizations, and chronicling misery.
Al-Ashiqeen broke from this approach. They neither mocked nor mourned exile. Instead, they gave it meaning and dignity, reminding refugees of their truth, urging them to act, recording their past, narrating their present, and calling them to rise. Even musically, they departed from pure folklore, experimenting with form and reviving heritage to express something new.
Their music, though rooted in the refugee experience, built a new collective memory; a shared imagined spirit for all scattered people and a new language to express their pain, hope, and belonging, all tied to their present and their dreams for the future.
The Camp and the Return: Urgent Themes
The word “camp” appears repeatedly in Al-Ashiqeen’s songs. The band represented it not as a passive, tragic space, but as an active, living entity that carries its pain and transforms it into action.
One song opens with:
“The sweetest love story began in a camp.”
Another line describes the camp as:
“A camp that tried, that taught and learned.”
They address it directly:
“No matter how tight they close you in, the papers are in your hands, and free decision returns to you.”
They call it home:
“The camp family of true love... family of revolutionaries in every land.”
In “The Streets of the Camp,” they seek healing:
“The camp’s streets overflow with pictures, our martyr spoke and made the stones speak.”
Yet Al-Ashiqeen did not shy away from pain. They did not idealize the camp as a myth but portrayed it as a daily struggle.
In “My Family in the Camp,” they sing:
“My family is in the camp, and my worry is in the camp.”
And in “Two Moons for Me”:
“Two moons I have the camp and the homeland; two wounds I have the camp and the moon.”
Most band members were Palestinian refugees in Syria, deeply connected to refugee society, as participants and witnesses. Many had lived the Nakba or its aftermath, sharing their audience’s hopes and sorrows. Their songs captured the pulse of Palestinian life and its transformations, expanding the language of exile to include expression, critique, and documentation, thus becoming musical chronicles of Palestinian history shared by young and old alike.
Anyone counting the word “return” in Al-Ashiqeen’s lyrics would likely find it in every song. The continuous call for return was the unifying dream of Palestinians; to cast off the burden of exile and the demeaning refugee identity imposed upon them.
Telling the Palestinian Story
The mission Al-Ashiqeen set for themselves was unmistakable in their albums:
Their first, “With My Own Eyes,” drew from the memoirs of lawyer Felicia Langer. Their second, “Sarhan and the Pipeline,” retold the tale of Sarhan Al-Ali, who blew up a British oil pipeline in 1936 during the Palestinian revolt. Their third centered on Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam, bearing his name. Their fourth, “Permitted Words,” chronicled the siege of Beirut and the battles fought over 80 days, becoming a historical musical record.
With the First Intifada, they released “Children’s Cantata” and “Children of the Stones.” They also revived folklore in “Dala‘ona and Zareef Al-Toul” and explored nostalgia in “The Bird of Exile.”
Their storytelling style drew them close to their audience. They became not just narrators but catalysts, provoking memory and encouraging refugees to tell their own stories. Their songs were aesthetic acts and political awakenings, deepening the bond between music and history, transforming awareness into collective identity.
Their song “Bear Witness, World, Upon Us and Upon Beirut,” about the 1982 war, became not only a historical record, but also a transformation of individual pain into collective political expression.
Refugees gathered around Al-Ashiqeen. The band did not merely communicate with them; it fostered communication among refugees, reminding them that salvation must be collective, not individual. They demonstrated that the Palestinian revolution also lived through culture and art.
The group toured globally, winning first prize at the “Confluence” International Festival in France, outperforming 32 international groups. The jury remarked that “the melodies carry the age of thousands of years,” a statement that provoked protest from the Israeli embassy in Paris.
Identity Can Only Be Collective
Al-Ashiqeen rarely performed traditional songs and was not a political band in the narrow sense of the term. They drew from heritage at times and from modern music at others, yet their most significant resource was the identity of their members. As refugees themselves, mainly living in camps, they created a shared language with their audience, who were also refugees.
The weight of exile was mutual between band and listeners. Their attention to the hardships of daily life, while avoiding the idolization of nationalist symbols, made their art intimate and real, without neglecting the significant events of Palestinian life.
They sang for the martyr, the prisoner, the wounded, for struggle, resistance, return, and liberation, and for the camp, the farmer, the city, and everyday suffering. They embodied Tawfiq Zayyad’s verse as their creed:
“Our poems are colorless, tasteless, soundless unless they carry the lamp from house to house; unless the simple folk understand them, better to scatter them, and ourselves fall silent.”
Likewise, they echoed Mahmoud Darwish’s words:
“They interrogate him: Why do you sing? He answers: Because I sing. They search his chest and find only his heart. They search his heart and find only his people. They search his voice and find only his sorrow.”
In his book Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance, Irish researcher and musician Louis Brehony writes of Palestinian bands abroad, including Al-Ashiqeen:
“Being comrades means escaping the isolation of bearing this era’s burdens alone. It also means political education and space to imagine future Palestinian music. The band’s unfinished collective commitment shows that political and economic crises in Palestine, Turkey, and beyond can only be solved collectively.”
Music, then, not only becomes a cultural phenomenon for preserving memory and building narrative, but also a collective political practice exercised by Palestinians.
Al-Ashiqeen’s song, therefore, is a collective voice, not produced by the band alone, but shaped together with the refugees themselves. The reception of Palestinian song, especially in exile, rests on shared participation rather than passive listening. The people who hear the song feel they have helped make it speak not only for them but from them.