Soundtrack to the revolution

I first heard this song stood on the roof of Benghazi’s tribunal building. Below me, hundreds of demonstrators were singing it, a cappella.

I then noticed it playing from virtually every car that passed by. Families would be humming it.

And on the front-line in Ras Lanuf, I heard it again. I asked a fighter what it meant to him. “It is a song to jihad” he told me. Quite a different sense of the song than that of the protestors in Benghazi. For them, it was simply as a song of resistance.

My driver one day had a tear in his eye when he heard it. His brother had just left to fight at the front-line, and he was worried. This song raised his morale, but also brought home the realities of their struggle.

Sowfa nabka huna. “We will remain here.”