Bourj Hammoud to London Pt. 2

Blog #5… I honestly didn’t think I would get this far with these blogs; but it’s been so refreshing picking up writing again, being one of my passions I had abandoned since I left school. I’m hoping that you are enjoying it as well thus far, so it looks like a win-win! This is the continuation of my previous blog, so give that a read first if you haven’t already. I doubt this will make sense, otherwise!

We travel back in time and place to the summer of 2019, Yerevan, Armenia. Having just graduated from high school and music school two weeks earlier in Beirut, I arrived in Armenia on the 17th of July in hopes of furthering my studies in music at the Yerevan State Conservatory in a month or so. You might recall from my previous blog that at this point, my brother was already living in Yerevan, so it was quite a smooth transition. This was my homeland after all, and it felt great finally calling it home!

This feeling didn’t last very long, though. The music scene in Yerevan didn’t even come close to what I was hoping for and had built up in my head. After years of convincing my family that I wanted to move to Armenia and pursue my passion, going back home wasn’t an option either. I was stuck. It suddenly hit me one afternoon, however, that there was a way out; but it was a long shot, to say the least! The new plan was to apply to major conservatoires around the world and hope that one of them would accept me. I recall having this long list of music schools I wanted to apply for in Europe, UK, and the Americas. But how and why I only went ahead with the Royal College of Music is beyond me. I was probably being lazy, but hey, it worked out just fine!

I believe when you set a major goal you want to achieve, life will challenge you in every possible way. It will test you to the brim and take you to your breaking point just to see if you’re worthy; if you’ve really got what it takes. And boy did the challenges come… bucketfuls of them!

In October 2019, a revolution started in Lebanon that paralyzed the whole country. All roads were closed, embassies and visa applications weren’t operating- the country was (still is) a mess! So when yours truly got an invite to audition in London, he hit his first challenge. As a Lebanese passport holder, I only had the right to apply for a visa from my home country (Lebanon), which at this point, was impossible to do because of the revolution. After a few emails back and forth with the Royal College of Music (RCM), I was made an exception to do a video audition, where I would send in a live recording instead of physically going to London for it. All that went smoothly and made everything a bit less complicated. In December ‘19, I got my acceptance letter from RCM! That was definitely my biggest achievement up until that point. What I hadn’t paid attention to was that the main criterion for anyone doing a video audition was that they weren’t eligible for a scholarship.

Then came my life’s biggest and longest battle to date. The revolution in Lebanon that I mentioned above was as a result of the financial crisis that had crippled the economy. This meant anyone who had any amount of money in the banks woke up one morning and no longer had access to them. Covid was the icing on the cake! My parents who had come to Armenia to visit my brother and I in February were now stuck there. With both of them out of work at this point, came the most bitter days that I wish not to recall. In a time when basic necessities seemed out of hand, I was there dreaming of studying in the UK.

I’m pretty sure no one believed I could do it, no rational person would, to be fair; except for my brother. I remember doing my daily affirmations, going to the park and visualizing that I was already in London, and at the same time trying to find individuals and organization that could potentially help me with funding this impossible mission. Throughout all this, however, it is crucial that I always believed fully and accepted the fact that I was moving to London to study there. How I would be able to do that was still a mystery.

Months went by; months of extremely hard work with only negligible progress. Just as I was waiting for some miracle to happen, another tragedy hit my life. The deadly explosion that happened on the port of Beirut on the 4th of August, 2020, nearly wiped away my hopes of moving to London with it. With our apartment in Beirut seriously damaged, my parents, who were still stuck in Armenia because of Covid restrictions, decided to stay there for good (they’re still there, by the way).

What kept me going was the burning desire to achieve what I was dreaming for a very long time. The hard work never stopped, the search for grants and scholarships that would be able to support me were still ongoing. So were the dozens of emails everyday to RCM as well as individuals who I thought could help. I had also managed to get in touch with the Head of my faculty at RCM to explain the extreme situation I was in who was so understanding and empathetic. And in the last few days of August ‘20, just two weeks before the start of term, I got my scholarship from the Royal College of Music. I genuinely couldn’t believe it. With the several grants I had managed to get from Armenian institutions, everything had finally come together!

Covid at the time was at one of its peaks which meant all courses were completely online, so I was now a student at the RCM but I was still living in Armenia. This worked to my advantage because it bought me time to sort out my affairs, as I still had no place to stay in London, and neither my family or myself had the means of sorting out my living situation. Not much time passed, however, before life tested me one more time. In September 2020, a full-fledged war started between the Armenian and Azerbaijani border. With both my countries, Lebanon and Armenia, in absolute mess, I seriously considered giving up my place at the Royal College of Music. I didn’t see the point to all this anymore; life was in ruins. Continuing my classes and lectures online back then played a big role, I guess, by keeping my focus more or less in the right direction. For the fun of it, I was still getting in touch with a lot of people through different connections and networks in order to find a place to stay. And as you might’ve guessed, another miracle struck my life. Through a very kind lady, who is the administrator of one of the scholarships funds who had supported me, the impossible happened. An Armenian hotel owner had agreed to host me in one of his rooms in exchange to a set number of work hours a week. In hindsight, I had imagined a few ways in which this obstacle would be overcome, but this certainly didn’t even come close to any of them. Life had done its magic once again.

More than two years after all this today, I look back and smile and think, “how the heck did I pull that off?” The answer to which is very simple now. I didn’t. I just set a goal, truly believed that it will become a reality, and life took care of the rest. I even had a piece of paper that read something along the lines of “I’m grateful for the fact that I’m moving to London to study at the Royal College of Music” that I hung on my closet in the one-bedroom apartment I shared with my brother and parents before I was even offered a place at RCM! To this day, I have an unwavering trust in this method. No matter the end goal, if you believe in something truly without a shadow of a doubt, it will definitely become a reality; hold me accountable on that.

It is beyond difficult; it will take anything and everything you’ve got! It’s easy to sit here are write about all this in hindsight, but each challenge nearly broke me in half. But great things only happen to those who put up a fight, who are always in the search for more, and most definitely for those who want it the most. Over and out!