For those who live half a life, and carry the other half in memory.

Nisf Hayat (نصفُ حياةٍ) is a meditation on the duality of existence in the shadow of war—a life divided between survival and memory, between the living and the dead. The title, meaning “Half a Life” in Arabic, reflects the fractured reality of those who endure conflict: one half tethered to the rhythms of living, the other half trapped in the silence of loss and absence.

The guitar and clarinet embody this split. The guitar, with its earthy resonances and open tunings, weaves fragments of melody that evoke the fragile persistence of life—the rhythms of a village, the warmth of shared stories, the stubborn pulse of hope. In contrast, the clarinet drifts through haunting, fractured phrases, its voice bending and breaking as if choked by dust or grief. Together, they trace a narrative of collision: the intrusion of violence into the mundane, the erosion of memory by displacement, the weight of a life halved.

The piece unfolds as a series of collapses and echoes. Moments of lyrical reflection are shattered by bursts of chaos, mirroring the text’s imagery of hunger that “resembles the bombs of tanks” and a world reduced to dust. In the final passage, both instruments converge on a single, fragile pitch—a fleeting unison that dissolves into silence, leaving only the ache of what could not be fully lived.

Nisf Hayat is not a lament for what was lost, but for what survives in the space between living and longing. It is a map of scars, drawn in sound.

This piece is inspired by the following text by Mahmoud Al Shaer, whose words resonate with the quiet violence of a life suspended between memory and survival:

It is half a life, then—half a life for living, while the other half remains trapped in fear, loss, and absence.
It is half a life, in a parallel time, beyond this reality I inhabit, beyond this place.
It is half a life, in the face of death and ruin. Dust fills every scene, and hunger resembles the bombs of tanks and the rifles of soldiers.
Half a life—without war, without peace, within a closed space, now entirely besieged.
Half a life—I drag my dead half toward life, but it does not come.
Half a life, in a parallel time, beyond this reality I inhabit.