When Hadi Birajakli, a Syrian multidisciplinary artist now based mostly in Cairo, started writing his newest music Safer (2025), one phrase got here to him first: safer, Arabic for “to journey.” However for Birajakli, who left Syria for Cairo in 2012 amid the warfare, the phrase holds excess of its literal that means.
Fairly, for Birjakli, the phrase carries the load of motion, of longing, and of questioning. It holds years of navigating life as a stranger in an odd land, and of trying to find a way of belonging in Cairo, removed from the Syria he as soon as known as dwelling. It additionally holds the numerous conversations he has had with himself, attempting to make sense of a shifting id.
Because the music unfolds, that single phrase — safer — feels as if it stretches throughout the complete monitor, spilling into its sound and melodies. Although it is just sung as soon as, proper in the beginning, it lingers. The best way it’s sung, with rawness and filled with emotion, makes it stick to you lengthy after it’s gone, rippling by way of the remainder of the lyrics like an echo. In Birajakli’s palms, safer turns into greater than a phrase. It turns into a meditation on departure, arrival, and all the things that lives within the in-between.
“I selected the phrase safer because the title as a result of it was the one which captured the guts of the music finest, and it was the primary phrase I wrote,” Birajakli tells Egyptian Streets. “Within the music, it’s spoken virtually like I’m talking to myself.”
The best way Birajakli holds the phrase safer, tenderly, and with the total weight of his feelings, finds a parallel within the mirror he carries all through the music video, which is co-directed by Egyptian filmmaker Hayat Aljowaily and Serbian-American filmmaker Kaja Grujic. Fairly than the acquainted image of a migrant’s suitcase, he chooses one thing extra introspective: a mirror.
As he strikes by way of the streets of Cairo, the mirror displays not simply town, however himself. At moments, he stops to look into it, talking softly to his reflection, as he sings: “Journey… I don’t need to be current with all of those issues.”
In his palms, the mirror turns into a vessel, simply because the phrase safer does, holding fragments of id, reminiscence, and self; a logo of somebody nonetheless trying to find the place they start and the place they belong.
As he walks by way of Cairo’s streets within the music video, the mirror holds two truths directly: what it displays, and what escapes its body, the inside and outer, and the true and the imagined. At one level, the video cuts to fleeting photographs of strangers watching him, with their presence being a reminder that he doesn’t fairly belong.
But, within the midst of all of the noise, the stares, the fixed actions and the disorientation, the mirror grounds him and facilities his gaze inward, pulling him again to himself. It turns into an area the place he begins to mirror, to query, and to seek for a way of id inside the unfamiliar.
“We wished to point out the journey of Hadi’s character arriving in a mysterious new metropolis, the place actuality blends together with his inside world,” the administrators clarify. “At first, he’s overwhelmed and distant, unwilling to just accept his new environment. However as soon as he begins to confront the trauma of leaving dwelling, he begins to let town in.”
Because the music unfolds, and his feelings develop extra layered, the music begins to evolve, weaving collectively fusions of Center Japanese instrumentation and progressive rock. The sound turns into extra expansive, drawing the listener into an area of catharsis, and it’s right here that Birajakli appears to achieve a resolve and a second of inside readability.
Within the video, this shift is proven as he will get a haircut for the primary time at a neighborhood barbershop. It’s a small, on a regular basis act, nevertheless it additionally marks a second of emotional launch, the place he begins to adapt, to open himself to town, and to step into a brand new model of himself in a spot that when felt distant.
However this emotional launch was not one thing Birajakli all the time felt snug sharing. Whereas it’s an inherently human expertise, it’s one that’s typically missed or left unstated within the broader discourse on migration.
“I’ve all the time had survivor’s guilt,” Birajakli says. “I used to really feel like I shouldn’t speak about what we’ve been by way of as Syrians due to how privileged I’m.”
Over time, although, his perspective started to shift. He got here to see that artwork holds a fair larger urgency as we speak, particularly in a area the place it stays one of many few methods Arabs can doc and protect their lived experiences.
“I’ve discovered that having the privilege to make music, to have the time and sources to precise myself, is precisely why I ought to speak about it,” he provides. “Even after I’m not attempting to, I discover myself writing about it anyway.”
The longer you sit with the video and the music, the extra it reveals itself: what begins as a disoriented, unsure journey steadily unfolds into one thing mild and grounded. Slowly, Birajakli begins to melt, to adapt, and to discover a sense of place inside the metropolis.
The reality is, the migrant journey by no means actually ends. Too typically, the query we ask is: When will the migrant lastly belong? However maybe the extra sincere query is: How a lot house and time are we prepared to present them to belong?
And that’s what this music reminds us: that adaptation shouldn’t be a vacation spot, however a sluggish, unfolding course of. There’s nonetheless a lot to be taught, to just accept, to really feel at dwelling with.
Within the last scene, Birajakli sits beside an Egyptian man, sharing tea and laughter. But, between them rests a small fishbowl, which is a logo of how far he has come, and of all the things nonetheless held inside.
“The fishbowl represents the sensation of belonging and alienation on the similar time,” he explains. “The water is dwelling for the fish, nevertheless it’s nonetheless trapped in a bowl.”