SANAA, Yemen — There was a jam session in the music room of Basement Foundation, a brand new cultural center in Sanaa in early February 2013. The lights were lowered and three musicians improvised melodies on the classical Arabic Hijaz scale. 

Khaled Haidar led on his keyboard and the guitarists joined in. Methal Hamadi, 22, occasionally put down her pink guitar to play the harmonica. She also plays the piano, the ukulele and the Melodicas she ordered on Amazon — much to the dismay of her mother, the breadwinner of the family, who wants to see her daughter have a career and make good money. So, much like many talented young Middle Easterners, Hamadi is studying medicine.

When Hamadi was a small girl a teacher at her conservative Islamic school taught the pupils that the word jeans comes from the word ‘jens,’ which means sex in Arabic, and is therefore haram. When she told them about her piano, they replied that it, too, was haram.

“Everything here is haram,” said Hamadi, exasperated by the fact that people say even walking in public with an instrument is haram.