How to be hopeful: Colum McCann on the broken violin that played in a refugee camp

Music can be a form of resistance - but an unstrung violin didn't hold much promise. Then it was fixed, a plume of dust rose, and the fiddler began to play

It wasn't a long journey, really, from East Jerusalem to Bethlehem in the central West Bank, but it went across ancient borders and boundaries and checkpoints. We were on our way, a group of five from the non-profit global exchange group Narrative 4, to the Aida refugee camp in the shadow of what the Israelis call the "separation barrier" and the Palestinians call the "apartheid wall". Among our group was Colm Mac Con Iomaire, an Irish fiddle player, one of the finest musicians in the world.

We abandoned the taxi at Checkpoint 300 and left Colm's fiddle in the car, knowing that we were quicker on foot, but that the taxi would bring the fiddle along later: everywhere we went in Israel and Palestine, Colm would open up the eyelids of the day by playing a tune.