For many years I listened to ABC Classic FM’s breakfast program on my early morning walks.The presenter wooed me with her beautiful voice and the wonderful music she played. This was Eddie Ayres, but at that time she was Emma Ayres.

As Emma, she had arrived in Australia after playing viola with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and teaching herself cello in her spare time. After many years with the ABC, she resigned from her breakfast radio job after taking sick leave for depression. I was just one of the thousands of devoted listeners who missed her tremendously.

As a child, Emma had always been fascinated by Afghanistan, and later, as an adult, she watched as the Taliban took control, violently enforcing their way of life but then being defeated by the allied forces after 9/11. The people of Kabul regained some of their freedom, even being able to listen to music and laughing in public places. Emma noted, with great interest, that even a music school was being refounded by an Afghan Australian named Dr Ahmad Sarmast.

Then, one day, on the news, she saw that a bomb had gone off in Kabul. Dr Sarmast, from the music school, had been badly injured. She wrote to him and applied for the position of cello teacher at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. Her new life was about to begin.

On meeting the little people – some orphans, some street kids – who would become her first students, she was amazed how each child knew exactly what instrument he or she wanted to play. And how quickly they learned. Music was in their souls: their beautiful music that could be traced back thousands of years and our Western music, which was new to their ears. But, sadly, just as you get to meet the children, some of them disappear, never to be seen again. This is life in Kabul. I was deeply moved by this book.

I was moved by the plight of the children living through this hell and moved by their bravery and that of their families.

And I was moved by Emma’s decision to finally find the courage to become the man she always knew she was.

Reviewed by Merle Morcom

Danger Music by Eddie Ayres