While he waits for his lesson at an Egyptian music school, Maissara Mohammed plays his oud, its soothing tones dissolving the stress of daily life during the coronavirus pandemic. “I play four instruments, but the oud is certainly my favourite,” the 27-year-old Sudanese engineer says, hunched over the pear-shaped body of his instrument. The oud, a stringed instrument popular in the Middle East and North Africa whose origins date back ...