Cigarette ash and super-glue - that is what refugee Anwar Ali used to mend his precious oud when the musical instrument was smashed on the ground of a Somalian camp.
He carried it with him the four thousand miles to Liverpool and it was in his hands when a chance meeting in the Zanzibar club changed his life.
Listening to his performance was local musician Dave Owen, who was immediately drawn into the rolling waves of melody that was at once familiar and utterly foreign.
Their friendship has brought Anwar a sense of belonging in the once-strange city that he has made his home, while for Dave it has been like gaining a brother.
The duo have now brought out an EP, Mchange Mweupe, meaning White Sands - a reference to Anwar's home in the Bajuni Islands, which he thinks of as a beautiful place despite the harrowing circumstances that brought him to Liverpool.
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He talks little about the experience, preferring to focus on the beauty of where he has left behind, and the music that he is sharing with people in his new home.
Dave says: "They have clove trees that grow on the beaches and when the wind blows you can smell them.
"It's a very beautiful place but it's lawless because it has no state. Anwar's claim for refugeeship came automatically because everybody is owed the protection of a state."
The Bajuni Islands' location close to Somalia makes its people a target for Islamist militant group al-Shabab.
Anwar says: "They come in the village and they want young people to join with them."
"It's quite a painful thing to talk about really," interjects Dave, who is very protective of his friend.
Anwar taught himself to play the oud after it was given to him by a Red Cross volunteer who had dropped it on the floor and broken it. He asked if he could keep the bits of wood and put it back together with his bare hands.
He says: "I didn't have any tools, just super-glue and cigarette ash so I just tried to see what would happen. It took hours to fix."
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A few years ago, he bought a new, glossier oud but has ended up returning to his well-worn instrument because the sound wasn't as good.
Anwar's journey to Liverpool took him by boat from Somalia to Yemen and then a flight to the UK. He was moved from Leeds to Croydon and eventually to Merseyside, where he settled near Vauxhall Road.
Anwar says: "I didn't know anything. I felt like I was in a safe country, but about Liverpool I didn't know anything.
"It was very different. I didn't know English, I didn't know culture. It was like you were in another world."
When Dave heard him playing in the Zanzibar in 2012, he thought: "Oh man, that's amazing."
He suggested they gig together.
"We'd communicate through music and as we got to know each other better and as Anwar's English got better we became very good friends," says Dave, whose day job is a service co-ordinator for a care agency.
"We've got to a point where it's sort of like a brotherly relationship."
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Together they have performed at festivals Africa Oye and Fire In The Mountain in North Wales. Their EP is released by Liverpool record company Mellowtone.
Dave, who is originally from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, but now lives in Toxteth, says: "There are a lot of beautiful things about where Anwar is from and I think the music really captures them.
"These songs are quite special because they are from East Africa and have been passed down from generation to generation and have evolved into something beautiful."
Anwar Ali and Dave Owen are playing at a Mellowtone event in the Zanzibar, where they met, on April 4.
Their EP, Mchange Mweupe, is available now from the Mellowtone website .
