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"We will stay here," go the song's lyrics, "until the pain goes away."
PHOTOS: Rebellion in Libya
"We will live here, the melody will sweeten," urging Libyans to stay in the country and endure the oppressive conditions under dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
It was the first song to come out of Libya when the revolution started. When camera crews rolled into Benghazi in the earliest days of the uprising, it was what the crowds were singing as they celebrated liberating their city.
But the story of its inspiration is joyless, as Al Mshiti told it recently in Tripoli.
At age 22, Al Mshiti was a medical student in Benghazi when he was arrested and thrown in prison. His crime was treating the victims of a violent crackdown on anti-Gadhafi protesters in 1996.
Too scared to go to public hospitals where they might be arrested, the injured protesters had turned to Al Mshiti and other sympathetic medical students to treat their bullet wounds. From that moment on, Al Mshiti's home was placed under surveillance.
Eventually, more than 100 armed internal security officers surrounded the house. They entered it and held his mother at gunpoint until Al Mshiti was found and taken away to the headquarters of Gadhafi's security forces in Benghazi.
For 10 days, Al Mshiti lay bound on the floor of a staircase. Guards beat him with boots and electric cables. A few days later he was transferred to a prison in Tripoli, where he spent six months in solitary confinement . His only break from confinement was when he was taken to be tortured or interrogated.
He was transferred to a cell shared with a couple dozen or so men. It was there that he began singing, hoping to relieve their boredom and soothe their pain.
"When I sang, all the prisoners would cry and it was one of the things that helped us cope. After we cried everybody felt better."
Almost six years after his arrest, Al Mshiti was released. He was determined not to let his imprisonment ruin his life, and so applied for re-entry to medical school.
It took him more than six months to persuade the college authorities to let him continue his studies. He found that he had forgotten much of the English language that he had learned to read medical textbooks.
Al Mshiti persevered and graduated in 2005. It was at his graduation ceremony that he first sang the song We Will Stay Here. The song became an underground hit.
"We couldn't listen to this song in public before," says Issa Aissa, 25, "but we listened to it in secret. I love the emotions when he sings."
When the revolt began in February, Al Mshiti was in Germany studying.
After rebels took control of Tripoli last month, Al Mshiti returned to Libya and discovered his song had been posted on YouTube and passed on from cellphone to cellphone.
"It is incredible, an incredible feeling," he says of hearing his voice all over Libya.
Al Mshiti says he hasn't made money from sales of the song but he is proud of what he did.
"My music is my weapon," he says.
On the streets of Tripoli, people feel the same way.
"For 42 years we didn't have any songs about our country, all the songs were about Gadhafi and his supporters," says Osama Al Shamli, 27. "This song is the story of the Libyan people."
