Author
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Love Notes From Fatima and Scheherazade
Debutante’s Ball is a website of a bunch of fun authors with upcoming books. Alicia Bessette, whose novel is coming out in August and who’s one of the webmasters asked me to write a bit on love, and here you go, and I think Fatima and Scheherazade would approve: Some Love Notes for Debutantes http://www.thedebutanteball.com/?m=20100213 Continue reading
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Silence As Golden As Sand
“Silence” is a relative word, referring to how quiet a place is compared to other times. Silence in a home still involves the hum of the fridge, the heater, the creaking in the wood, the wind on the windows, and so many other things. Outside, it means the birds still chirping, bugs buzzing, the breeze, Continue reading
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BEIRUT: CATS INSTEAD OF GUNS
When I used to look out at the Corniche from our apartment in Beirut in the 1980s, I’d see a lot of guns, partly because a makeshift military post had sprung up one night in the field in front of us, and partly because there was a war. People still found away to walk the Continue reading
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DISNEYLANDIFICATION AND THE HIJAB
In order to get to my reading in Cairo, my two colleagues and I had to negotiate with a stoned cab driver, whose body for most of the harrowing ride was half out the taxi chatting with a man stuck on the bus next to us, and a donkey who refused to budge off the Continue reading
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NOT ALL GULF COUNTRIES FEEL THE SAME WAY ABOUT MICHAEL JACKSON
As I got into my first taxi in Bahrain last weekend, the taxi driver shocked me: He was Bahraini. He dressed and looked like someone from the UAE, but he was most definitely not Emirati. Emiratis may live just down the Gulf from Bahrain, but they do not drive cabs. Heck, they barely ride in Continue reading
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THE NIGHT COUNTER’S MIDDLE EAST TOUR BEGINS
Six weeks after finishing the initial U.S. tour, The Night Counter and I are going to do a little tour of the Middle East. Started out easy last night at the American Women’s Network in Abu Dhabi, where, thanks to my friend Annette, many of the women had already read it and were fans. Next Continue reading
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The Middle East Film Festival and Egypt’s Heliopolis
Independent film is hard to come by in Egypt, and so I really wanted to love Heliopolis, by first time director Ahmed Abdulla and starring Egyptian heartthrob Khaled Abol Naga. And I was all pumped up, as I ended up sitting in front of Abbas Kirostami and Joan Chen, who are the festival’s jury. The Continue reading
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MIDDLE FILM FESTIVAL: Iraqi and Syrian Films
After seeing an opening night film in which half the crowd walked out and in a year where my limited opportunities to see films has left me until last night calling The Hangover my favorite film of the year, I’m delighted to now call Son of Babylon my favorite film of the festival and the Continue reading
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THE MIDLE EAST FILM FESTIVAL: LEBANON AND SOME SHORTS
When I was a child, I remember my grandmother complaining to my mother about the war having ruined her fashion sense. My mother’s response was “Which war?” At that point both had lived through so many wars, as had the other people of the Arab countries of the Mediterrean, from North Africa and Egypt to Continue reading
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LIVE FROM THE RED CARPET: THE MIDDLE EAST FILM FESTIVAL GALA
In the end, rumors were false and Omar Sharif did not show up for the screening of Al Mosafar (The Traveler), the opening night movie of the Middle East Film Festival in which he stars. But most of the other actors in the film did, as well as several other stars from around the world. Continue reading
Alia Yunis 