Middle East
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Not So Much Like a Virgin
Madonna’s self-proclaimed world peace tour arrived in Abu Dhabi via Tel Aviv and opened with the Material Girl mowing down with her assault rifle as many minimally dressed, mostly black men with well-oiled muscles as possible while repeating for at least five minutes, “Bang, bang, I shot my lover dead.” Fake blood included. Peace. It’s Continue reading
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Beyond 100 Goats
Abu Khalil has 100 goats, twelve children, three wives, and few good teeth. When he hosts people in his main tent, he dons the gold colored bisht (robe), a sign of celebration and status among the Bedu (or Bedouins). I met Abu Khalil’s family earlier this month while accompanying a visiting American friend on a Continue reading
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Where are the Actors?
Every year I ask this, and here I go again for the third time, “Know any enthusiastic student filmmakers living in the Middle East?” If so, please let them know about the Zayed University Middle East Film Festival, which brings together student films from across the Middle East to reveal an industry in rebirth, as Continue reading
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Being Good Enough
OUR PLIGHT By: Michael J. Oghia June 2011 Beirut, Lebanon Dedicated to all my Arab–American brothers and sisters that know exactly how I feel. Who am I, but a complex amalgam of contradictory identities? Two, which exist paradoxically, yet never seem to make you feel complete. They glare at you for one, Snarl at you, Continue reading
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A Good Library is Hard To Find
What is more important in a library than anything else – than everything else – is the fact that it exists. ~Archibald MacLeish, “The Premise of Meaning,” American Scholar, 5 June 1972 The other day in Jordan, my mother made the day of a young Spanish woman with whom we were chatting by telling her Continue reading
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THE WRITING ON THE WALL: BEIRUT
There are things those of us who have lived in Beirut can take for somewhat inevitable—electricity will go out when it feels like it, war is always a believable possibility, ignoring fashion is more sinful than religious differences, and as many people are trying to leave as are trying to come back. In Beirut last Continue reading
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Work Horse in Egypt
My friend Natasha Ghoneim went to Cairo this summer, as she does most summers. But this time she went with the goal of finding some of the untold stories of the revolution. As Egypt’s revolution made clear, human rights are not something guaranteed to anyone, not just in the Middle East but in many places Continue reading
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Just Peachy in Jordan
In Jordan, my mother’s garden has a peach tree that doesn’t stop giving at this time of the year. She hands out bags of peaches to neighbors and relatives and anyone who passes by on the street. She makes peach jam with whatever peaches she can save, and still she mourns the peaches that fall Continue reading
Alia Yunis 