Middle East
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What Arabs Talk About At Dinner
On a recent work trip to Kuwait, my American colleague started chuckling while he listened to my Syrian cousin and me arguing about the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Is this what sitting down to dinner with family sounds like in the Middle East?” he asked. Yep. Pretty much always unless there is a divorce Continue reading
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Bahrain Again
Since the uprising in Egypt, I’ve been getting e-mails from people asking me if I’m okay, if I’m safe with everything going on the Middle East. Safety in the Middle East is just a question of where you are standing at a given moment. Sadly, I have never known the Middle East not to have Continue reading
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Cue the Camels and the Donkeys…and the Cool Cats
It’s time that we get our Middle East animals straight. The other day when I was watching men on camels and horseback charge through Tahrir Square in Cairo, whipping demonstrators, I felt like I was witnessing a bad Hollywood remake of Ben Hur or any other “cue the camels” movie depicting battle in the Holy Continue reading
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Egypt, Revolution, and Kushari (Koshari)
As the people of Egypt rise up against three decades of corruption, they do so very aware of thousands of years of culture that includes the pharaohs, Cleopatra, some of the greatest scholarship and literature of the Arab world, the wonders of the Nile, the Suez Canal, the Aswan Damn—and, perhaps not as internationally renowned Continue reading
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MY PSYCHIC POWERS AND THE MIDDLE EAST
The other day a colleague told me he was really excited to see how his students would react to a short story he had given them to read. “They’re not going to read it,” I predicted. He didn’t believe me. Sure enough, the next day no one had read it. “How did you know?” he Continue reading
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The Quran and the Quest For Kindness
In the last years of my dad’s life, I spent a lot of time asking him questions about the Quran. It wasn’t because either one of us was having a religious rebirth or even because it gave us some common ground together other than playing backgammon, although it did do that. It was because my Continue reading
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Get Out of My Face, You Donkey
Ruhi min wiji, ya hamra. Budrabik kef, these are the two phrases that my preadolescent nephews in Virginia would say to me every chance they got when I hung out with them this past month. Every time they said them, more animated with each rendering, they would start howling with little boy laughter. Get out Continue reading
Alia Yunis 