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Nazareth’s Deep Rooted Miracle
This year I happen to have written an unprecedented amount on Christmas related and Palestine related matters, although not in conjunction with each other. So perhaps it’s best to end the year with where Christmas and Palestine actually met for me a year ago. Where they’ve met since the beginning of Christianity: In Nazareth. At Continue reading
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My Very Short Middle East Movie List
Recently a professor in the US asked me if I could put together a list of Arabic language films she might be able to use in her women’s studies and global studies classes. This is only a short excursion around 20 plus countries sharing a common language and multiple problems and plenty of quirkiness. Continue reading
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Poetic Pomegranates
Nothing like a Rumi poem about pomegranates to sum up what is hip in literature and food circles today. Both these Middle Eastern imports—Rumi and pomegranates– have gone from near obscurity to near cliché levels in Western cultural hotspots over the past few years. Yet another reason for the pomegranate to laugh in Rumi’s poem. Continue reading
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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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Volunteering Because You Can
As a child, I could tell you a lot about fjords and olive trees, even though I had never seen either one. This is because I grew up around a lot of Norwegians and Palestinians. The Norwegians were my neighbors and classmates in Minnesota, the Palestinians our family friends, part of the handful of Arabs 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
Alia Yunis 