TMR 13
ORIGINS
The region we call the center of the world includes great diversity in terms of its ethnic and religious groups, each with their own identity, language and history. This issue features Black Iranians, Kurds, Armenians, the Amazigh, Coptic Egyptians, Rum and Somalians, among others.
- TMR 13
- TMR 13
- CENTERPIECE
Displaced: From Beirut to Los Angeles to Beirut
Ara Oshagan I am walking along the narrow and labyrinthine Armenian neighborhoods of Bourj Hammoud in Beirut—spaces with names like Nor (new) Marash, Nor Sis, Nor Yozgat. These are the […]
15 September 2021 • By Ara OshaganMORE FROM THIS ISSUE
Hasteem, We Are Here: The Collective for Black Iranians
Twelve Gates Arts and the Collective for Black Iranians are hosting “Hasteem: We Are Here” from September 3-24, 2021. Maryam Sophia Jahanbin Content warning: enslavement, land and labor acknowledgement. […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY AIMéE PAPAZIAN
For Somalia’s Sagal Ali and Her Country’s Future, Art Triumphs Over War
Art historian Sophie Kazan speaks to Sagal Ali about the importance of art-making for the future of Somalia and her founding of the Somali Arts Foundation. Sophie Kazan […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY SOPHIE KAZAN MAKHLOUF
Flagbearer of a Stateless Nation, from “Daughters of Smoke and Fire”
The following is excerpted from Chapter 14 in Ava Homa’s Daughters of Smoke and Fire and appears in TMR by gracious arrangement with the author. Ava Homa When his […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY OMAR EL AKKAD
Three Poems by Kashmiri American Bard Agha Shahid Ali
Agha Shahid Ali Tonight Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar —Laurence Hope Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight? Whom else from […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY KARIMA AHDAD
My Amazigh Indigeneity (the Bifurcated Roots of a Native Moroccan)
Brahim El Guabli I am Amazigh, Black, and Sahrawi. Amazigh language is my mother tongue. My mother is Black, and my father is Sahrawi. The only picture I own […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY BRAHIM EL GUABLI
Why Resistance Is Foundational to Kurdish Literature
Kurdish writer Ava Homa on how statelessness, trauma and political exile shaped her novel "Daughters of Smoke and Fire."
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY AVA HOMA
The Harrowing Life of Kurdish Freedom Activist Kobra Banehi
Excerpted from the anthology Kurdish Women’s Stories (Pluto Press, 2020), by special arrangement with editor Houzan Mahmoud. The Prison Speakers Played Islamic Verses Kobra Banehi Kobra Banehi, also known […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY KOBRA BANEHI
The Complexity of Belonging: Reflections of a Female Copt
Nevine Abraham Growing up in Shoubra, one of the most populated Christian suburbs of Cairo, I met all my Muslim friends at a French Catholic school, which they and […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY NEVINE ABRAHAM
The Limits of Empathy in Rabih Alameddine’s Refugee Saga
The Wrong End of the Telescope a novel by Rabih Alameddine Grove Atlantic (Sept 2021) ISBN 9780802157805 Dima Alzayat When in 2018 director Lena Dunham announced she had been hired […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY KHULUD KHAMIS
“Tattoos,” an excerpt from Karima Ahdad’s Amazigh-Moroccan novel “Cactus Girls”
In this excerpt from the Amazigh-Moroccan novel "Cactus Girls" by Karima Ahdad, a fierce small-town girl from the Rif named Sonya remembers what it was like growing up under the spell of heroic women. Like the cactus of the title, Ahdad’s women are survivors in a barren landscape, one filled with hostility towards women.
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY MONIQUE EL-FAIZY
Attack the Empire and the Empire Strikes Back: What 20 Years of American Imperialism Has Wrought
Omar El Akkad, author of American War and What Strange Paradise, looks at 20 years of blowback.
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY OMAR EL AKKAD
Shelf Life: The Irreverent Nadia Wassef
For a brutally honest look at what it’s been like to run a business and raise a family in Cairo these past twenty years, read Diwan’s founder Nadia Wassef’s “Shelf Life” How a labor of love consumes, challenges and fills her life with questions whose answers are often on the Shelf.
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY JANINEDIGIOVANNI
“The Location of the Soul According to Benyamin Alhadeff”—a story by Nektaria Anastasiadou
Nektaria Anastasiadou weaves a rich tale of thwarted love between Sephardic and Rum residents of Istanbul.
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY NEKTARIA ANASTASIADOU
Voyage of Lost Keys, an Armenian art installation
Aimée Papazian Art and text by Aimée Papazian; photos by Stephen Ironside “Voyage of Lost Keys,” a permanent art installation recently installed in the Fayetteville Public Library in Arkansas, […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY AIMéE PAPAZIAN
20 Years Ago This Month, 9/11 at Souk Ukaz
Hadani Ditmars The commemoration of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 unfolds in televisual real time and yet with a strange sense of suspended animation, as if we’re on a slow […]
15 SEPTEMBER 2021 • BY MOHJA KAHF