Making a Film in Gaza
The screenwriter and would-be director of Gaza Airport recounts her struggle to make a feature film in Gaza.
Essays
Vitamin W: The Power of Wasta Squared
In which C.S. Layla, the American daughter of a Jordanian professor, remembers life and wasta in the old country.
Syria’s Ruling Elite— A Master Class in Wasta
Lawrence Joffe on how the al-Assad and Makhlouf families have mastered the art of control and corruption in a country decimated by a decade of war.
The Wall We Can’t Tell You About
There are some walls we can't discuss freely and openly without inviting censure. This is one of them.
The Bathing Partition
In this creative exploration of identity and homelessness, Sheana Ochoa faces her own inner walls and travels to Auschwitz.
Is Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek, Too, Occupied Territory?
Taylor Miller explores the aesthetics of gentrification and the "settler colonial hydra that continually displaces, erases, and reinscribes Palestinian space."
Between Thorns and Thistles in Bil’in
Muralist Francisco Letelier travels to the West Bank to help a Palestinian community confront the Occupation with art.
We Are All at the Border Now
Roving reporter Todd Miller, who has published four books exploring the world and its borders, questions the philosophy of walls.
Beautiful/Ugly: Against Aestheticizing Israel’s Separation Wall
Malu Halasa revisits the question of whether walls, borders and barriers should ever be dressed up to disguise their true intent.
Reviving Hammam Al Jadeed
Artist Tom Young who divides his time between Beirut and London, paints in Hammam Al Jadid during its revival after 70 years.
From Damascus to Birmingham, a Selected Glossary
Frances Zaid describes in epistolary fashion the language barriers in her blooming relationship (leading to marriage and kids) with a three-time refugee from the Yarmouk Camp.
The Labyrinth of Memory
Critic Ziad Suidan meditates on the meaning of the labyrinth and the walls that can separate us but also remind us of our shared history inside the hammam.
Panopticon of Kashmir
Ifat Gazia remembers her native Kashmir and wonders why her family, like countless others, was uprooted, displaced and forced to live like homeless people in their own land.
Poet in Pakistan: the Flamboyant Carolyn Kizer
Biographer Marian Janssen reveals the big, brash, blonde feminist writer and poet Carolyn Kizer, who fascinated and shocked Pakistanis—and introduced the ghazal to America.
France’s Fake Islamo-Leftist Crisis
One of France's prime "Islamo-leftist" suspects, Raphaël Liogier, explains why the term does not apply and what the true danger is (hint: it's not Islam).