Leaving Abdoh, Finding Chamran
Salar Abdoh reflects on returning to Iran, burdened by injustice and a desire to reconnect with a culture that has normalized disinformation.
Essays
Home is Elsewhere: On the Fictions of Return
Feeling that her childhood home differed from her birthplace, writer Mai Al-Nakib perceives home as more imaginary than real.
Exile and Hope: Sudanese creatives and the question of home
Sudanese artists in exile are keeping their identity and heritage alive while they await the chance to return home.
Arabic Jazz and Yazz Ahmed: A Music Between Homelands
Arabic jazz challenges stereotypes amid rising xenophobia in the West and colonial violence in the Arab world.
A Letter To My Cruel Lover: Tripoli
My Tripoli breathes gunpowder, // … the city where mosques are bombed and streets get emptied. // … How can my Lebanon be their Lebanon?
The anger and sadness I brought back from Damascus. And the urge to shave my head
Batoul Ahmad, during a ten-year absence from Damascus, reconstructs her sense of home through memory and self-discovery in Australia.
Looking for a Job, Living and Dying in Iran: The Logistics of Going Back
Not even escalating tensions between Israel and Iran could stop one wayward Iranian from returning home to see his father one last time.
Strangers at Home: Young Palestinians in Israel
Young Palestinian citizens of Israel navigate life facing a unique position as both insiders and outsiders.
Return to Iraq: Sama Alshaibi’s ‘طرس’
Sama Alshaibi’s new project focuses on the spatial, material, and technological fragments that narrate the story of a place and its people.
Germany’s Most Rightwing Parliament Since WWII—Liberals Panic, Immigrants Roll Their Eyes
Laila Abdalla, a young Egyptian journalist transplanted to Germany, sizes up the rightward drift of the country.
Four Gates to the Hereafter: On The Dissenters
The Egyptian author of an epistolary novel — his first in English — meditates on whether his work will join the canon of world literature.
Frankenstein in Baghdad: A Novel for Our Present Dystopia
An NYU professor who has frequently taught this Iraqi novel finds that two months into Trump 2.0, its significance has shifted considerably.
Love and Resistance in Online Persian Dating Shows
From blindfolding potential dates to threating them with cockroaches, Iranian YouTube dating game shows go viral and the regime takes action.
A Conversation Among My Homeland’s Trees
The Trees spoke above the screams, the fires, the bombs, the droughts, across the oasis, forests, and streams of her homeland.
Heartbreak and Commemoration in Beirut’s Southern Suburbs
In the southern suburbs of Beirut, women openly grieve those they have lost, in the wake of Israel's latest onslaught.