Burning Forests, Burning Nations
Columnist Hadani Ditmars recounts meeting strangers at the beach during fire season in British Columbia and finds Syria and Turkey are shared homelands.
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“The Settlement”—a story by Tariq Mehmood
From Tariq Mehmood comes an allegorical story with the strange beauty and simplicity of a tale by Ghassan Kanafani or J.M. Coetzee.
Climate Disasters Hasten the Advent of a World Refugee Crisis
Novelist Omar El Akkad ("What Strange Paradise", "American War") warns that wildfires and other climate disasters are creating the conditions for a global refugee crisis the world is not prepared for.
Killing Olive Trees Fails to Push Palestinians Out
Olive trees are majestic, they are the source of many livelihoods throughout Palestine, and they have too often been slashed and torched by Israeli settlers. Olive trees should never be pawns in a political supremacy game. Basil al-Adraa reports.
FIRE: An Abbreviated Reading List
Here are a few staff picks in a very short list that could benefit from having us add your own fire-related titles. Come on, light our fire.
Alchemy and the Deaf Blacksmith of Amman
Munir Atalla, the Brooklyn-based writer-director, recounts the story of a rather unusually happy, earnest man with a handicap and a skill.
Poem: An Allegory for Our Times
Jenny Pollak, a poet in Australia, captures the unrelenting menace of a changing world.
Sacred Fire, Profane Fire: From Ritual to Barbecue
Bethlehem's top chef Fadi Kattan waxes enthusiastic on fire, grilling and the art of turning meat pink.
Diary of the Collapse—Charif Majdalani on Lebanon’s Trials by Fire
A.J. Naddaff reviews the latest work of creative nonfiction by Lebanon's Charif Majdalani, as his nation teeters on the edge of the abyss.
Reconsidering Thoreau in a Burning World
Megan Marshall on living with things lost in the Caldor Fire and revisiting Henry David Thoreau.
The Vanishing: Are Arab Christians an Endangered Minority?
Hadani Ditmars reviews Janine di Giovanni's ambitious new travelogue on beleaguered Christian communities in Iraq, Gaza, Syria, and Egypt.
A Street in Marrakesh Revisited
In which the editor of "Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Contemporary Moroccan Poetry" remembers her introduction to life in Marrakesh.
Day of the Imprisoned Writer — November 15, 2021
TMR On November 15th, every year now for the last 40 years, PEN International has observed the Day of the Imprisoned Writer. With the harassment, detention, conviction and imprisonment of… Continue reading Day of the Imprisoned Writer — November 15, 2021
The Ignominy of Guantánamo: a History of Torture
Marian Janssen, biographer of a forthcoming volume on the flamboyant American poet Carolyn Kizer, reviews the new memoir by former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi.
Refugees Detained in Thessonaliki’s Diavata Camp Await Asylum
In which our columnist flies up to Thessaloniki and visits the Diavata camp for refugees seeking European asylum — no one is illegal, everyone merits a better life.