Articles

Michael Stevenson

Conspiracies. In a way, I think we all believe in them.

Nav Haq

Zaki Nusseibeh: Before and after

For as long as there has been a United Arab Emirates, Zaki Nusseibeh has been by the side of its leader.

Jonathan Shainin

Alexander Siddig: The Accidental Arab

The setting for our encounter could not have been more English.

Jamal Mahjoub

James Thornett: Sake bombs over Baghdad

James Thornett established the Baghdad Country Club in the Green Zone in 2004.

Alexander Provan

Giorgio Agamben

“I am an animal, even if I belong to a species that lives in unnatural conditions. And it seems to me at times that animals regard me with compassion. I’m touched by this, and feel something akin to shame every time an animal looks at me.”

Leland de la Durantaye

Omar Sleiman: Beirut book bazaar

“I don’t show them to people, because if I do, they’ll want to buy them, or get them one way or another.”

Lana Daher

Lawrence Weiner: Subwaying

I’m not a Frank Capra person, but I like Frank Capra movies.

Babak Radboy

Tony Shafrazi: All lies

He’s a wild Persian. He’s totally Armenian. He gave Keith Haring his first solo show.

Bidoun

Hampton Fancher: Pray for rain

“She used to laugh at herself because she was so beautiful, all the time I was growing up, and then she became a little old lady, and it was amazing to her.”

Gini Alhadeff

Mohammed Mrabet: Fish soup

Thousands of Europeans. Español, Français, American. Une salade niçoise.

Sean Gullette

Alejandro Jodorowsky: The unthinkable spring

If the pollution were to end, no one would want to live in those awful buildings without windows. Air conditioning is negating air.

Pedro Reyes

John Wilcock: Interview 101

“Andy’s idea was to take his tape recorder everywhere and just tape everybody.”

Zachary Hooker

Ghida Fakhry: Anchor-woman

For several years after 9/11, Al Jazeera was taboo in the US.

Shumon Basar

La Galerie qui Bouge: Beirut 1979

The artists attending began to paint, and when the paint ran out, they used Nescafé.

Kristine Genevive Khouri

Arabic as a Second Language

I first heard the Arabic word for “vibrator” by the ice cream machine in a cafeteria at Middlebury College.

Negar Azimi

Pow Wow Wow: Museum at the Heshmatiye Prison

The story of “the permanent exhibition of arts and crafts and cultural heritage of the captives of the holy war and their ways of living, hygiene, and treatment,” goes back to the early years of the Iran-Iraq war…

Vahid Zare Zade

Children of War: Beirut: Julien and Gabi Asfour

Julien and Gabi Asfour were born and raised in east Beirut, and grew up amid Lebanon’s several civil wars.

Bidoun

Children of War: Baghdad: Emad Abdelkarim Ali

Emad Abdelkarim Ali was fifteen years old when the American invasion of Iraq began.

Emad Abdelkarim Ali

Sweet Sixteen

The first time I ever saw a giraffe was at Khaled’s house. He had gotten one for his birthday, along with a snow leopard that I was told was bordering on extinction and some kind of monkey that wouldn’t stop screaming.

Lisa Farjam

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Just as Shirley Temple stole Depression-era America’s heart with her lollipop-sweet blond curls and blue eyes, soothing the country’s sorrows over sugar rations and Prohibition, so Lebanon had Remi Bandaly as a symbol of lost innocence in the midst of an ugly civil war.

Lina Mounzer