Afro-Horn

Roland Kirk was a sight to see on the streets of Manhattan: a big blind man lugging a felled forest of burnished horns behind him in a green golf cart. Onstage he’d drape a menagerie around his neck, which he would play simultaneously and in harmony.

Brent Hayes Edwards

The Pearl Cannon

The barren and the impotent, the debutante and the bachelor, the spinster and the wench — all gathered around the miraculous cannon on Charshanbe Soori.

Sohrab Mohebbi

Hafez Al-Assad’s Iron Bladder

The Sphinx of Damascus was ruthless; he was patient. He knew when to hold them, and he could hold them indefinitely.

Rasha Salti

Santé Cigarette Box

The woman on the box had tinted blonde hair that is unlike but also like so many Greek blonde women.

Anna Boghiguian

Biscuit Tin

In this preindustrial fastness, anything that carried a whiff of the busy civilization elsewhere was cherished.

Pankaj Mishra

Condoleezza Rice’s Ice Skates

For all her storied achievements, there is a sense that what Condi Rice became was a well-heeled warning to prodigies everywhere.

Peter James Hudson

Berber Blanket

At one of the cafes in the modern city, a boy he imagined to be a more beautiful, Berber version of himself came up to him speaking Spanish, then switched to French. The boy bared his teeth, said he wanted to fuck him.

Marco Roth

The Object

The Middle East in its geographical obscurity and geopolitical remove serves as a generous host for inorganic demons and alien relics — a pulp lair for all objects that can be considered insurgent.

Reza Negarestani

Nefret-Hur’s Toilette

She strokes the fish; for a moment, the tip of her finger rests on its mouth.

Ahdaf Soueif

Anwar Sadat’s Pipe

The pipe, Sadat’s most successful bit of stagecraft, conveyed his canny paternal wisdom while delivering a subtle “fuck you” to the Brits, whom he’d beaten at their own game.

Maria Golia

The Mujib Coat

When Sheikh Mujib led the movement that broke Pakistan in half to make Bangladesh (the sound of one wing flapping), he was like a god.

Naeem Mohaiemen

The Taqwa Bus

The Taqwacores was a love letter and an indictment and a suicide note all at once, the work of a sometimes-mournful ex-Muslim. Then a funny thing happened.

Deena Chalabi

The Telltale Ass

An opened book, spread on a table, has its buttlike qualities.

Bruce Hainley

Chromeo’s David Macklovitch: Super-Jew & the Apostles of Funk

Around 1999, my girl was like, “Yo, you look stupid. Why you wearing shirts that are too big for you?” And I was like, That’s true, I look like a clown.

Alexander Gartenfeld

On Georges Perec’s Un Homme Qui Dort

On and offscreen, in and out of character, Shelly Duvall acts from the outside in, like a puppet master of her own body.

Ken Okiishi

Heavy Metal in Baghdad: The Decline of Middle Eastern Civilization

Over the course of Heavy Metal we will learn much more about what it means to be a certain kind of transnational North American hipster than about what it means to be an Iraqi metal band.

Gary Dauphin

Yalo

It is the 1980s in Beirut, and Daniel Jal’u, called Yalo by his friends, is arrested on charges of stalking and raping a woman named Shirin.

Dena Yago

Rogers

It’s not easy to talk about Rogers, Ahmad Nagi’s deliriously vexing new novel.

Nael Eltoukhy

Missing Soluch

Even as a trickle of Iranian artists, writers, and filmmakers — indeed, even as Iran itself — finds its way into the collective consciousness beyond fear-mongering stereotypes about ayatollahs, hostages, and great satans, a deep reservoir of Iranian culture remains unexplored.

Max Weiss

Mahma Kan Al Thaman: Whatever the price

Fatima Al Qadiri, Khalid Al Gharaballi