Articles

Space Oddity: Mazlan Othman: Director of UNOOSA

The fifty-nine-year-old, who has the distinction of being Malaysia’s first astrophysicist, looks a bit like the result of an encounter between E.T. and a more subdued Yoko Ono.

Yasmine Seale

Save the Babes: Nazazin Afshin-Jam: Singer, Model, President of Stop Child Executions

Most every aspiring beauty queen hopes for world peace. Nazanin Afshin-Jam is more specific.

Lisa Farjam

Storytelling: Radwan Kasmiyah: Conscious Video Game Designer

The Jahliyya, or “Age of Ignorance,” that predated the rise of Islam has all the necessary ingredients for a sweeping historical fantasy or epic role-playing game.

Anand Balakrishnan

Left Behind: Suchindvath Aiyer: Strategic and Change Management Mentor at Acciacatura Consulting

At St Joseph’s Boys’ High School in Bangalore, where I was a student in the late 1990s, the Tamil Brahmins ate curd rice in small groups, eschewed sports, dressed neatly, and raised their hands milliseconds faster than anyone else.

Ryan Lobo

Potenco Al La Homoj: Esperanto: Power to the People

In 1887, a young Russian eye doctor named Ludwig Zamenhof published the first grammar of his Universal Language under the pseudonym Docktoro Esperanto (Doctor Hopeful).

Benjamin Tiven

The Adventures of Superadobe: Nader Khalili: Visionary Architect Founder, California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture

Nader Khalili’s thirty-year quest for an architecture that could house the world’s poor culminated in an idea he called Superadobe.

Brian Ackley

Dreams that Matter

Every Wednesday night from the years 2001 to 2003, millions of Egyptians would tune into Channel 3 on national television to watch Ru’a, a popular talk show in which audiences would intently listen in as callers would, in great detail, retell their dreams.

Anna Della Subin

The Clash of Images

In this Borgesian set of very short, short stories that are part memoir, part fable, part criticism, a young Abdallah, who serves as the central character through most of the stories, comes of age in a small unnamed town on the coast of Morocco.

Yasmine El Rashidi

Armen Eloyan: Anarmeniacs

“Putting together a good painting is like putting together a good joke.”

Negar Azimi

Whirling in the West: On DIA and/as spiritual conspiracy

It was foreordained: a veritable princess of the underground, in a grand act of renunciation, became a faqir, a pilgrim, and a stranger. And then she died, in a manner of speaking…

Alexander Keefe

The Math of Khan: Salman Khan: Founder of the Khan Academy

The voice belongs to Salman Kahn, who wants to pulverize every last ossified notion you’ve ever had about education.

Par Parekh

Mujahidude: Amr Khaled

He is an army of one dreaming of the Islamic Renaissance to come, a pious poster boy, hero, and self-help coach to millions.

Negar Azimi

Best Dad Ever: Naif Al-Mutawa: CEO, Teshkeel Media Limited and Creator of “The 99”

Doctor Mutawa, an affably serious thirty-nine-year-old with dark, floppy curls and a salt-and-pepper five o’clock shadow, has been called one of “The Most Influential Muslims in the World"…

Michael C. Vazquez

Juicing the Global Jukebox: Pangea: World Musicians

The video for “Citizens of the World” begins with a helicopter-mounted camera breaking through the clouds and descending toward the dreary grid of Los Angeles.

Alexander Provan

Miljohn Ruperto: Recovering a complete person from her time as an Other

When Cooper finally made her way to Hollywood in 1940, she found no more than thirteen bit parts — amounting to a total of sixteen and a half known onscreen minutes — before her suicide two decades later.

Aram Moshayedi

Revolution by Design

One of the oddest chapters in the annals of the Cold War was its proxy war by magazine, and the oddest Cold War magazine was undoubtedly Tricontinental.

Babak Radboy

Mondo Aramco

Founded in 1949 by the New York–based public relations department of the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), Aramco World is the oldest English-language arts and culture publication in the Middle East

Michael C. Vazquez

Invitation to a Sunset

In the India of my growing up, Red Russians were our white people.

Achal Prabhala

How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge

Bono sent a book of poems. Someone wrote an essay, “How to Write about Afghanistan.” I shook hands with, not one, but two European presidents, who read my text and shook their heads: How bad, how very bad.

Binyavanga Wainaina

How’s Business: Naguib: Police officer turned hash dealer, Cairo

In March of 2010, Egyptian newspapers began to report on what has come to be known as “the hash crisis” (azmat el-hasheesh).

Issandr El Amrani