The Old Amman and its il-Madineh At a small dinner party a few years ago in Beirut, I met George Arbid, then professor of Architecture at AUB and co-founder of the Arab Center for Architecture (ACA). He told me he was working on a region-wide project on monuments to modernity in Arab metropolises–or something to …
Return to Hadath “ Ya, madame,” he shouted from the third floor balcony. I think I finally heard him the third time around. “ My grandfather lived here a long time ago,” I reassured him, instinctively knowing what brought him out. “I just wanted to take a photo or two of the old place.” He …
As The Lebanese Elites Play House… When the 2019 protests in Lebanon began to fizzle, a few of us sat over dinner discussing what might be the key lesson of that season of discontent. The most chilling one so far, I said, is that the ruling cabal realized they can pretty much do whatever they …
“Lina, My Little Muslim Friend” Last week, a Lebanese friend of mine, whom I shall call Samira, went with her daughter and granddaughter to the children’s toy department at London’s Selfridges. Upon entering the store, she was stunned to see little veiled Lina and her playmates on display. The Muslim dolls Lina, Amira and Aamina, …
What’s in A century? I am not sure how many of us Arabs are aware that, in 1920, our Levantine forefathers were the authors of a constitution that decreed Islam merely as the official religion of the king, omitted any reference to Islamic law, and arrogated to religion authority only over religious affairs. To civil …
Lebanon’s Cemeteries of People and Ideas “Parking lots are mass graves here.” It took some time to move past researcher Malena Eichenberg’s words. I was reading about Lebanon’s disappeared. This is every civil war’s chilling catchphrase, I thought. Any two fratricides may not meet in cause, triggers, pace, length, or brutality, but they are almost …
Lebanon seduces. That’s what every smitten foreigner—and they are many—will tell you. There is a sultry feel to the place, they say; seedy, perhaps, yes, and intoxicating all because of it. It could very well be Lebanon’s blithe openness to life’s best and worst possibilities that gives it this special glow even though it actually makes it stink. The taste of the West flirting shamelessly with that irresistible whiff of the
Our politics is a narcissistic, shrill creature, isn’t she? There is no hope for perils of the tight-lipped kind in her presence. She raves and rants and kills, shoving shyer tragedies to the back pages, as if our center stage is only for cataclysms that come with ticking bombs. And what an ungrateful prima donna she is, for where would she be, who would love her, who would even give her a second glance if it were not for the
Our politics is a narcissistic, shrill creature, isn’t she? There is no hope for perils of the tight-lipped kind in her presence. She raves and rants and kills, shoving shyer tragedies to the back pages, as if our center stage is only for cataclysms that come with ticking bombs. And what an ungrateful prima donna she is, for where would she be, who would love her, who would even give her a second glance if it were not for the
“They killed female goats because their reproductive organs were uncovered and their tails were pointed upward, which they said was haram (profane). They branded cucumbers as male and tomatoes as female, and they forbade our women from buying cucumbers….”
(Hameed al Hayess, one of Anbar’s tribal chiefs on the wondrous teachings of al Qaeda. Quoted in a Reuters article in August).
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