The Markaz Review

09/18/2021

The Persian Gulf Slave Trade was only abolished in 1929. Nearly a century later, The Collective for Black Iranians holds their inaugural exhibition in an effort to disrupt the discourse surrounding intersections of Blackness and Iranianness, carrying an expansive and inspiring narrative of Iranian heritage.

The exhibition, entitled 'Hasteem: We Are Here' addresses the erasure of Black Iranians from history by centering the voices of Black Iranians, specifically women.

Full article https://bit.ly/3AlYOwX 🧕🏿

The Persian Gulf Slave Trade was only abolished in 1929. Nearly a century later, The Collective for Black Iranians holds their inaugural exhibition in an effort to disrupt the discourse surrounding intersections of Blackness and Iranianness, carrying an expansive and inspiring narrative of Iranian heritage.

The exhibition, entitled 'Hasteem: We Are Here' addresses the erasure of Black Iranians from history by centering the voices of Black Iranians, specifically women.

Full article https://bit.ly/3AlYOwX 🧕🏿

09/16/2021

See the new TMR, issue 13 ORIGINS with original stories reflecting Amazigh, Armenian, Bedouin, Kurdish, Sephardic, Black Iranians and other diverse cultures of the MENA: https://themarkaz.org/magazine/

See the new TMR, issue 13 ORIGINS with original stories reflecting Amazigh, Armenian, Bedouin, Kurdish, Sephardic, Black Iranians and other diverse cultures of the MENA: https://themarkaz.org/magazine/

09/14/2021

By the looks of it, these fierce women, from congresswomen to entertainers, weren't about to have their messages lost in translation at last night's #MetGala. Strutting down the red carpet adorned with show-stopping ensembles, they let the looks do the talking - quite literally. Which is your favorite?

#MetGala2021 #AOC #carolynmaloney #caradelevingne #femen

09/07/2021

REBELLION RESURRECTED: THE WILL OF YOUTH AGAINST HISTORY

Unleashing the creative genius of Arab comic artists, the Arab Spring was the timely detonator of a slew of comic collectives that cultivated spaces dedicated to freedom of expression in different countries across the region.

Initiatives like Egypt's TokTok توك توك and Lebanon's Samandal Comics played a central role in embracing comics artists from across the region by creating independent platforms free from the constraints of the publishing world, argues George Khory Jad, award-winning artist, author, and digital media lecturer at the Lebanese American University - LAU.

SWIPE 👇🏼 for some of the region's best comic releases, magazines, and collectives throughout the decade.

Full article at https://bit.ly/3zT3V7t

09/04/2021

Amel Brahim-Djelloul

This Tues/Wed if you happen to be in Montpellier, a talented Algerian performer, Amel Brahim Djelloul, will present a fresh repertoire of Kabyle songs as part of the annual Festival Arabesques, not to be missed:

Les rencontres des arts du monde arabe reviennent à Montpellier du 8 au 20 septembre 2020 pour la 15ème édition du Festival Arabesques !

08/23/2021

Reading Egypt from the Outside In, Youssef Rakha’s “Baraa and Zaman” — The Markaz Review

Today, in TMR Weekly, Sherifa Zuhur reviews a study of the classic film “The Mummy” which has much to say about contemporary Egyptian society, particularly in how Egyptians have so often looked outside the country for validation:

Sherifa Zuhur reviews a study of the classic film “The Mummy” which has much to say about contemporary Egyptian society, particularly in how Egyptians have so often looked outside the country for validation.

08/17/2021

The new Markaz Review is here on graphic novels, political cartoons, BD, with some really interesting essays:
https://themarkaz.org/magazine

The new Markaz Review is here on graphic novels, political cartoons, BD, with some really interesting essays:
https://themarkaz.org/magazine

08/16/2021

Afghan women paid the steepest price for the Taliban rule in the 1990s, eroding decades of freedoms and civil liberties guaranteed for women by the 1964 constitution. Will they face the same fate after the return of Taliban?

Read our article on the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban by Hadani Ditmars via https://bit.ly/3iNeB1w

08/16/2021

THE FALL OF KABUL

"Now, as thousands of civilian lives hang in the balance in Afghanistan and a sense of betrayal by the West haunts families hiding out in their basements, I am reminded that the only thing worse than being an enemy of the US is being a former ally," writes Hadani Ditmars.

Full article https://bit.ly/3iNeB1w

08/14/2021

A Masterful Account of America’s Doomed Afghanistan Mission

A Masterful Account of America’s Doomed Afghanistan Mission

Wesley Morgan’s “The Hardest Place” is embedded reporting at its finest.

08/05/2021

A Stateless Woman: A Conversation with Ava Homa

Kurdish novelist Ava Homa has a lot to say of interest when it comes to activism, literature, feminism and emotion, in this wide-ranging LARB interview. Her novel is "Daughters of Smoke and Fire."

Amy Reardon interviews Ava Homa about her debut novel, "Daughters of Smoke and Fire."...

08/04/2021

Middle East Eye on Twitter

See what Beirutis experienced a year ago today in these candid camera clips: https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1422853040755859458

“It's been one year since the devastating #Beirutblast that killed more than 217 people and left 300,000 homeless. CCTV cameras captured the heartbreaking reactions of Lebanese citizens the moment the blast hit https://t.co/MQ9XG8wZ2r”

08/04/2021

Remember 18:07 and Light a Flame for Beirut — The Markaz Review

We remember the devastating blast at the Port of Beirut last August 4th, 2020, and call for justice and restitution for its many victims:

We remember the devastating blast at the Port of Beirut last August 4th, 2020, and call for justice and restitution for its many victims.

08/01/2021

“Guns and Figs” from Heba Hayek’s new Gaza book — The Markaz Review

TMR presents an exclusive excerpt from the new book "Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies," Heba Hayek’s vignettes of a girlhood in Gaza.

TMR presents an exclusive excerpt from the new book Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies , Heba Hayek’s vignettes of a girlhood in Gaza.

08/01/2021

Heba Hayek’s Gaza Memories — The Markaz Review

Shereen Malherbe reviews a new book from a first-time Gazan author based in London.

Shereen Malherbe reviews a new book from a first-time Gazan author based in London.

08/01/2021

Revolution, Democracy and the Tunisian Exception — The Markaz Review

Our correspondent in Tunis Iason Athanasiadis (@iason11) looks at President Kaïs Saïed’s un-democratic attempts to save Tunisia from collapse. It really is a Gordian knot.
https://themarkaz.org/tmr-weekly/revolution-democracy-and-the-tunisian-exception

Our correspondent in Tunis looks at President Kaïs Saïed’s un-democratic attempts to save Tunisia from collapse.

06/11/2021

Maqloubeh Behind the Wall in Bethlehem — The Markaz Review

Waking up to your land slowly being taken over by an occupier is by no means a happy state of mind. But sometimes it’s the little things that help us make it through the day. The biggest of little things, as we all know, is food!

Franco-Palestinian chef and hotelier Fadi Kattan gives us a taste of what it’s like to wake up at dawn in occupied Bethlehem, as well as his extra special recipe for his renowned, authentically-Palestinian Aubergine Maqloubeh.

Chef Fadi Kattan, fed up with walls, Covid and strife with Israel, shares a classic Palestinian recipe.

06/11/2021

The Markaz Bookgroup is reading Susan Abulhawa's celebrated novel "Against the Loveless World" about a Palestinian militant named Nahr, and will discuss the book together, via Zoom, on June 27th. To join in, send your email to [email protected].

The Markaz Bookgroup is reading Susan Abulhawa's celebrated novel "Against the Loveless World" about a Palestinian militant named Nahr, and will discuss the book together, via Zoom, on June 27th. To join in, send your email to [email protected].

06/10/2021

TMR's WALLS issue raises many timely issues! https://themarkaz.org/magazine

TMR's WALLS issue raises many timely issues! https://themarkaz.org/magazine

06/09/2021

Palestine in the World: “Palestine: A Socialist Introduction” — The Markaz Review

“From Ramallah we see Jaffa, we see the sea!”
(Photo credit: Jack Rabah)
As students in high school in Ramallah and later at Birzeit University in the early 1980s, our lives included anti-occupation demonstrations, strikes, recurrent interruptions of classes and campus closures, rock-throwing, barricade construction, tire-burning, and army attacks in which students were shot, beaten, arrested from the street or at home in the middle of the night, imprisoned, and tortured. We also engaged in collective chanting and singing, voluntary work, and smoke-filled hours of political debate. Even students who were not politically engaged experienced most of this directly, because “the Israeli occupation knocks on (or down) every door,” as we would say.
Before the First Intifada in 1987, there were many intifadas that lasted for weeks and months, and the Israelis had yet to bomb us from the sky. Political debates and voluntary, community work (to help till fields at risk of Israeli confiscation, for example) seemed like opposing activities, I figured at the time, and I chose to work in groups mainly engaged in the latter. Yet I came to understand that all these activities, from the presumably static to the hands-on, constituted vital operational modes in the face of a ruthless occupation...

Jenine Abboushi reviews the recent anthology of essays on socialism in the context of Palestinian resistance.

06/08/2021

My Palestinian Poem that “The New Yorker” Wouldn’t Publish

See Fady Joudah's poem in the Los Angeles Review of Books, and think about what it means to lose your home, your country, your passport:

In May 2021 the poems I wrote came to me, and I received them — in Bergsonian durée, between ruptured continuity and continuous rupture, similar to the replication of two DNA strands running in opposite directions. I was reproducing life.”   ...

06/08/2021

Spare Me the Empathy Tantrum: Rafia Zakaria’s “Against White Feminism” — The Markaz Review

Myriam Gurba reviews a book that argues that some “white feminists accept the benefits conferred by white supremacy at the expense of people of color.”

Myriam Gurba reviews a book that argues that some “white feminists accept the benefits conferred by white supremacy at the expense of people of color.”

06/08/2021

Palestine in the World: “Palestine: A Socialist Introduction” — The Markaz Review

Jenine Abboushi reviews the recent anthology of essays "Palestine: A Socialist Introduction" on socialism in the context of Palestinian resistance.

Jenine Abboushi reviews the recent anthology of essays on socialism in the context of Palestinian resistance.

06/06/2021

The Bathing Partition — The Markaz Review

A true story about walls and home in which a Los Angeles writer and a homeless rabbi converge.

"Soon after noticing Adam at my AA meeting, I spotted him on the street in my neighborhood, shoeless, standing outside the Pico-Robertson Jewish Community Center. I circled the block, looking for a parking place. I felt compelled to stop and talk to him, not that I was consciously making any decisions; it was more visceral and instinctive, like lunging for a falling object," writes Sheana Ochoa.

In this creative exploration of identity and homelessness, Sheana Ochoa faces her own inner walls and travels to Auschwitz.

06/05/2021

The Murals of Yemen’s Haifa Subay — The Markaz Review

Haifa Subay, a Yemeni millennial artist exposing the human face and cost of her country's ongoing civil war through evocative, socially-conscious graffiti art and street murals, sits for a exlusive chat with Farah Abdelssamad, revealing the implications of the war on her daily life and artistic output.

Yemen street artist, activist and mother Haifa Subay speaks to Farah Abdessamad about the state of the country and her work.

06/05/2021

Tobie Nathan’s “A Land Like You”

A LAND LIKE YOU by Tobie Nathan and translated by Joyce Zonana was the May 2021 selection of the Markaz book group. The discussion around this title was lengthy and passionate.

“Egypt is my mother, the womb of all my thoughts,” claims the narrator of Tobie Nathan’s A Land Like You, a novel that explores the lives of Egypt’s Jews in the first half of the twentieth century.

06/03/2021

The Maps of Our Destruction: Two Novels on Syria — The Markaz Review

"Jumaa, a high school teacher of Arabic, is now jobless and forced to live under horrific conditions in which running daily errands has become a life-threatening task. Readers meet Jumaa on the morning he has woken up to discover that his head, which had always been round, has turned egg-shaped “with two tiny bumps bulging out in arousal,” making him “appear as some kind of sexual deviant.”

Read our reviews of 'Roundabout of Death' by Faysal Khartash and
'The Map of Salt and Stars' by Zeyn Joukhadar.

Rana Asfour reviews Faysal Khartash’s Roundabout of Death and Zeyn Joukhadar’s The Map of Salt and Stars.

06/03/2021

A Land Like You

This is a fascinating novel, a kind of fictional memoir of life in Egypt, which was the subject of our TMR bookgroup in May (and reviewed by Ella Shohat in TMR):

In his latest novel, A Land Like You (short-listed for the Prix Goncourt in 2015), Tobie Nathan has written a beautiful and immersive novel, plunging readers headlong into Egypt's

06/03/2021

Review: Readings in Syrian Prison Literature

We never stop thinking about human rights and writers, with free speech endangered in too many countries, especially #Syria :

In 'Readings in Syrian Prison Literature: The Poetics of Human Rights', Iranian-American academic Shareah Taleghani asks the international community to rethink human rights through the writings of Syrian prisoners

06/02/2021

The Wall We Can’t Tell You About — The Markaz Review

The biggest repressive structure in the history of mankind cuts through Western Sahara, a daunting 2,700-kilometer military berm strewn with over three million land mines, and subject of 'Building Oblivion,' a documentary by Jean Lamour which was heralded at the third Naples Human Rights Film Festival.

There are some walls we can’t discuss freely and openly without inviting censure. This is one of them.

05/31/2021

The Maps of Our Destruction: Two Novels on Syria — The Markaz Review

Rana Asfour of BookFabulous reviews Faysal Khartash’s "Roundabout of Death" and Zeyn Joukhadar’s "The Map of Salt and Stars" both novels of which take place in Syria:

Rana Asfour reviews Faysal Khartash’s Roundabout of Death and Zeyn Joukhadar’s The Map of Salt and Stars.

05/31/2021

Arab Women and The Thousand and One Nights — The Markaz Review

Sex, love and lust! Malu Halasa reviews a new anthology of Arab women writers, including “the leading lights of modern Arab fiction: Hanan al-Shaykh, Adhaf Soueif, Leila Slimani and Adania Shibli.”

Malu Halasa reviews a new anthology of Arab women writers on sex, love and lust, including “the leading lights of modern Arab fiction: Hanan al-Shaykh, Adhaf Soueif, Leila Slimani and Adania Shibli.”

05/25/2021

The Murals of “Education is Not a Crime” — The Markaz Review

Between 2015 and 2017, Education Is Not A Crime, a mural-painting campaign dedicated to fighting back against Iran's oppressive educational policies towards its Baha'i minority, produced more than 40 murals in New York, Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles, London, Sao Paulo, Cape Town, Delhi and Sydney, celebrating education and drawing attention to the denial of this right to the Baha'is.

Saleem Vaillancourt describes the worldwide mural campaign spearheaded by Maziar Bahari on behalf the Baha’i community to speak out about Iran’s persecution of its largest religious minority.

05/25/2021

Opinion | A Gazan’s View on Hamas: It’s Not Complicated

Are you trying to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Basma Ghayalini's new column in the New York Times may help: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/opinion/israel-hamas-gaza-ceasefire.html

The right to self-defense against Israel’s continued aggression belongs to all Palestinians.