‘What have I survived’: New Poetry by Mahmoud Alshaer
“I survived—came out of yesterday / alive, carried out on the shoulders / of the wind.”
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Posts by Marcia Lynx Qualey:
Classic Short Fiction: Mohammed Hussein Heikal’s ‘The Second Family’
Short fiction by Mohammed Hussein Heikal (1888 – 1956) about marriage and money in early twentieth century Egypt.
Sinan Antoon’s ‘Of Loss and Lavender’
In this conversation over e-mail, Sinan Antoon talks about the novel, the fraught nature of collective memory, the process of self-translation, and the sort of “security checkpoints” a book must pass through in the process of translation.
‘On the Back of Restless Winds’
In his 2015 autobiography, A Time of Wind, Anxiety, and Freedom (أزمنة الريح والقلق والحرية ), Sudanese scholar Dr. Hayder Ibrahim Ali offers a rare and insightful account of Sudan’s intellectual and political life.
Lamia Ziadé’s ‘Rue de Phénicie’
Lebanese artist and writer Lamia Ziadé’s fifth illustrated book for adults, Rue de Phénicie, (Phoenicia Street), is a work of intellectual rigor and personal honesty. It’s a story that begins with finding hedonistic joy in Paris grows progressively more complicated by her excavations of the past and grappling with the present.
‘The Tale of a Child Who Has Not Yet Burned’
This excerpt comes from the first chapter of the extraordinary literary memoir The Fire: The Tale of a Child Who Has Not Yet Burned, by Mohammad Abdo Najari, published in Damascus by Dar al-Hassad in 1996.
Two (Communist) Poems by Saadi Youssef
“I’ve said it before, and I say it now on this London evening / before it’s too late: / I am the last communist!”
’48 kg’: Creating Life from a Desire to Diminish and Fade Away
Gaza-based Palestinian writer Husam Maarouf responds to Batool Abu Akleen’s ’48 kg.’
Mohammed el-Makki Ibrahim and the Homeland as Beloved
For Sudanese readers living through the current crisis, the following lines by the late Mohammed el-Makkī Ibrahim resonate with striking immediacy, even though they were written in the 1980s. Beneath the layers of grief, a restrained optimism continues to breathe through its lines.