‘Dear Tayeb Salih’
This letter originally appeared in the debut issue of ArabLit Quarterly: Beginnings, published in the Fall of 2018.
Nonfiction
Friday Finds: Reem Khorshid’s ‘Experiencing the Sounds and Silences of Cairo’
“When the sound processor of my cochlear implant is switched on, I feel like I hardly know this place. I fail at all attempts to conjure the old sounds of my hometown as my brain now perceives them in a different way. The pitches, the frequencies, the tones, and the ranges now have offbeat qualities that have taken over the sounds of the past.”
Hawraa Al-Hassan on Reading Resistance and Collaboration in Iraqi Novels
“It is important to note that the state marketed the novels it sponsored (including the novels of Saddam) as belonging to Arab ‘resistance literature’; a corpus of works with a long tradition of anti-imperialist struggle in the Arab world.”
Nizar Qabbani’s 1967 Letter To Gamal Abdel Nasser
“Whoever loves his country, Mr. President, purifies its wounds with alcohol, and with fire cauterizes—if need be—the areas that are wounded.”
Friday Finds: The Dialects of Oil & Rain
At the end of last month, three writers — Mona Kareem, Deepak Unnikrishnan, and Krupa Ge — talked about translation, transience, the Gulf, belonging, and more.
Another Road for Syrian Poetry
“The divide among poets has added a diaspora to the spatial diaspora, which scattered Syrians around the world.”
Remembering Muhammad Wardi: Censored, Banned, and Beloved
For that reason, Wardi’s words have been at the forefront of the current Sudanese revolution. He’s recalled as a strong example of a great artist who proved strong and steadfast in opinions, words, and actions. His revolutionary-themed pieces, which document crucial chapters of Sudanese history, have been used as rallies’ chants and played on the sit-in site loudspeakers.
10 Recipes from Medieval Arabic Texts
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were — among other things — a wonderful period for Arabic cookery compilations, several of which have recently been translated to English.
Reclaiming the Women of Arabic Popular Epics
This look at the women who seem to have disappeared in scholarship about the Arabic popular epics is a re-run from Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth) last year.