‘Have You Seen Afifa, Have You Seen Latifa?’ Recovering History Through Folktales
Every year, we run a special holiday gift on December 25. This year, it’s an essay from our most popular edition, the ArabLit Quarterly FOLK issue,
Nonfiction
Origin Stories: Tracing Jabra and Munif’s childhoods in Bethlehem and Amman
On a sweltering July day in Amman, I left my friend’s apartment in Abdoun and made my way to Jabal Amman with nothing more than a set of vague coordinates plugged in to Google Maps to guide me. I was in search of Abdulrahman Munif’s childhood home.
‘Matters of National Football’
In honor of today’s match, we’re running this essay from our beloved FOOTBALL issue, by Moroccan author Yassin Adnan, translated by Moroccan translator Hicham Rafik, with photographs by Moroccan photographer Omar Mesrar.
Adania Shibli on Samira Azzam: ‘Out of Time’
“My little watch is the first to sense the change, going into and out of Palestine.”
INTRODUCING ‘Out of Time: The Collected Short Stories of Samira Azzam’
Today, we are launching our first crowd-supported translation: Ranya Abdelrahman’s translation of thirty-one selected stories by the great cult-classic Palestinian writer Samira Azzam.
The Patriotic Sufi
“Faceless, I gaze. / Legless, I dance.”
Author Mohamed Kheir on Surreal Coincidences and the Mysteries of Translation
” One day, I read Lorca’s wonderful poem “Elegy to a Bullfighter,” translated into Arabic by a great Arab poet. I was agitated by the translation, not because I knew Spanish — I don’t know Spanish — but because I memorized the poem from another translation, which had been done by a man who was neither a poet nor a translator. “
From the WEDDINGS Issue: ‘The Grim Symbolism of Weddings in Algerian Oral Literature’
“Grim Symbolism” is one of the essays included in the Fall 2022 issue of ArabLit Quarterly.
Kneading Words: Mohammed Alnaas on Bread, Writing, and the Stuff of Language
“With time, I came to the conclusion that bread-baking as a creative act resembles the art of writing in many ways that might not be obvious to the untrained eye. And that the similarities become clearer with practice, and by persevering with the act of creation and creativity.”