Vol. 20, No. 70

 

Justifying Starvation: Intellectual Reactions to Madaya’s Siege: “Madaya: Lebanese Degenerations”; “Madaya and all this Hatred”; “A Director of Sorts!”; “A Small Cameraman!”; “Hateful Hashtags on Social Media”

 

READINGS:
 

“On Random Violence” by Azmi Bishara; “Ceasefire” by Ghassan Charbel; “Aleppo: A Catastrophe Defying Poets’ Powers of Description” by Amjad Nasser; “How One Broadcaster Liberated Her Emotions with the Written Word” by Rima Assaf 

ESSAYS AND FEATURES:

 “Yasar Kemal: Champion of Anatolian Literature and Social Justice” by Alex Soltany; “Visionary Egyptian Novelist Gamal al-Ghitani: Dead But Not Forgotten” by Nada Ramadan Elnahla; “Farag Bayrakdar’s ‘In Between the Lines’: when ‘Nation’ Becomes a Weapon!” by Farag Bayrakdar; “The Syrian War Has Taken Us Prematurely to Hell!” by Father George Massouh; “Syria and the Politics of Personal Sadness: A Review of Yassin al-Haj Saleh’s Revolutionary Thought” by Rana Issa; “Syrian Children and the Exit from the Dark Tunnel!” by Salam Kawakibi

 

 

“In This Land Lay Graves of Mine” written and directed by Reine Mitri, reviewed by Angele Ellis; “On the Banks of the Tigris: The Hidden Story of Iraqi Music” directed and produced by Marsha Emerman, reviewed by Lynne Rogers; “Nefertiti’s Daughters” directed by Mark Nickolas and Racha Najdi, reviewed by Nada Ramadan Elnahla; “Terrace of the Sea” directed by Diana Allan, reviewed by Doris Bittar; “The Mulberry House” directed by Sara Ishaq, reviewed by Bobby Gulshan; “Voices of Muslim Women from the U.S. South” filmed and directed by Maha Marouan and Rachel Raimist, reviewed by Nada Ramadan Elnahla

 

 

“Q&A with Director/Writer Reine Mitri” by Angele Ellis; “Khaled Khalifa Speaks His Mind from Wrestling with Censors at Home and Abroad to How Books and Drama Fare Differently Under Syrian Censorship” by Rebecca Joubin and A.J. Naddaff

 

 

“Stories of Change: Beyond the Arab Spring” edited by Kari Lundelin and Rebecca Simons, reviewed by Alyssa Wood; “This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror” by Moustafa Bayoumi, reviewed by Nora Eltahawy; “Inside Syria: A Physician’s Memoir” by Tarif Bakdash with WD Blackmon, reviewed by Bobby Gulshan; “Quicksand” by Carolyn Baugh, reviewed by Angele Ellis; “Farewell Damascus – A Mosaic of Insurgency (In Arabic)” by Ghada Samman, reviewed by Nada Ramadan Elnahla; “Renaissance Emir: A Druze Warlord at the Court of the Medici” by T.J. Gorton, reviewed by Lynne Rogers; “Lifted by the Great Nothing” by Karim Dimechkie, reviewed by Lynne Rogers; “Textu” by Fady Joudah, reviewed by Zaid Shlah; “ClockWork” by Zaid Shlah, reviewed by Joseph Sills

 

“A Dying Man Tells” by Hanna Saadah

 

 

“Doris Bittar’s ‘Cryptographic’: Finding Identity and Unity Through Art” reviewed by Bobby Gulshan

 

 

“Weeping Before Zarqaa Al-Yamama (Excerpt)” by Amal Danqal; “Exit Journey — The Stone Cake Song ‘First Chapter’” by Amal Danqal; “My Sunrise” by Hanna Saadah

 

 

Huguette Caland (Cover artwork “Summer In Venice, California,” 2011), was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1931. Ms. Caland began painting at the age of 16 under the private tutelage of Fernando Manetti, an Italian artist who resided in Lebanon. She then studied art at the American University of Beirut, lived in Paris for 17 years, and spent some time working in New York. Ms. Caland eventually settled in Venice, California, in 1987. Her work is shown in galleries in Europe, the Middle East, the U.S.A., and some of her pieces are now part of major private collections and foundations.

 

 

Etab Hreib (whose artwork “The Vanguards of the Baath,” 2016, appears on the back cover) is a critically acclaimed Syrian watercolorist, who was born in Deir-Ez- Zor, Syria, and graduated from the Graphic Art Department, University of Damascus. In addition to working full time as an artist, she has taught at the Fine Arts Departent at Damascus University.