Recent Stories

Lebanon Still Overshadowed by Oblivion As Port Blast Aftermath Enters Fourth Year
 
Art has played an influential role in making sense of the loss felt after the August 4 explosion. Tom Young’s “Strong Angels” and other paintings show a human dimension of the tragedy and its civilian heroes, who “join forces to lift the city’s grief,” writes Darine Houmani of Diffah Three (The New Arab). “Despite all its devastation, the August 4 explosion brought greater impetus to preserve our heritage and brought about a database of our historical buildings that hadn’t been done before,” states Mona Hallak, an architect, heritage activist, and director of the American University of Beirut’s Neighborhood Initiative, as cited in The New Arab. Several weighed in on the rebuilding efforts, including Lebanese architect Jad Tabet, who proposed “rehabilitation” rather than “reconstruction,” focusing on preserving the city’s existing social fabric and inhabitants alongside the architecture (for further reading on Jad Tabet and architectural heritage, see Al Jadid, Vol. 4, No, 25, Fall 1998; Vol. 5, No. 26, Winter 1999; and Vol. 24, No. 79, 2020). As art historian and gallery owner Andrée Sfeir-Semler says, “You need to nourish people with art and culture because that is what feeds their souls.”

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Our Current Issue

Shipwrecked Lives:

Migration, Collective Memory, and National Trauma in the ‘Shadows of the Titanic’
By Naomi Pham
 
Fascination with the Titanic has grasped the public for well over a century. Its name easily brings to mind several artistic and literary works — the 1997 film by James Cameron, the 1995 nonfiction book by American historian Walter Lord, “A Night to Remember,” and numerous sources like Encyclopedia Titanica dedicated to recording as many details as possible about the ship and its downfall. Syrian-American writer Leila Salloum Elias’ 2010 book “The Dream and then the Nightmare: Syrians Who Boarded the Titanic” broached the often overlooked Syrian and Lebanese victims of the sinking. The losses of the maritime tragedy — arguably among the most famous and deadly in history — were felt and mourned across the ocean, in Lebanese villages, where names of loved ones were lost, mis-reported, or remain unknown.
Essays and Features

The Woman Who Gave the Village a Voice:

Seven Years After Her Passing, Emily Nasrallah’s Words Still Carry the Homeland
By Naomi Pham
 
Renowned Lebanese writer Emily Nasrallah’s legacy continues to broaden the understanding of emigration and exile, celebrated seven years after her death and living on through a foundation established in her honor, the Beit Touyour Ayloul Foundation, named after her first novel, “Birds of September.” On July 7, 2025, the Oriental Library of the Saint Joseph University of Beirut became the new home to a part of Nasrallah’s archive. A decade ago, Nasrallah had also donated 17 documents of her literary works to the same library.
Essays and Features

The Unbearable Weight of Existence in Arab Letters:

Between the Silence of Taboo and the Cry of Despair
By Naomi Pham
 
The 10th of September every year marks World Suicide Prevention Day. The International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) and World Health Organization (WHO) estimate more than 720,000 suicides occur each year worldwide. Large-scale studies conducted on a global level find that the rates of suicidality (encompassing suicidal ideation, plans, attempts, and death by suicide) are low in the Arab world compared to other countries. 2019 statistics from the World Health Organization reported that countries within the Arab world held figures between 2.0 to 4.8 suicides per 100k (with Syria reporting 2.0 and Iraq 3.6 per 100k).
Essays and Features

The Nobel Mirage:

How Power and Language Keep Arabic Literature at the Margins
By Naomi Pham
 
Literary prizes have long held the rapt attention of critics, intellectuals, and readers in the Arab world, as evidenced by the dozens of prizes awarded each year for novels, short story collections, and poetry anthologies. Occasionally, Arab writers have been awarded the International Booker Prize or the Prix Goncourt for translated editions of their works. Yet the Nobel Prize, whose last Arab winner was Naguib Mahfouz in 1988, has eluded them for nearly 40 years. Amir Taj al-Sir writes in “The Annual Nobel Fever,” published in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, that Arab readers and intellectuals follow developments surrounding the Nobel Prize “as if stricken with fever — even though it is not an Arab prize, and it is doubtful that it will ever again be awarded to an Arab after Naguib Mahfouz, given the humiliation and marginalization that Arabs and their ancient civilization face across the world.”* Year after year, anticipation over the year’s winner leaves many in the Arab world asking questions similar to those of Brewin Habib in Al-Quds Al-Arabi: “Will the Nobel remember us after 37 years of absence? And will the eternal nominee, Adonis, finally receive it?”
Essays and Features

The Fragility of Stone, the Fragility of Nations:

Beirut’s Raouché Rock Tells Stories of Endurance and Collapse
By Elie Chalala
 
As a Lebanese and as many others who grew up not far from Beirut and the Raouché district — also known as Pigeons’ Rock — I was captivated by its grandeur. Two massive limestone outcrops rise from the Mediterranean along Beirut’s western coast, separated from the mainland by an ancient earthquake. This natural landmark is not only a symbol of beauty but also a silent witness to Lebanon’s triumphs and tragedies.
Essays and Features

The Uncompromising Voice of Syrian Screenwriter Fouad Hamira

By 
Rebecca Joubin

A Study in Courage: Screenwriter and Activist Fouad Hamira

Cinematic activist, Fouad Hamira, who began his career working for the National Theater, has become one of the leading voices for justice in Syrian television. Despite all attempts to silence him, this man of courage and conviction remains as vocal as ever. Since the current uprising in Syria, he has denounced injustices such as the government’s attempts to reframe the battle for Syrian freedom as a sectarian uprising. 

 
Fouad Hamira, who began as an employee in the National Theater, has gone on to become one of the leading voices in Syrian television drama. He is renowned for his unwillingness to compromise with the forces of societal and political oppression. His controversial “Ghazlan fi Ghabat al-Dhi‘ab” (Gazelles in a Forest of Wolves), which was filled with a poignant critique of corruption and the abusive nature of power, was finally allowed to air in 2006, although he had written the miniseries 15 years earlier.

Wives in Tension

By 
Rebecca Joubin

In this exemplary documentary film, women (both veiled and unveiled, religious and secular) discuss the presence of Islam and secularism in contemporary Turkish ...

Women of Turkey: Between Islam and Secularism
A film by Olga Nakkas
Turkey/Lebanon
WMM, 2006

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