Beirut’s Chernobyl Moment: A Message of Love to a Suffering City, Its Unforgettable Memories, and Undying Heart

Perhaps the August 4th explosion is the most catastrophic in Lebanon’s modern history, but let us not forget that it follows other recent explosions – financial, social, economic, and even imminent starvation.

The latest explosion is disastrous by all accounts, leaving 350,000 homeless, more than 137 dead, 5000 injured, and a large number of people still unaccounted for. Office buildings and apartments across the capital are destroyed, as well as the country’s largest port, with reconstruction estimates ranging between 12 and 15 billion dollars at a time the government cannot even secure a two-billion-dollar emergency loan.

Cultural Briefings

BOOK NEWS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 79, 2020

New Anthology Empowers, Celebrates the Role of Professional Women Journalists Covering the Mideast
“Don’t shy away from writing about your community, your people, or your home country or region, so long as you uphold the highest journalistic standards,” the late David Khatell told Lebanese-British journalist Zahra Hankir, which inspired her latest work.
 
“Our Women on the Ground” (Harvill Secker, 2019), edited by Zahra Hankir, compiles a groundbreaking essay collection by 19 Arab and Middle Eastern female journalists, reporters, and photographers. Divided into five sections, these essays combine memoir and reportage to give perspective into the obstacles women journalists face when covering news in dangerous and oppressive countries, where they often encounter sexism and harassment. In an interview with Pen America, Hankir said, “I made sure I included a broad range of contributors in terms of their religious and cultural backgrounds: nationalities, ages, ethnicities, and political learnings. My hope was to demonstrate the diversity of the region through their stories. I worked quite closely with almost all the contributors on shaping their essays, without ever instructing or coaching them on how they should speak their own truths.”
Books

ESSAYS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

Women in Kanafani’s ‘Umm Saad’: How Revolutionary Is The ‘Revolutionary Mother’ As Symbol and Actor?
By Al Jadid Staff

Ghassan Kanafani weds literary technique to political objectives in his “Umm Saad” (1969), with characters that reflect the Palestinian condition. Kanafani, a literary and a revolutionary figure in the Palestinian national struggle, proposes alternative ways of engaging the masses in the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. With  “Umm Saad,” readers can examine the representation of women in Palestinian literature through the story of the titular protagonist, whose son leaves to join the fedayeen. 

 

Essays and Features

BOOK REVIEWS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

New Book Studies Egypt’s Modern History Through the Production of Its Number One Beer, Stella
By Al Jadid Staff

Lebanon and Egypt are the only two Muslim-majority countries to boast of significant alcoholic beverage industries. For the Lebanese this means Arak, the anise-flavored grape-wine whose production (and consumption) is nothing less than a matter of national pride. Egyptians, for their part, have a similar reputation with regard to beer-making, though this has not been quite as visible since the 1970s, when Sadat began appeasing the Islamists.

Books

The ‘Grand Compromise’ Between Lebanon’s ‘Strong Presidency’ and Iran’s 'Rejectionists' Hastens the Demise of Lebanon’s Economy

By 
Elie Chalala


In early July, we wrote about two suicides in Lebanon while holding off on a third until we fact-checked it. Subsequently, the Beirut-based Al Modon newspaper wrote about a total of four suicides, including the two reported here. The article’s author deliberately stressed the reasons behind the suicides were not personal, but rather related to deteriorating economic conditions and the loss of dignity.

ESSAYS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

How Lebanon’s ‘State within a State’ Escalated Financial Disaster: Two Beirut Landmarks – AUB, and Le Bristol Hotel – the Latest Collateral Damage
By 
Elie Chalala

It is painful to witness, even from afar, what recently befell Lebanon. This agony springs from the memories of my formative years during Lebanon’s post-independence era, when resentment of its ruling elites consolidated my belief in the necessity of change. I left the country without the reform wish fulfilled, and later watched the flames of civil war consume hopes of change – even when guns fell silent after the country’s second constitution in 1989. While the Lebanese started to come together to embark on reconstruction of the country, corruption, sectarianism, and the plundering of state’s resources soon took over.

ESSAYS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

Farah Al-Qasimi: Between Two Worlds: Arab Americans in Detroit
By 
Al Jadid Staff

The works of photographer Farah Al-Qasimi touch on the intricacies of life as an Arab American in Detroit, with each frame capturing both Arab and Western aesthetics. Of the 22 countries belonging to the “Arab World,” as defined by membership in the League of Arab States, seven – Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen – are prominently represented by immigrants in Metro Detroit. The Arab American community is also diverse in its religious representation, with Islam and Christianity in their Middle East iterations represented by a variety of sects and denominations including Chaldean, Coptic, Druze, Greek Orthodox, Maronite, Melkite, Shi’a, Sunni, and Syrian Orthodox.

Play Reveals Wounds of Palestinian Occupation

By 
Bobby Gulshan

An event hosted by the Voices from the Holy Land Film Series will focus its next Online Discussion Salon on director Pamela Nice’s "It’s What We Do: A Play About the Occupation" on June 14, 2020 at 2 pm EST. The event will feature guest speaker Yonatan Shapira, a former IDF helicopter pilot, who has been involved in speaking out against the abuses of the IDF since his service. Please register for the one-hour discussion, which will be in a Zoom format, at this link. Organizers are asking all registrants to view a 55-minute video beforehand. You can access it at www.iwwdplay.org.

Earlier this year, the Israeli Knesset passed a law barring “Breaking the Silence” from presenting in schools, universities, or any other non-profit institutions. The initiative to enforce a ban on the group came from Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who accused “Breaking the Silence” of denigrating the reputation of the Israeli Defense Force in the eyes of Israeli youth.

 

ESSAYS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

Award-Winning Amin Maalouf Sees World Civilization on the Edge of the Abyss!
By 
Elie Chalala

Amin Maalouf recently received the National Order of Merit from the French government, earning the second-highest status in the title of Grand Officer. The author’s other decorations include the Prix Goncourt in 1993, as well as his induction into the Academie Francaise in 2011, filling the seat of Claude Levi Strauss. His books have been translated into 50 languages. His most recent work, “The Sinking [or Drowning] of Civilizations” (Le Naufrage des Civilisations, Grassat 2019), takes up Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis, but shifts the focus from a clash between civilizations to a crisis that affects all aspects of human civilization as a whole. In the age of globalization and technological development, Maalouf claims that peoples and civilizations cannot be separated from each other in the way Huntington’s thesis suggests. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to add credence to the author’s claim.

BOOK REVIEWS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

New Film History Volume Documents, Preserves Legacy of Palestinian Cinema, From Nakba to the Present
By 
Al Jadid Staff

Nadia Yaqub’s recent book “Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution” (University of Texas Press) offers a valuable survey of Palestinian cinema, from its pre-history in the early photographs and films made by international relief organizations, up to its birth out of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s struggle against the Israeli State. Yaqub details the narrative of victimhood that dominated early visual documentation of Palestine, as presented by organizations like the American Friends Service Committee and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Such films depicted Palestinians as “seen but not heard, and their statelessness and victimhood are presented as timeless, ahistorical facts, rather than the results of a process of violent dispossession culminating in the Nakba in 1948.”

BOOK REVIEWS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

The Scanning of Signs: ‘Love, Sex and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability’
By 
Al Jadid Staff


Challenging ethnographic theorists like Claude Lévi-Strauss, L.L. Wynn’s “Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability” (University of Texas Press, 2018) considers aspects of love and desire often overlooked by theorists when describing kinship structures. Wynn focuses on 21st century Cairenes in her book, with research collected from 2000-2015 on middle- to upper-class men and women, predominantly heterosexual, and conversations overheard in Arabic.

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