Recent Stories

Layla Baalbaki (1936-2023): Lebanese Writer Who Left a Revolutionary Storm in Modern Arab Feminist Novel at 22 Before Unexpected Adieu to Fiction Writing
 
After a long stay in London, Layla returned to Beirut in 2009  to sign her novels, “I Live” and “The Gods Deformed,” and her short story collection “Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon,” which had been republished by Dar al-Adab, at the Beirut Book Fair. Surrounded by her books, Layla seemed as if she was still preserving her old magic and charm. She was Beirut’s “star” novelist during the 60s, especially after “Spaceship of Tenderness” was banned in 1964 on charges of immorality. She was arrested, tried, and won the case.

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Our Current Issue

The River That Carries a Nation:

Lebanon’s River of Memory and Conflict
By Naomi Pham
 
Lebanese people often say that just as Egypt is the gift of the Nile, Lebanon is the gift of the Litani. Rivers create the ideal conditions for the rise of great civilizations, a connection acknowledged since ancient times through the worship and reverence of rivers in Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and across the wider world. From the creation of myths and the birth of numerous fertility deities to celebrations, festivals, and offering ceremonies, rivers have been central to the lives of the communities surrounding them. “As the presence of water is inextricably linked to the presence of life — and its absence to death — it is hardly surprising that rivers, waterways, and their basins have frequently ignited wars and bloody conflicts among humanity,” states Shawqi Bzeih in “The Litani River: Guardian of Memory and Legend, Ignored by Poets,” published in Asharq al-Awsat.
Essays and Features

Inscribing the Forgotten Quarter:

Public Art and the Preservation of Arab American History in New York
By Naomi Pham
 
Just in time for the closing of Arab American Heritage Month, French-Moroccan artist Sara Ouhaddou in collaboration with NYC Parks, the Washington Street Historical Society, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and funding by the Mellon Foundation, unveiled a vibrant art installation on April 30 that not only celebrates the history of its surrounding area, but stands imbued with the hopes of preserving the community’s legacy for years to come. With its permanent home at the Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza in the Financial District, Ouhaddou’s sculpture and mosaic installation, nearly a decade in the making, honors the memory of Manhattan’s Little Syria, which was completely demolished and its residents evicted in the 1940s to make way for the construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. The unveiling was also organized in conjunction with a symposium at NYU’s Kevorkian Center, titled “Beyond Al-Qalam: Literary Rebellion and Visual Abstraction in Little Syria,” held on May 2, 2026, exploring the legacy of New York’s early Arab American writers.
Essays and Features

Voices Across the Peninsula:

How Arabia's Tribes Created a Common Language Without a Common State
By Naomi Pham
 
Arabic in the pre-Islamic era — or Jahiliyyah, the ‘age of ignorance’ — was a diverse continuum of spoken dialects and poetic language rather than a single unified language. The period encompasses the history of the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding regions prior to the spread of Islam in 610 CE, a time characterized by nomadic Bedouin tribes and a rich oral poetry tradition. Mustafa Attia Juma’s essay, “The Reality of Arabic in the Pre-Islamic Era,” explores the deep history of the Arabic language and the conditions that determined its purity.
Essays and Features

The ‘Profound Loss of Arabic’:

Leila Slimani on Living Between Languages as a Francophone Writer
By Naomi Pham
 
Two languages, two sets of expectations — a twofold rejection on both sides, and at the heart of it, a complex relationship with identity. The Francophone writer perpetually exists between two worlds, regardless of efforts to bridge the distance between them. French-Moroccan writer Leila Slimani’s recent book, “Assault on the Border” (Assaut contre la frontière, Gallimard, 2026) explores the predicament of Maghrebi identity fragmented by two languages — more specifically, the writer’s relationship to her language, Arabic, bound by a “yearning that can never be sated, for its object was not suddenly lost, but rather never fully formed in the first place,” writes Anisa Makhalda in Asharq al-Awsat. “Assault on the Border” provides an intimate look into the writer’s personal life and reservations, especially surrounding Slimani’s “profound loss of Arabic” as a Francophone writer who has lost touch with what she considers her “paternal language.”
Essays and Features

The Architecture of Absence:

How Digital Images Sustain Hope Among Lebanon’s Displaced
By Naomi Pham
 
Social media has become an invaluable resource to many facing displacement throughout Lebanon’s ongoing conflict. A senior UN official reported to Reuters that approximately 100,000 people are registered in shelters, but the number of displaced residents is expected to be higher, as many families are staying with relatives, in public areas, or on the streets. The estimated number of people displaced from Southern Lebanon, according to statistics reported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on March 31, 2026, is over 1 million, with a large percentage unable to access food, shelter, or basic necessities. For many, this is not the first time they have had to flee, but their second or even third.
Essays and Features

The Ghosts of Syria’s History:

Between Erasing and Repeating the Past
By 
Elie Chalala
 
I have been closely examining the pressing controversy surrounding the al-Sharaa HTS government's decisions to politicize Syrian history, alter the national holiday calendar, and manipulate the collective memory of the Syrian people. The government has motioned to remove holidays commemorating the October War of 1973, March 8 Revolution Day, Teachers’ Day, and Martyrs’ Day based on the HTS's aim to distance the newly formed state from Hafez al-Assad's legacy.

Between the Tunnel and the Tower:

The Afterlife of Little Syria in American Urban Memory
By 
Naomi Pham
 
Pockets, though sparse, of Manhattan’s Little Syria have withstood the test of time, though just barely. The community was once considered the “mother colony” to the thousands of Arab immigrants coming from the then-Ottoman-controlled Greater Syria (which today encompasses Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan) during the Great Migration from 1880 to 1924.

Hind, or the Myth of Beauty:

Hoda Barakat and the Mythology of Loss in Lebanon
By 
Naomi Pham
 
Between living in the memory of beauty, deliberately blind to its flaws, and living in beauty’s shadow, perpetually weighed down by the past, Hanadi’s story is a portrait of more than a woman disregarded by both family and society, but an encapsulation of all the problems plaguing Lebanon, in fiction and reality.

A ‘Narcissistic Wound’:

Betrayal and the Politics of Survival in Syria
By 
Naomi Pham
 
Syrians have nursed a wound that has never been given the chance to heal, just barely scabbing over before it is reopened once more — so much so that the Syrian experience has become synonymous with pain and suffering. In the aftermath of the coastal massacres in March, Samar Yazbek found herself feeling empty, searching for answers only to be met with silence.

Mourning the Swallows of Ghouta:

Twelve Years of Grief, Silence, and Betrayal
By 
Naomi Pham
 
Twelve years have passed since the horrifying attack on the people of Damascus’ Ghouta district, but the nightmares of that day are just as vivid today as they were over a decade ago to the survivors. Shortly after midnight on August 21, 2013, Bashar al-Assad’s regime launched a sarin gas attack on the towns of Zamalka, Ein Tarma, and Irbin.

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