Tunisian Grave Digger Gives Drowned Refugees in Death, the Dignity They Failed to Receive in Life

By Naomi Pham

On a donated plot of land on the outskirts of Zarzis, a cemetery marked by a sign labeled “Cemetery for Unknown” in six languages has become the resting place for hundreds of unidentified bodies. One Tunisian man has devoted himself to giving migrants who died at sea dignity in death. At 52, Chamseddine Marzoug, a former fisherman-turned-gravedigger, has built over 400 graves in the span of a dozen years for migrants who perished at sea in an effort to reach Europe. Coming from Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, as well as Tunisia, these migrants often washed ashore with no family to claim their bodies. “They didn’t have any families to care for them,” he was quoted last September in a Washington Post article by Sudarsan Raghavan, continuing, “So I decided to become their family.”

Cultural Briefings

Imperialism First!: European Leftists Abandon Anti-Fascist Legacy to Embrace Putin and Assad

By Al Jadid Staff

Both the European and Western Left, as well as their Arab counterparts, have received their share of criticism regarding their policies on the Syrian war. While some intellectual debates among the different factions of the Left indicate differences in policy outlooks, a majority of these groups remain united in their embrace of Syria’s Assad and his Russian enabler, Vladimir Putin. Hussam Itani’s essay “Imperialism First!: European Leftists Abandon Anti-Fascist Legacy to Embrace Putin and Assad,” which appears in the forthcoming issue of Al Jadid, centers on how the European Left abandoned the struggle against fascism, and instead turned its energies to fighting U.S. imperialism.

 

Essays and Features

Rest in Peace Mai Skaf: Death of Exiled Artist Mirrors Syria’s Dying Revolution

By Elie Chalala

As an editor of an arts and cultural magazine, I could not help but closely follow the views and activities of two Syrian activist artists, actress Mai Skaf and poet Fadwa Suleiman, since the onset of the Syrian revolution. Both passing away while living in exile in France, Suleiman lost her battle with cancer on August 17, 2017 at the age of 47 years, and Skaf passed away by an acute brain hemorrhage on July 23 of this year at the age of 49 years.

Essays and Features

The Western Connection: How the Romanticism of Gibran & Rihani Hooked Up With Naimy’s Critical Realism to Engender a New Arab Literature

By Michael Najjar


Gibran, Rihani and Naimy: East-West Interactions in Early Twentieth-Century Arab Literature
By Aida Imangulieva, translated by Robin Thomson
Anqa Publishing, 2009

Aida Imangulieva’s book “Gibran, Rihani & Naimy: East-West Interactions in Early Twentieth-Century Arab Literature” is a translation of the Russian version, which was published shortly before her death in 1992. It focuses on three of the most prominent members of what Imangulieva calls “the Syrio-American School,” named after the then-Syrian immigrant writers who left their homeland (now Lebanon).

Books

The Silence

By Riyadh Al-Saleh Al-Hussein

In the evening, the men came tired from the pasture;
in the evening, the women came tired from the fields.
The men’s hearts hovered on the verge of failing,
and the women’s eyes on the verge of tears. 
In the evening, they came and danced till the morning. 
The wound became a song,
and fatigue a flute. 
But a certain man remained seated in the corner, 
the rifle between his hands like a snake,
and life in his eyes a time of clay.
The man, who just looks silently,
doesn’t seem to be watching television, 
or dreaming,
or sleeping. 
The wretch…
What is he thinking of?
Poetry

The Syrian War Has Taken Us Prematurely to Hell!

By 
Father George Massouh

The crimes committed in Syria have surpassed what the human mind can imagine in terms of horrors and atrocities. Undoubtedly, in our cruel East, we have become accustomed to living with this reality, which plunges us down to the depths of hell. This horror lies in our acceptance of what occurs in our countries while we continue our daily lives as if nothing is happening, and justify the violence as a defense of central causes or as wars against terrorism.

 

The crimes committed in Syria have surpassed what the human mind can imagine in terms of horrors and atrocities. Undoubtedly, in our cruel East, we have become accustomed to living with this reality, which plunges us down to the depths of hell. This horror lies in our acceptance of what occurs in our countries while we continue our daily lives as if nothing is happening, and justify the violence as a defense of central causes or as wars against terrorism. As if some want to convince us that terrorism can be defeated by “counter” terrorism.

Women of the Revolutions: The New Faces of Arab Feminism

By 
Angele Ellis

“Nada’s Revolution” follows the tale of the 27-year Nada Ahmed, an Alexandrian woman looking to make decisions about marriage and career in the years after the revolutionary wave of the Arab Spring. In “Feminism Inshallah: A History of Arab Feminism,” Feriel Ben Mahmoud, the film’s director, traces the beginnings of feminism to male feminists such as the Egyptian Qasim Amin (1863-1908), whose nationalist aspirations for Egypt fueled his assertion that the Quran supported women’s rights—essential to throwing off the yoke of colonialism and joining the modern world.

 

Feminism Inshallah: A History of Arab Feminism
Directed by Feriel Ben Mahmoud
Women Make Movies, 2014

Nada’s Revolution
Directed by Claudia Lisboa
Women Make Movies, 2014

 

Sin, Redemption, and Visions of Female Illness in Modern Arab Literature

By 
By Bobby Gulshan

Hamdar’s examination of the female body in illness and suffering presents a compelling contribution to the body of literary criticism of Arabic Literature. She invokes strains of critical thought—like Foucault and the idea of discourse—using them to map the development of the image of the female body in recent Arabic literature. 

 
The Female Suffering Body, Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature
By Abir Hamdar

New Issue of Al Jadid

By 
Al Jadid

Al Jadid is just out (Vol. 19, No. 68). The cover (“Encoded History 1” 2015) by Doris Bittar. Al Jadid is a Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts (www.aljadid.com). As usual, the new issue is rich with essays and features, book, film and TV reviews, fiction, poetry, and a substantive editor's notebook.
ESSAYS AND FEATURES: ‘My Story With You is Different’ by Rima Assaf; ‘Sabah Zwein (1955-2014): An Innovative And Haunted Poet’ by Mike D’Andrea; 

Al Jadid is just out (Vol. 19, No. 68). The cover (“Encoded History 1” 2015) by Doris Bittar. Al Jadid is a Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts (www.aljadid.com).

‘The Jewish Quarter:’

Ramadan Drama Revisits 40’s Egyptian-Jewish Relations
By 
Elie Chalala

“The Jewish Quarter” has sent some unsettling messages about the “Ramadan series” (or soaps), prompting commentaries in the Arab press and beyond, and finally meriting a feature article in the New York Times. This 30 episode serial, which runs through the month of Ramadan in Egypt, offers a viewpoint unlike that featured in any other serial before or after the Arab Spring.

 

Al Nakba at 67: Generations of Catastrophes

By 
Elie Chalala

I rarely passed on an Al Nakba remembrance, an event which was pivotal in forming my political and moral consciousness during my early days in Beirut and in my academic diaspora. Nowadays, I reserve my aggravation for those intellectual cowards who saw nothing in Al Nakba except a shelter to hide from their shameful silence on one of the most horrific “Nakbas” in modern Arab history.

I rarely passed on an Al Nakba remembrance, an event which was pivotal in forming my political and moral consciousness during my early days in Beirut and in my academic diaspora. Nowadays, I reserve my aggravation for those intellectual cowards who saw nothing in Al Nakba except a shelter to hide from their shameful silence on one of the most horrific “Nakbas” in modern Arab history.

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