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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

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

Reality Check: A Newly Elected Administration Navigates Lebanon's Oligarchy to Address Reforms and Reconstruction

By 
Elie Chalala
 
Lebanon has recently elected a president, and the immediate response might be, “So what?” On top of this, the parliament also chose its prime minister-designate. The difference between the level of news from Syria last month and Lebanon this month sounds almost incomparable. At least regarding Syria, the fact that Bashar al-Assad is no longer the country's leader while the incumbent has not yet been elected still maintains an element of surprise for the future.

Reflecting on Yara Nahle's 'In the Presence of Rubble'

By 
Elie Chalala
 
Yara Nahle, a Lebanese writer, begins her blog with the image of the ‘angel of history,’ described by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) as a figure who “sees only one catastrophe, a pile of rubble before his feet." For Benjamin, history is not a continuous progression toward the future but a pile of ruins accumulated by wars, conflicts, and disasters.
 
"Ruins" has more meaning for Benjamin than its literal definition, which combines rubb

A Baalbek-Native Artist Reflects on the ‘Air Monsters’ Threatening His Hometown

By 
Al Jadid Staff
 
“Voices That Speak Over the Rubble: Intellectuals Reflect on Lebanon’s War From Above, Below, and Within,” a unique feature to be published in Al Jadid’s forthcoming annual edition (Vol. 28, No. 85, 2014), compiles the compelling, powerful, and heart-wrenching accounts of those directly experiencing the ruination caused by Israel’s war against Lebanon. Among the several stories are two articles by the artist and engineer Mohamed Charaf.

Kamel Daoud’s Goncourt-Winning ‘Houris’ Breaks the Silence on Algeria’s Black Decade

By 
Elie Chalala
 
For countries sharing as complicated a relationship as France and Algeria, some might expect the recent awarding of France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, to an Algerian writer to be cause for celebration. Algerian-born writer Kamel Daoud emerged the winner of this year’s Goncourt with his third novel “Houris” (“Virgin” in English), securing six out of 10 votes from Académie members during the deliberation process.

‘Is There an Arab Culture?’

Long History of Pluralism, Decentralization, Pragmatism Underpins ‘Arab Culture’ Debate
By 
Elie Chalala
 
Rarely do we read a cultural or even general-interest publication without encountering discussions questioning whether an Arab culture exists, and if it exists, whether it is in decline. I found no exception when recently perusing Al Jazeera’s online cultural section. We do not need to look far into the article, as its title speaks for itself: “Is There an Arab Culture?” The article is by Dr.

Dreadful Days in Lebanon: The Invisible and Visible Scars of War

By 
Elie Chalala
 
Discussing and analyzing the catastrophic disaster that hit Lebanon is difficult. I am connected to the subject on two levels: intellectually and emotionally. Hamas' "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood" and Hezbollah's "Operation of Solidarity" have been viewed as irresponsible, and their military consequences questionable, with the conflict leaving unprecedented emotional scars on many Lebanese.

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