Down to the Sea in Unsafe Ships: Lebanese Refugees Risk Death to Escape Hunger, Violence, Despair

By Al Jadid Staff

Many will recall the image of Alan Kurdi, the child whose death at sea became the icon of Syria’s agony when his photograph was spread across the world in 2015. Though his story is five years old, that awful photograph comes to mind these days as desperate Lebanese families follow the same path in a desperate attempt to flee the economic, political, and humanitarian storms which rule the day in their country. The recent deaths of many Lebanese, including two children on a smuggling boat headed for Cyprus, provides us with yet more heartbreaking details of the suffering of the Lebanese people.

Cultural Briefings

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

Syrian, Palestinian and Afghan Stage Artists Cross Oceans to Land in Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin

By 
Al Jadid Staff

Despite being so far from their homes, a group of actors and actresses come together at Germany’s Maxim Gorki Theater to present a story near and dear to their hearts. “Winterreise” (or, “Winter Journey”), performed by the “Exil Ensemble,” tells of 24-year-old Syrian actress Kenda Hmeidan’s journey with her fellow six performers as they take a bus tour through Germany during the brittle cold weeks of January. Each an exile from Syria, Palestine, or Afghanistan, these actors have left their home countries in pursuit of their art, all while struggling with the transition from departure to settlement.

Syrian Refugee Drama Troupe Seeks to Heal Traumas

By 
Al Jadid Staff

It is no accident that the "Love Boat" theatrical sea journey ends in Shakespeare's "King Lear," as more and more Syrians die either under assault from Assad and Russian bombs or by drowning, desperately taking to the seas in hopes of escaping genocidal policies.

It is no accident that the "Love Boat" theatrical sea journey ends in Shakespeare's "King Lear," as more and more Syrians die either under assault from Assad and Russian bombs or by drowning, desperately taking to the seas in hopes of escaping genocidal policies.

‘The Morning They Came for Us’: Untold Stories of Syria's Most Vulnerable Victims

By 
Elie Chalala

Ms. Janine di Giovanni, one of Europe’s most respected reporters, chronicles the hardships inflicted upon adults and children alike, telling tales both gruesome and emotional in her new book, “The Morning They Came for Us” (Liveright, 2016). 

 

Ms. Janine di Giovanni, one of Europe’s most respected reporters, chronicles the hardships inflicted upon adults and children alike, telling tales both gruesome and emotional in her new book, “The Morning They Came for Us” (Liveright, 2016). From her visits to Syria in 2012, di Giovanni gathered stories, speaking with a diverse group of people including pro-Assad nuns, regime doctors, and civilian activists...“The Morning They Came for Us” provides rich content that can be difficult to find in daily news coverage alone.

Dreaming at the Crossroads of Cultures: Mirages

By 
Angele Ellis

Issa Makhlouf’s “Mirages” (The Post-Apollo Press, 2015), formerly translated from the Arabic into French in 2004, returns in an English edition translated by Alicia F. Lam.

 
Mirages
By Issa Makhlouf, translated into English by Alicia F. Lam
The Post-Apollo Press, 2015
 
Issa Makhlouf, an expatriate poet, possesses an anthropologist’s eye, a philosopher’s soul, a journalist’s sense of detail – and a heart rooted in the mountains and valleys of Lebanon.

Love and Loss: An Iran-Iraq Story

By 
Bobby Gulshan

For those unaccustomed to witnessing the daily, random bombardments of cities during a bloody conflict like the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, it would be hard to imagine the lives of those who actually endured those experiences.

 
For those unaccustomed to witnessing the daily, random bombardments of cities during a bloody conflict like the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, it would be hard to imagine the lives of those who actually endured those experiences. The novel “A Portal in Space” (Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 2015), by Mahmoud Saeed, allows readers to feel, share, and interact with the ordinary people living in war-plagued Basra, Iraq. You cannot help but feel connected to the characters as they struggle to cope with their worries, fears, and despair.

Diaspora Arab Women Writers: The Legacy of Shahrazad and Female Infanticide

By 
Nada Ramadan Elnahla

Rather than focus on Arab women’s repression from an observer’s viewpoint, Hanadi al-Samman’s “Anxiety of Erasure: Trauma, Authorship, and the Diaspora in Arab Women's Writings” (Syracuse University Press) instead highlights the accounts of female writers living in diaspora who have contributed productively and creatively through their writings.

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