Itinerary #27
My father keeps a list of the items he and my mother brought with them when they left Líbanon during the civil war. The list is neatly handwritten in a little notebook, and when I was young I was fascinated by it. It is a factual list, yet it was evocative of a past unknown to me.
The fantasy of sectarian repression in Iraq
When it comes to the Middle East, there is almost always a tendency to blame the victim of a crime or tragedy. When talking about Israel, there are attempts to rationalize the decades of oppression towards the occupied Palestinians, and there is also a similar rationalization from the opposition to try to justify Israeli civilians being attacked by Palestinian elements. Of course the largely innocent civilians are caught in the middle of it — not just the conflict itself, but the media war launched by the fringe hawks and vultures on either side.
L'Orientaliste: a literary oasis in the heart of downtown Cairo
L’Orientaliste is a Cairo bookstore with remarkable historical value, even by Egypt’s high standards. Even though it is a place that would interest locals as well as foreigners, countless people who walk along Qasr el-Nil street in downtown Cairo, where L’Orientaliste is located, have never even noticed the store.
