GAZA CITY: "It doesn't matter who wins in Israel, they are all the same to Gaza.
Such was the sentiment of Said Sharafa, 26, a Gazan employee of DHL Express, with regard to upcoming Knesset elections in Israel. Sharafa's statement points to a (...)
During Eid Al-Adha, I skipped slaying sheep in the streets of Cairo and went to visit my girlfriend in Japan instead. Culture shock hit me like a 50-kilo sack of rice five minutes after I stepped off the plane in Osaka, when the customs agent (...)
Waiting for the show to start at Rawabet Theater Sunday night, I struck up a conversation with two members of El-Kahwa, a fresh-faced group trying to break into Cairo's modern Oriental rock scene.
Lead guitarist Weka, 18, and vocalist Moustafa, (...)
As I was heading out one night on my way to a fashion show at Townhouse Gallery, a friend, Haitham, stopped me in my tracks with an especially eager ahlan wa sahlan. Haitham runs a small copy shop on the first floor of my building, and we exchange (...)
If you had gone to Manial Palace late Wednesday evening, you would have passed through a long tunnel of tangled banyan trees, glowing white under soft light, adorned with the flags of 18 European and Arab nations.
You would have heard (...)
Nights of Eastern-Western Fusion, a concert series organized by the Norwegian Embassy in Egypt, brought saxophonist Trygve Seim, accordionist Frode Haltli, and vocalist Tora Augestad together at El Sawy Culture Wheel on Sunday night, where they (...)
"What Do I Know about War, a one-woman stage production by Margo Lee Sherman, has emerged as one of the divisive performances of this year's Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival, dividing audiences and critics alike.
Dressed in baggy (...)
Scratchy cabaret tunes competing with the incessant chatter of the filmstrip, sepia-toned light casting a parchment-colored glow over angular, art nouveau backdrops, captions flitting below the oriental figures jittering across the stage. This is (...)
Iudging by the crowd piled outside the Rawabet Theater on Saturday night, a passerby would surely have assumed that a well-established act was about to take the stage. On the contrary, Baraka - led by singer Mariam Saleh, 23 - is fresh from the (...)
CAIRO: For those unfamiliar with the Islamic practice of veiling, the many variations of the hijab found on the streets of Cairo can be perplexing. Why are some hijabs bright, fashionable - sometimes downright flashy - while others seem conservative (...)
Last Sunday evening, I headed to the Culture Wheel on a whim with some friends to see Mraya Band. None of us had heard Mraya Band, or even heard of them, before that night. We paid LE 10 each for entry, and then strolled into the cool darkness of (...)
"You came to Cairo at an odd time - a statement of sympathy from fellow foreigners who've lived in the Middle East for a while, expressed upon my arrival in Egypt at the end of August 2008.
I was in Cairo for less than a week before the start of (...)
Late Monday evening the Suzanne Mubarak Housing Project in Duweiqa was thrumming with people and machines. Moving trucks, piled high with furniture, snaked through the crowds, entire families jammed into the cabs.
Front-end loaders carted rubble (...)
CAIRO: In the dusty street outside her home, just above the newest disaster area in Moqattam, Ola waves a yellowed, tattered housing permit. The permit, over 20 years old, allows Ola and her family to occupy one of the original government flats in (...)