I still remember sitting in on professor Samia Mehrez's “Translation: Theory and Practice” graduate course some five years ago. We were a small group, four in total, including Mehrez. The course was our getaway to the field of Translation Studies, (...)
“Snow sheaths the land/January revisits/A year has ended/A new one has dawned/We have yet to know how it will be like.”
Thus sang the iconic Fairouz in a short video released on YouTube in the last hours of 2015.
Our Jarrat al-Qamar (Neighbor to (...)
“Let me see the sea” graffiti adorns the otherwise ugly, mammoth concrete barrier, also known as ‘The Apartheid Wall', that separates the occupied West Bank from Israel.
Perhaps the duet of hope and pain that underpins this graffiti sentence also (...)
Two neighbouring cells and a hole wide enough to deliver shy attempts at communication. Two neighbouring cells and a hole wide enough to permit the flow of conversation. Two neighbouring cells and a hole wide enough to witness a budding love story, (...)
Tens of jazz aficionados headed to downtown's GrEEK Campus on Thursday for the opening night of the 8th Cairo Jazz Festival (CJF) which runs until 22 October.
First up on stage were Ala Ghawas & Likwid, an on-stage collaboration bringing together (...)
“Your eyes reunited me with the days that had gone by
They taught me to regret the past and its wounds
That which I experienced before my eyes saw you
What is this wasted life to me?
You are my life whose morning began with your light"
We are at (...)
“I was sitting in Ain Al-Hilweh refugee camp and this lovely refugee woman said, in Arabic, “What's your name, praise be to the prophet?” And I said, “My name is Reem.” And she said, “Ah, I've got a song for you,” and I said, “Okay mother, let's (...)
“Beirut windows are slowly rising
Read in their coffee cup
tell me what you see
They've been through a lot
sweet days and sour days
Hungry for more legends
and life is still young.”
Shababeek Beirut ("Beirut Windows"), Tania Saleh
The words raytak (...)
Lebanese band Adonis brought their pop-rock sound to a packed El-Genaina Theatre Wednesday, 28 September.
Taking the stage for two hours, the five-member band performed a selection from their two albums to date: Daw L Baladyyi (Light of the (...)
Founded in 1906 by Beglian entrepreneur Baron Edouard Empain, the Heliopolis quarter in northeast Cairo still retains something of that era's grandeur. This is especially true of the Korba district, which offers a bit of everything, from food to (...)
On 24 September, Jordanian band Random House and Palestinian musician Tamer Abu Ghazaleh took the stage in a double-bill concert at Cairo's El-Genaina Theatre.
First up on stage was Random House, known in Arabic as Al Bait Al-Ashwae—a four-member (...)
Jordanian band Al Bait Al 3ashwae (Random House) are scheduled to hold three concerts in Cairo next week: on 24 September at El-Genaina Theatre; on 27 September at ROOM Art Space; and on 29 September at the Cairo Jazz Club.
Founded in 2012, the (...)
What complements a gentle breeze that shyly drifts through the air on a Cairene summer night? Many answers suffice, but for the lucky audience who took their seats at Cairo's El-Genaina Theatre on Sunday 4 September, it was none other than Lebanese (...)
“In the Arabic language, ‘love' has tens of synonyms, including hobb, wid, ishq, kalaf, shaghaf, jawa, tadaloh, hayam, sababa, wajd, shajw, danaf, shawq, bilbal, tabarieeh, haneen, gharam, walah, etc. But the most intense state of love is that of (...)
“O Palestinians, the fusilier has shot you
With Zionism which kills the doves that live under your protection
O Palestinians, I want to come and be with you, weapons in hand
And I want my hands to go down with yours to smash the snake's head
And (...)
“My country,
Gold from the days of yore
My country
Born of poetic stories
I am a poem carved upon your gates
Written by a persistent wind
I am a stone, a lily,
A lily, Oh my country.”
Thus the “Soul of Lebanon,” a moniker for the legendary (...)
“Sleep my sweetheart, now fall asleep
Pain has departed our home
If they ask about us, we will say
Just now our little bird has had his bath
Sleep my sweetheart, now fall asleep
Here is your beautiful and comfortable cradle
In this warm cradle lies (...)
“Stripped of my name and identity?
On soil I nourished with my own hands?
Today Job cried out
Filling the sky:
Don't make an example of me again!
Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,
Don't ask the trees for their names
Don't ask the valleys who their (...)
Israeli authorities denied entry to Hazem Shaheen, the oud master, singer and founder of Egypt's well known independent band Eskenderella, as well as Jordanian musician Maen El-Sayed, ahead of their scheduled participation in this year's Palestine (...)
“Collect all the work and any information from him, as we need to get him out on the street.”
So says the worker's boss in the opening scenes of Out on the Street (Bara Fil Sharea), a hybrid documentary by filmmakers Jasmina Metwali and Philip Rizk, (...)
The American University in Cairo recently hosted Lila Abu-Lughod, a professor of Anthropology and Women's and Gender Studies at Columbia University. She delivered two lectures, the first titled ‘Saving Muslim Women' on 28 October, and the Edward (...)
“My aspiration is for turath,” or heritage, “to always be present, for us to reclaim it, build on it, but never abandon it.”
Thus the famed Lebanese singer Ghada Shbeir, best known for giving traditional and ancient music a contemporary twist, (...)
“When I go back to Morocco, everything I see is colourful. Whether it's the food, markets, floor patterns, kaftans, landscape, textiles, wood or metal work, Morocco is full of beautiful patterns. And I think this is how we display ourselves. We like (...)
On 20 May the first Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel was awarded to, among other books, Adagio by the established Egyptian novelist Ibrahim Abdel-Meguid, setting off an intense debate in Cairo literary circles. While much of the discourse has (...)
Of the Libyan-American poet Khaled Mattawa's three American University in Cairo “In Translation” lectures (organised by the Center for Translation Studies and the English and Comparative Literature department), the last, “Power, Identity and a (...)