/art © Jamal Penjweny/ Iraqi-Kurdish photo artist Jamal Penjweny’s newest project envisions a new chapter in the history of Iraq’s Jews, written about on Mashallah News. It’s another great project by Penjweny. In less than four years, from 1947 to 1951, most of Iraq’s Jews left their homes and moved to Israel. Their presence in […]
/The Match Seller by Louay Kayali/ Louay Kayali was a Syrian modern artist, a brilliant painter born in Aleppo in 1934. He began painting at the age of eleven and held his first solo exhibition when he was eighteen. Kayali died in 1978, from burns incurred from his bed catching fire, reportedly from a cigarette (he suffered from […]
/From the film The Band’s Visit/ Ronit Elkabetz died. It’s hard to believe it, but it’s true – there will be no more films featuring the lovely and talented, bright and insightful, funny and beautiful beyond words – Elkabetz. She was only 51, the cause of her death cancer. During the last twenty-five years she […]
/The Moroccans, © Leila Alaoui/ It seems way too early to pay respect to Leila Alaoui, talented French-Moroccan photographer, in MER’s Remembering sessions. After all, she entered 2016 full of power, only in her thirties. Unfortunately, Alaoui succumbed to her injuries sustained in the Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) terrorist attacks, only couple of days ago. She was among those (at […]
Hassan Abdullah Hamdan, more commonly known as Mahdi ‘Amel, was an Arab Marxist intellectual and a political activist. Today is the twenty-eight anniversary of his assassination and a perfect time to reflect on his life and remember his work. /Mahdi ‘Amel, photo via sierra.mmic/ Mahdi ‘Amel joined the Lebanese Communist Party in 1960, at the age […]
Today would be Samir Kassir’s birthday and he would celebrate it. He would be fifty-five. Lebanon would celebrate (with) him. He would be happy. But that will never happen since Samir Kassir was assassinated ten years ago. /Samir Kassir, photo via ballandalus/ Born to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, Kassir was one of the most well […]
“The house still stands at the end of the curved, dusty road at the foot of Cairo’s great Citadel. It still has character and mystery; now, however, it is a unique work of art amidst its modern concrete neighbours. It is the house where Hassan Fathy lived; a mansion without its master. That master was […]
Assia Djebar was the pen name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, an Algerian novelist, poet, translator and filmmaker. She died a month ago, at the age of seventy-eight. /Assia Djebar, photo via Seven Stories/ Djebar is considered to be one of North Africa’s pre-eminent and most influential writers. She was elected to the Académie Française in 2005, the […]
In his 2002 autobiography You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Howard Zinn wrote: “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in […]
Since the first time I read his poems, it seemed to me that poems came to Pablo Neruda as easily as air comes to those who breathe. I remain fascinated by that, and it is hard for me to name any other poet who had been blessed with the same talent as Neruda. /Pablo Neruda, […]
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