Every morning for over six years, Rania al-Baz has been the smiling face of a family program on Saudi television. She was a young, beautiful Saudi TV news anchor–the first woman to have such a job–when her abusive husband beat her into a coma and left her for dead. She remained in a coma for […]
Iraqi artist Bilal immigrated to the U.S. after Desert Storm, and channeled his haunting experiences into his performance pieces, culminating in Domestic Tension. For 31 days and nights, Bilal was the target of a paintball gun controlled by online participants who were invited to “shoot an Iraqi.” Video cameras recorded Bilal’s struggle to retain his […]
Known in the West as a cultural patron and as the ruler who sent exotic gifts to Charlemagne, Harun al-Rashid was also a soldier who waged war against the Byzantine empire, and a politician who often dealt ruthlessly with the religious and social revolts which threatened his far-flung kingdom. A symbol of the fabled Orient […]
An Arab Muslim woman born in Beirut in 1918 weaves together reflections on her personal struggle for independence with an account of her extended family’s dislocation in the violent political upheavals of the Middle East. As Lisa Majaj points out in her insightful introduction, this is no simplistic account of an Islamic woman rescued by […]
Karmi, a doctor and founding member of the British political group Palestine Action, relates her quest for cultural identity after her “fragile… and misfit Arab family” leaves Jerusalem for England during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Ironically, they resettle in a Jewish neighborhood in London; Karmi, aged nine, quickly begins to […]