DUBAI: The Syrian musician Maya Youssef was only eight years old when she was told something that changed her life. Youssef was on her way through Damascus to a music lesson in a taxi with her mother, when she heard the intriguing sounds of the qanun on the radio. She asked the taxi driver what the instrument was and he said that the qanun was traditionally played only by men.
DUBAI: The Arab Hall in London’s Leighton House Museum has been described by one of the English capital’s walking-tour guides as the city’s “most jaw-dropping room” The story of this sumptuous space begins with one of the Victorian era’s most-distinguished artists and travelers, Lord Frederic Leighton, who was only in his mid-thirties when he started building his red-brick