Read this interview in its original Arabic here. Syrian writer and poet Faraj Bayrakdar has long been known as a staunch opponent to the Assad regime. In the 1970s, he and other left-leaning writers took part in editing and publishing an underground literary zine known only as “the pamphlet.” They printed in secret at library […]
For decades, the Assads have tried projecting an image of themselves as “secular” bulwarks against religious extremism. All the while, they’ve been shoring up the powers of loyalist religious institutions and stoking sectarian divisions as a tool for control, argues Joseph Daher.
Over the course of a year in the 1970s, a group of Syrian leftist poets and short story writers gathered to publish an underground literary zine, clandestinely printing at university libraries and handing out copies to students and friends. The publication went unnamed and, at least for a little for a while, outside the radar of the mukhabarat. In the short period before its editors either faced arrest or were forced into hiding, “the pamphlet,” as it came to be known, made waves through Syria’s literary scene.
The history of Ethiopian Jewry goes back millennia. For almost 2,000 years, the Beta Israel had their own community – even their own kingdom and army – in the Simien Mountains region of Ethiopia.
“She is a bride with no husband but the people who walk with freedom, seeking the blessing of patriotism beneath their flag’s sky. Her marriage contract is penned with the ink of both reason and heart.” -Mary Ajami In an old Damascene house, in the Jowaniyeh neighborhood’s Talaa al-Fidha alley behind the St. John […]