Cairo’s coolest cosmopolitan hotel. General Manager: Youssef Rakha
Cairo by Piri Reis, 16th century. Source: Wikipedia
أجمد أوتيل كوزموبوليتان فيكي يا مصر. المدير العام: يوسف رخا
Arabic calligraphy by Mahmud Atef
Arab Spring Arabic literature art Beirut black and white Cairo death Egypt Fiction History Islam literature love Novel Poetry Revolution
رواية سفر شعر شمس ضحك غرام قصة قصيرة قصيدة نثر قلب قهوة كتابة مدينة مرض مطر موت موسيقى نص نوم
Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè: To Hypothesize Like E C Catalan
Head of the wife of an Ooni, the traditional ruler of the ancient Yoruba city of Ile-Ife, 1930s. Source: 1stdibs.com
(For Onnie)
I have tried to count our minted coins:
They are Z+ of integers slipping through mind
Like a money changer sans numismatic head.
Perhaps I am a failed Pythagorean
Perhaps I am a failed mathematicist
That I have always been all my life.
Two from Freiburg by Yasmin Helal
An Epiphany in the Land of Plenty
May 15, 2018
“An Epiphany in the Land of Plenty” by Yasmin Helal
Far away from home, I walked down a nameless street, in and out of nameless shops, buying products I never believed in. Weeks after, meaningful words have left me. Just when I needed them the most.
I’ve always been a talker, playing with words until they succumbed to my will. But now they have abandoned me. So did my healthy appetite and peaceful sleep.
Left to my own devices. I remain in the dark. Here I am where kids attend music classes after school. Drinking clean water from the tap, long after the sewage has left my kidneys. Eating clean food with a stomach of steel that can digest stones. Rolling my tobacco and counting my Euros.
Rémy Ngamije: The Sage Of The Six Nigga Paths (or, The Life And Times Of the Five Os)
Chris Steele-Perkins, a black township near Windhoek, Namibia, 1984. Source: magnumphotos.com
Niggathrond And The Path Of Youth And Foolishness
When we were younger there was nothing else for niggas in this Wild Wild Worst town to do but fight. Me, Rinzlo, Cicero, Lindo, and Franco―the Five Os. We were from the same side of town: torn Millé and Hi-Tech sneakers unworthy of hot-stepping in, out-of-fashion t-shirts from the Pep store with girl-pulling gravity set to zero, and not even a coin between us to spend at the video game arcade. We’d pool our poverty at the mall on weekends waiting for rich kids from Olympia and Ludwigsdorf to give us shifty looks so we could corner them in the parking lot and pound on them.
Anything could set us off.
Some Jordan-wearing dude looking at our cheap kicks funny? Fight.
Rinzlo’s younger brother getting bullied? Fight.
Some random-ass nigga coughing into the west wind while we were coming up from the east?
Rabiu Temidayo: Burkas
Alex Majoli, Lagos, 2013. Source: magnumphotos.com
Early the staccatos swelled, the jalopies trundled through the eigengrau, martins and peckers perched on wires portending the resurrecting sun. Windows jittered in the cold, and outside the red, blinking mast laddered up the azure-turning sky. Watchmen tinkered with their rusty panels and disappeared into silent folds. I woke up on the sofa in the parlor facing the green glow of the incandescent crucifix above mother’s bed. It waned like the moon in the morning. Occasionally, whirring airplanes flew low with their wheels down headed for the airport’s runways, shaking the houses in their cold silence. She’d face the ceiling on her bed, muttering a prayer, then descend into her loose sleeping robes. Feet sweeping the carpet, she’d examine the children splayed on the floor, my sisters and I, sometimes our cousins, carried a lantern and trudged through the creaking door, then through the hollow hallway.
Peter Collins: James Cameron and the Tabora Hotel
James Cameron, image courtesy of Peter Collins
If there was a golden age of journalism, then surely James Cameron represented Great Britain. You could throw in the Commonwealth countries and its former colonies for good measure, for he would have invariably visited them all, drank in their bars, met their dignitaries and moved amongst their people.
Born in 1911, Mark James Walter Cameron learnt the rudiments of his trade in the offices of Scottish newspapers before heading south to London’s Daily Express and eventually a life on the road as a foreign correspondent and a role which would define not only Cameron the man but the standard for journalists to follow the world over.
A Flaming Chair Surrounded by Mirrors: Anna Iltnere quizzes Tom de Freston and Kiran Millwood Hargrave
I received the following in emails sent to me from Australia and Hawaii. The British artist Tom de Freston and writer Kiran Millwood Hargrave, who live in Oxford, are a talented couple who have been together for over a decade. They were married two years ago in Goa, but spent their honeymoon in the Seychelles. By the time this interview appears online, they will be back in Oxford, having also been in New York. They always have their plate full with beautiful projects – books, and journeys. And sometimes, as in this case, they are not physically together while they happen.
سلمى الداني: شاهد رقيق
Moises Saman, Japan, 2017. Source: magnumphotos.com
تجلس على أريكة مخملية متأملة حوضًا صغيرًا من السيراميك ذا زخارف يبدو أنها أندلسية، لا تستطيع تمييز جميع ألوان زخارفه بسبب رغوة الصابون، تأخذ رشفة من الشاي الذي مدته لها أخصائية المساج، وكعادتها تتساءل بينها وبين نفسها وهي لا تنتظر إجابة ما: هل هو بطعم البابونج مع العسل؟ فترتشف رشفة أخرى، ثم تنتبه أن روبها يبدو مرتخيًا حتى بدا صدرها؛ لكنها لا تبالي. تمد قدميها بحذر وهي تدخلهما في الحوض، وتُرجع ظهرها باسترخاء على الأريكة راجية أن ستستطيع النوم بشكل عمي بعد هذا المساج.
تخرج قدميها من الحوض، وتخلع الروب الحريري عن جسدها، تتردد في خلع القلادة الفضية فتتركها مكانها؛ وتتبع تعليمات المدلكة بأن تنام على بطنها، وتضع وجهها داخل فتحة مجوفة في طرف السرير. الإضاءة الخافتة؛ ورائحة الشموع العطرية؛ والموسيقى الخلفية الداعية للاسترخاء؛ تزيد من حدة توترها، لم تستغرب هذا التوتر فهي تدرك أن ردود فعلها المغايرة أمر طبيعي. لا تهتم بما تشعر به في تلك اللحظة.
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