By MAX FREEMAN
Virgil got his tattoo in Megara
Around the time he knew that his great poem
Must be destroyed. A reckless decision.
The luxe door had cost them everything. Oak, with wooden lace. It gave the impression there was more behind it than:
By RICO GATSON
Introduction by David E. Little
What was required was a new story, a new history told through the lens of our struggle.
—Ta-Nehisi Coates
They say there’s nothing harder than hitting a fastball. In America, clichés on the difficulty of sports abound. But how to describe the challenges of art?
By SUSAN STRAIGHT
When my youngest daughter began her freshman year of high school, I said casually to her, “Do you ever see Christian?”
She gave me an incredulous and dismissive look. She replied, “Why would I see him? He doesn’t go here. He’s probably not in school at all. He probably fried his brain dying his hair all those colors.”
And then she was done. She talked about something else. But I kept picturing him. Forever to me he will be the boy who called my child a nigger and spat on her when she was ten.
Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE
We awoke one morning to news of a death. The person we had lost was the one we used to call the Village Idiot—that buffoon who used to make us laugh and cry at the same time, that leaping, dancing ball of energy who would hurl himself around, wild with enthusiasm, stomping on our toes and crashing into us as he went gesticulating by.
A compilation of the Visual Art from Issue 11.
All What Will Remain. Photography. Bahaa Souki.
Toy Men—Plastic Women. Mixed media on wood, 84 x 69 cm, 2012. Bahaa Souki.
Decision Keeper. Mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 2014. Bahaa Souki.
One Arm Man With His Dog. Oil on cotton paper, 95 x 68 cm, 2015. Bahaa Souki.
Home, Part 1. Photography, 105 x 70 cm, 2013. Ons Ghimagi.
Home, Part 2. Photography, 105 x 70 cm, 2013. Ons Ghimagi.
In the Mood for Love. Photography, 105 x 70 cm, 2013. Ons Ghimagi.
010. Oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm, 2004. Bader Mahasneh.
017. Archival print of 3 editions, 90 x 90 cm, 2010. Bader Mahasneh.
Untitled. Acrylic on canvas, 175 x 95 cm, 2015.
Untitled. Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 80 cm, 2015.
Untitled. Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 80 cm, 2015.
Child’s Message (1). Mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 2014.
Cold Breezes. Mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 2012.
Dialogue. Mixed media on canvas, 200 x 100 cm, 2015.
The Original Fall. Photography. Bahaa Souki.
Scholars of Arabic literature were, for a time, obsessed with naming a “first” Arabic novel to stand at the head of an apparently new literary tradition. Was it M. H. Haykal’s 1914 Zaynab? Was it one of the many novels that were serialized in popular magazines that sprouted up in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon in the late 1800s and early 1900s? Or perhaps Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s peripatetic, language-glorifying Leg Over Leg (1855)? Never mind that al-Shidyaq mocked the obsessions of European writing.
On the very first night, one thousand years ago, or… wait, why do we always begin our stories with the first night? There is absolutely no difference between what happened in that distant time and what is happening now. The same columns of men march beneath the sun’s rays in the afternoon’s scorching heat, the same tear-soaked supplications and hymns: “O God, make his grave a green pasture in the gardens of Paradise—don’t cast him into a burning pit of hell.” “O God, grant him a better spouse than the one he has, a better home, and better children.” “O God, forgive his sins and those of your faithful worshippers.”
By MONA MERHI
Translated by NARIMAN YOUSSEF
The sign outside the shop reads, in big dusty letters, Abu Ramy The Lebanese. In a bid for some familiarity amidst the chaos of this neighborhood, I insist we go in.
“Are you Abu Ramy, the Lebanese?”
“At your service.”
Translated by MOHAMED EL-SAWI HASSAN
It was the first of February 1957, and in the entrance of Prince Abdul Munem’s palace, a young officer stood facing the prince. With the usual sternness, the officer told the prince that he must leave the palace immediately.¹ Without saying a word, the prince went back inside and came out carrying a suitcase. He smiled at the officer and walked toward the southern wall of the palace.
At first the officer was astounded by this, as there was only one entrance to the palace and it was located in the northern wall. His amazement only grew as he watched the prince open the door of a room built against the southern wall and step inside it. Thinking he must have been duped and that his assignment had not been successfully completed, the officer went into the room and yelled furiously at the prince, threatening to use force to get him out of the palace. But the prince claimed that because the room was not part of the palace and he did not actually own it, he was still allowed to stay and live in it. He told the officer that his father had given the little room away a long time ago. He also informed him that Sheikh Abu Annoor was buried inside. He pointed to a structure in the middle of the room covered with a thin rug. “Don’t you see the tomb?” he asked. He then whirled his forefinger around in the air, pointing around the room, and asked the officer: “Would you really nationalize a shrine?”
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