A girl in a white gown. We don’t see her face. On the bride’s right side stands another girl pinning her hair. Another pair of hands: one hand reaches out while the other holds the tip of the bride’s hair. In their midst there is an ordinary guy, probably in his forties, holding the back zipper of the dress. The closest character is indistinct; she, too, is wearing a white gown. We see her brown hair lock, her hands, and the white gown. This looks like an ordinary picture taken minutes before a wedding.   This picture circulated in western and Arab... more

  A year ago my head began to reject my hair, like those places in which I’ve lived, the countries that rejected me. Land after land, one place after another: Palestine, Syria, and now, Lebanon—those countries that have failed and have burdened me with their failure.   The Gulf War, the family’s constant sundering. Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Berlin: parts of myself scattered across all these places. My memory, riddled with holes. My present and my death.   In Umbilical Cord I assemble an archive of my family in Kuwait: my dead memory of family. I embark on a quest for the unknown part of... more

  The crowds fill the foreground, a river of thin bodies, faces packed between two parallel, receding lines of ruined buildings. The closest face is that of an elderly woman, wearing black shawl on her head. I’ve never seen an exhausted face with quite this kind of parched fatigue before. It is an epic image, it could be a canvas by some great artist, but the truth is it is just a single snapshot from the siege of the Yarmouk Camp in Damascus. How can an image such as this be beautiful, so very beautiful? We are used to describing colours as beautiful... more