“It was therefore inevitable that what applied in Palestine would also apply in the Levant and beyond.”
Amal Ghandour on Israel’s latest war on Lebanon and the destruction wrought across the region: www.hidden-cities.com/p/a-ledger-o...
“In mystified disbelief, we find ourselves listening to Israeli and American leaders invoking Armageddon, end-of-time combat, the Crusades, bombing the ‘bastards’ into the Stone Age.”
Amal Ghandour in @hidden-cities.com, writing from Beirut, on Israel’s "extraordinary tally of destruction."
“Nobody knows how close Iran was to collapsing. But try to imagine not the cease-fire into which the Iranians succeeded in maneuvering Trump, but rather Netanyahu’s scenario of ‘total victory.’”
Hagai El-Ad on the cost of Israeli victory over Iran: www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-catast...
Thrilled to have Hagai El-Ad, the former executive director of B’Tselem, in @hidden-cities.com, writing from Jerusalem, on Netanyahu’s fantasy of “total victory” over Iran:
www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-catast...
New in @hidden-cities.com: Hagai El-Ad on the cost of an Israeli victory over Iran, as Netanyahu hoped for.
“Imagine Israel after a total victory over Iran: a dangerous recipe for further military adventures, territorial expansion and you name it.” www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-catast...
“It was the hub of anti-colonial resistance that became a symbol of national identity, central to the collective memory of Algerians. But today, the historic heart of Algiers is a museum in ruins.”
Abd-el-Kader Cheref on the fate of the Casbah, in @hidden-cities.com
"For all its neglect, the Casbah still embodies the resilience of the Algerian people."
Abd-el-Kader Cheref on the Casbah of Algiers, a museum in ruins. www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-casbah...
New in @hidden-cities.com: Despite years of neglect and marginalization, the crumbling Casbah is still the beating heart of Algiers.
Abd-el-Kader Cheref on the Casbah's history, heritage, and place in Algerian culture and identity: www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-casbah...
“From the elevated highway, the city looked like a palimpsest of failed promises and stubborn resilience.”
Yasser Elsheshtawy in @hidden-cities.com on Cairo and how its “chaotic inclusiveness, imperfect but vital, is being replaced by curated order.” www.hidden-cities.com/p/an-elegy-f...
“The façades may be restored, the sidewalks disciplined, the shops curated—but beneath the surface, the city’s older rhythms persist, faint but audible. Cairo resists finality.”
Yasser Elsheshtawy on what is lost and what remains in downtown Cairo: www.hidden-cities.com/p/an-elegy-f...
“The façades may be restored, the sidewalks disciplined, the shops curated—but beneath the surface, the city’s older rhythms persist, faint but audible. Cairo resists finality.”
Yasser Elsheshtawy on what is lost and what remains in downtown Cairo: www.hidden-cities.com/p/an-elegy-f...
“The Cairo of that age was messy, alive, unvarnished. This one felt embalmed.”
New in Hidden Cities: Yasser Elsheshtawy’s elegy to downtown Cairo, and the fragments of memory and fading relics that still make the city what it is. @hidden-cities.com
www.hidden-cities.com/p/an-elegy-f...
Among the revealing notes in @miraalhussein.bsky.social's piece, she writes of the low casualty count in the Gulf that it is "possible the Gulf governments are managing disclosure carefully, wary of provoking panic." @hidden-cities.com www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-iran-w...
“Like many anxiously watching from a distance, I’ve been calling family and friends in the Gulf every day. They send voice notes offering insights on the conflict that rarely make it into official Gulf channels.” @miraalhussein.bsky.social in @hidden-cities.com www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-iran-w...
“U.S. military bases in the Gulf, long presented as guarantors of security, have revealed themselves as liabilities.”
@miraalhussein.bsky.social on reactions in the Gulf to the Iran war, which has exposed a bet on U.S. protection. @theconversation.com www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-iran-w...
New in @hidden-cities.com: Paul Kohlbry on how Israel's occupation, together with market coercion under the Palestinian Authority, have devastated the social, ecological, and economic fabric of rural life in the West Bank. www.hidden-cities.com/p/agrarian-a...
Read and subscribe to @hidden-cities.com for more: @versobooks.bsky.social
www.hidden-cities.com/p/why-the-st...
“Palestine is at its core a struggle against fossil capitalism.”
Adam Hanieh, Robert Knox, and Rafeef Ziadah on why “the battle for survival waged by Palestinians today, in Gaza and beyond, is inseparable from the fight for the future of the planet.” www.hidden-cities.com/p/why-the-st...
“The Iran we knew couldn’t be conveniently minimized to caricatures and platitudes about its present and past.”
Kourosh Ziabari mourns a lost Iran, where social cohesion, civil dialogue, and collective identity have cratered under state repression. www.hidden-cities.com/p/an-elegy-f...
“The Iran we knew couldn’t be conveniently minimized to caricatures and platitudes about its present and past.”
Kourosh Ziabari mourns a lost Iran, where social cohesion, civil dialogue, and collective identity have cratered under state repression. www.hidden-cities.com/p/an-elegy-f...
"Iran’s metamorphosis is that of a country estranged from its identity, deluded about its present, confused about its future, and detached from its past."
A new essay by Kourosh Ziabari, mourning a lost Iran: www.hidden-cities.com/p/an-elegy-f...
"One day there will be no more looking away... One day there will be an accounting."
A powerful excerpt from Omar El Akkad's searing book "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This," in my new publication, Hidden Cities.
Read and subscribe! hiddencities.substack.com/p/omar-el-ak...
“Egypt has always trusted in the afterlife of words—that brief counsel, well-shaped, can outlast stone.”
A lyrical journey by @ysl.bsky.social from ancient Egypt to medieval Cairo, finding comfort and clarity in the humble aphorism. hiddencities.substack.com/p/the-ancien...
"I Wish I Had a Leg" Ten-year-old Rateb Abu Qleiq was wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis that killed his mother and brother. Rateb's right leg was crushed and had to be amputated. "I wish I had a leg so I could play with my friends." "I want to return to our home and have my mom my dad and my leg with me."
“I Wish I Had a Leg,” a new poem in Hidden Cities by Vaheed Ramazani. hiddencities.substack.com/p/i-wish-i-h...
What the fall of Baghdad, the occupation, sectarianism, and callous American adventurism could not erase: a sense of humor, of food, of hospitality and humanity. hiddencities.substack.com/p/playing-ch...
Delighted to share my piece on
The Ancient, Enduring Wisdom of Egyptian Aphorisms
Hidden Cities is a new publication: part travelogue, part global news brief—
a magazine that illuminates the world
Launched by @freddydek
hiddencities.substack.com/p/the-ancien...
#egypt #wisdom #history #quotes
New from me in Hidden Cities: Assad is gone, along with the regime cronies who were behind an authoritarian vision of Syria's reconstruction, if it could even be called reconstruction at all. Yet Syrians still don't have enough say in how their country might be rebuilt under Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“The current crisis isn’t just about bread and jobs, it’s about who decides what Iran stands for.”
Kamran Talattof in Hidden Cities on why Iran’s protests go deeper than economic frustration alone. @us.theconversation.com
www.hidden-cities.com/p/neither-ga...
“Jordan cannot be reduced to the banalities of orientalist folklore, much less the other tropes that have long garbled how the Western media describe the kingdom.”
@seanyom.bsky.social in Hidden Cities on what Jordan’s history reveals about the Middle East: www.hidden-cities.com/p/why-tiny-j...
