Beirut-based Fiction & Other Writings
Note: This is the first of two posts recounting Eye on the East’s recent visit to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
So I finally went back to Dubai. I didn’t expect anything to feel familiar, given that so much had changed in the eight years since my first visit. Part of me knew what to expect, and part of me hoped for something new.
Continue reading “Dubai: The desert, the skyscrapers and everything in between…”
It is difficult to stay away from writing and lamenting about bombs, death and destruction for too long when in Lebanon. And it’s all too easy to write and lament about the same old things when this happens: on how we’ve had enough of this perpetual vicious cycle of violence and how our politicians are an indestructible curse; Continue reading “On Resilience and Perpetual Violence”
There is never a good or right time to talk about Palestine. A cause, a dream, a responsibility, a defeat, a crime and a badge of shame on the world, which has affected, been used and abused, and shaped a considerable part of the Middle East’s contemporary history. As the situation in the occupied territories continues to evolve, or rather deteriorate, and with it the chances of a viable peace, keeping Palestine in the public discourse almost seems like a constant necessity to keep the cause alive. Continue reading “Thinking about Palestine”
When I used to look at Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, Brazil’s infamous shanty towns, dotting the city’s lush mountains overlooking its glorious shores, it was difficult to imagine the existence of such dire poverty. I had never seen anything like that anywhere I had been, nor had I seen anything like it in Lebanon. It seemed like an irreversible curse that a country, blessed with such beauty and with a people so happy and content with the simple pleasures in life, had to endure such injustice and inequality. Continue reading “When Poverty is so Dire…”
We live in a world where violence has become common place, suffering a regular feeling we have learned to cope with and the dead just one more number. Or maybe this is the world that the Middle East and Arab World has taken to be its ‘daily bread,’ leaving little left to move us so deeply that it will impact us for the rest of our lives. Continue reading “Human Rights Watch on the Children of Bahrain”
Saying that this past week was a long week is an understatement. Syria and the Levant awaited the “imminent” but “limited” strike, barely able to imagine the immediate consequences on Syria and the wider repercussions on the region this attack would have had. The attack seems to have been averted, for the time being, with many feeling utterly disappointed and others terribly relieved. Continue reading “A Strike Averted, Back to Business as Usual”
If they are not yet, today more than ever, all eyes are on Syria. Well, not exactly today, but they soon will be…
Many of us have been following the Syrian uprising from day one: praying for the fate of the innocent children of Daraa who sparked the revolution, fervently denying the revolt was a conspiracy as the Syrian regime wanted the world to believe, disheartened by what parts of the Syrian opposition had become, and grieving for Syrian suffering and the horrors of Ghouta. Continue reading “We’ve Already Let Syria Down”
It will take a very long time for us to forget the horribly indescribable images from the Ghouta massacre. The fact that it was a chemical weapons’ attack is beyond question, but there are still questions on whether it was the regime or opposition forces who are responsible for it.
They say that Beirut is a city that will never surrender, but what if everything that keeps life together in it is slowly disappearing, gradually being torn apart? Continue reading “Beirut will never surrender, but…”
Who hasn’t heard of “the dustbin of history.” It’s a place you would wish actually existed, to which some people, ideas and events eventually end up or are pushed into, unaware that their time under the sun has come to an end, never to come back again. Continue reading “And into the dustbin of history…”
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