essays
Syrian Children and the Exit from the Dark Tunnel!
by Salam Kawakibi. For more than five decades, the Syrian child was subjected to an orderly process of upbringing to control the phases of his growth and maturity. Following [...]
Syrian Booknotes
by Elie Chalala. Since the 2011 March uprising, scores of books have been published on Syrian politics, with most written by a new generation of scholars with no longstanding [...]
Whatever is Left of the Levantine Spirit?
by Elie Chalala. The Arab world lives in a state of nostalgia for bygone days, when much of the hatred and intolerance of today had not set in, and the demographic minorities [...]
Reconstructing the Disastrous History of the Lebanese Famine
by Angele Ellis. Despite his almost uniformly dry and scholarly tone, Louis Farshee’s painstaking reconstruction of the famine that may have claimed as many as 375,000 [...]
When a Corpse Becomes an Icon for Syria’s Agony and Abandonment!
by Elie Chalala. “For a moment I was in a state of disbelief, thinking sleep had overtaken him,” wrote Mr. Ghassan Charbel about Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler who died [...]
Generations of Catastrophes: The Palestinian Problem at Half a Century
A Brief Introduction by the Author. I rarely passed on an Al Nakba remembrance, an event which was pivotal in forming my political and moral consciousness during my early [...]
Novelist Salwa Bakr Dares to Say it Aloud
by Elie Chalala. Revolution’s successes and failures; the taboos broken, how political Islam’s “holiness” mask dropped; the intelligentsia’s flight to the past [...]
Radwa Ashour (1946-2014) A Literary, Cultural and Political Activist Icon, Echoing in Egypt’s Valley
by Professor Nada Ramadan Elnahla. The valley was flooding with apparitions . . . Silence, followed by a crescendo. A sound that will echo in the valley years later. [...]
GEOGRAPHY AND NUMERICS OF EDEN, KHARSAG AND PARADISE: SUMERIAN AND ENOCHIAN SOURCES VERSUS THE GENESIS TALE
by Emilio Spedicato, University of Bergamo. Abstract In two papers [1,2] we have analyzed the geographical data referring to the Garden of Eden, the place where [...]
ON ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE
an essay in English by Massimo Pittau. In the last 70 years, in Italy, with regard to Etruscan language, several and authentic linguistic “obviousnesses” have [...]
Prison: Geography of Despotism
By Hala Muhammad Prison: A Geography of Despotism without a Place in the Nation A picture of a wood stove warms hearts. The gas stove in the picture has an odor. The prisoner [...]
On Arab Spring: A Father to the Point of Tears
by Faraj Beirqadar. I’m not sure whether I’ve been a success or a failure at being a father. In [...]
