“On one floor of one of the hollowed-out, monochrome, skeleton buildings, someone had fitted new windows. In others, families had claimed a space and a few meters of privacy by pinning a sheet across a blown-out wall. People are returning. More every day.” @qunfuz.bsky.social @saqibooks.bsky.social

New in @hidden-cities.com: @qunfuz.bsky.social on returning to a Syria in ruins and what the rubble reveals — from his new book just published by @saqibooks.bsky.social “Someone had painted on an intact bit of wall the words Eid bil-eid n’amara min jadeed, or Hand in Hand We’ll Build It Anew.”

“There is a second injustice in being defined by the atrocity done to you,” @adamakary.bsky.social writes, introducing his new poem in @hidden-cities.com, “Both Sides of the Looking Glass.” “A strike on Beirut lands in Cairo. It lands anywhere anyone is still listening.”

“There is a second injustice in being defined by the atrocity done to you,” @adamakary.bsky.social writes, introducing his new poem in @hidden-cities.com, “Both Sides of the Looking Glass.” “A strike on Beirut lands in Cairo. It lands anywhere anyone is still listening.”

“The Lebanese are often called resilient, but it is a strange compliment in moments like these. It asks people to endure what should never have been done to them, then praises them for enduring it.” A new poem and accompanying essay, clear-eyed and devastating, by @adamakary.bsky.social:

“The Gulf model is uniquely dependent on the psychological confidence of two highly mobile, risk-averse groups: international energy markets and the global expat talent pool that comprises the backbone of its professional sectors.” My interview w/ Dalia Ghanem on the end of the Gulf’s gilded age.

“say clash, say escalation, say cycle of violence even if one side owned all the sky.” Style Guide, a new poem by @adamakary.bsky.social in @hidden-cities.com www.hidden-cities.com/p/style-guid...

Thrilled to have this poem by Adam Makary in @hidden-cities.com, writing from Cairo. Style Guide the child is never named. the rubble is implied. do not use words like massacre unless sourced by three governments that did not bleed. www.hidden-cities.com/p/style-guid...

“Sisi embarked, with the full support of the senior brass, to militarize state organs and securitize public spaces in a quest to turn Egypt into what Michel Foucault envisioned as the ‘perfect military camp.’” @barracks.substack.com in @hidden-cities.com www.hidden-cities.com/p/how-sisis-...

“During the revolution, millions prophetically chanted: Yasquṭ yasquṭ ḥukm al-ʿaskar! Maṣr dawla miš muʿaskar! (Down with military rule! Egypt is a state, not a [military] camp!)” “Today, Sisi is turning the country literally into one large military camp,” @barracks.substack.com writes.

New in @hidden-cities.com: Hossam el-Hamalawy @barracks.substack.com on Sisi's vision of turning Egypt into one vast military camp, from the fortified new capital outside Cairo to an entire urban landscape shaped by mass surveillance and control. www.hidden-cities.com/p/how-sisis-...

A new poem by Vaheed Ramazani, on the wrenching reality in Gaza under a “ceasefire” that is no such thing for Palestinians, including children. “She went on her own two feet / and she came back to me on a stretcher.”

“Some conflicts arrive pre-packaged with a clear villain and a recognizable frame. They require nothing from us except the willingness to be angry. Others have fragmented perpetrators, unfamiliar histories, no ready-made alliance of condemnation. They ask more. So they receive less.”

"He kept speaking even when it felt like no one was listening—not because it was effective in the way he deserved, but because silence was not something he was willing to offer his people." On the life and radical work of Sudanese scholar Hamid Khalafallah: www.hidden-cities.com/p/hamid-khal...

"The same people who did the killing and financed the killing and justified the killing and turned away from the killing will congratulate themselves on doing the right thing." Omar El Akkad in @hidden-cities.com: www.hidden-cities.com/p/omar-el-ak...

"There will be those who say it was all the work of a few bad actors, people who misled the rest of us well-meaning folks. Anything to avoid contending with the possibility that all this killing wasn’t the result of a system abused, but a system functioning exactly as intended." -Omar El Akkad

“At its core, whether it’s ballistic missiles, exoatmospheric interceptors, or rockets that launch satellites—or astronauts—into space, the technology is the same. But it’s a world away,” Hagai El-Ad writes. www.hidden-cities.com/p/looking-to...

"The first launch I ever got to see was not for peaceful purposes; it was part of a war." Hagai El-Ad in @hidden-cities.com on looking to space for optimism amid so much war, and why the Artemis II mission was an antidote to Trumpism: www.hidden-cities.com/p/looking-to...

“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...

Read and subscribe! www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-casbah...

“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...

“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,” 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...