Check out the new site!

It was time to move this collection of thoughts from a blog format to more of a webpage, where content could be organized and sifted through with a bit more formality. 

As the posts went through their transformation, content was often edited to fit with the latest theme, so all original posts will remain as they were on this site. 

Thanks for coming along for the ride, and please join me at the new site:

www.arabicbooksculture.wordpress.com

Cheat-sheet: All of the possible book options for Pal Lit quiz (and where to find them)

First of all, if you haven't taken the Which Palestinian Novel Should I Read? quiz, take it here!

If you want to take a gander at all of the possible outcomes, scan below and click the links to the publishers to order your very own bit of Palestinian literature. 

Which Book? Quiz fun with Palestinian Lit.

Want to cheat and take a look at all of the options? Click here.

Cairo Bag elicits travel tips from Damascus (in Istanbul)

It was not the best of times. Thunderstorms over Istanbul and raging winds diverted a budget flight from Europe, so it landed hours late at its final destination, following some in-flight lightening (which freaked out the Brazilian dance band en route to a festival), and a good long stretch parked on an Ankara runway. 

Most passengers, who were simply connecting in Turkey for flights elsewhere, were told on arrival in the terminal that their flights had left without them. 

Don't worry, the airline assured, you will be put up in a hotel for the night and shuttled back to the airport tomorrow for the same flight the next day. It was as easy as going to pay for your entry visa and checkin in with the airline hotel. 

Visa? (well, fisa) I heard the woman behind me whisper to her husband. 

The Curious Life of a Bag Called Cairo - 1

It was, to start, just a really pretty canvas bag that was useful to have --stuffed in the bottom of some other bag--for groceries, an overflow of books, market finds and the like. 

As it travelled with me through Europe and the Middle East, however, the little bag called Cairo took on a bit of a life of its own, and seemed to tell a story bigger than its self. 

More than just a reusable canvas sack, the little Cairo bag wanders the world eliciting reactions and creating stories that tell a lot about how places and people relate to Cairo. More than Cairo though, the bag seems to come to symbolize something that seems lost; lost connections, lost friendships, or a lost golden period where Cairo seemed the centre of the world, umm ad-dunya...home to Umm Kulthum, Arab Nationalism, and maybe most importantly, the locus of optimism exported to a whole region. 

Tiles of the 20s make Palestinian comeback

 Jalal Aslan Tiles is the only place in Palestine that makes --by hand-- these beauties:

Popular for the fancy classes from the turn of the century right up into the 40s and 50s, the cement tiles had a good long time to develop a whole Palestine-wide fashion landscape, with different styles becoming popular in different cities, with everything from colour preference to motif becoming characteristic of a region, a family, or a home. This one, with its yellow, red, and green, round formations and flower edges, is typical of the Nablus area.

For the record: Cairo to Jerusalem by bus...

Still the cheapest way to travel (done right its about $80/£55 for a return trip, plus $40/£25 for the visa) Cairo by bus has gotten a little more complicated these days. 

Since the most problematic part of the journey was not knowing how things worked before hand, and thus not being able to plan very well, here is what I learned, for posterity (and for other hearty 
travellers).