May 7, 2010 Posted by saaleha

Sweet Alexandria

Tweet In a glass lightly   Um Ali, the mother of halwayaat   Coffee with chew   Outside Qal3a... read more

Apr 29, 2010 Posted by saaleha

Wadi Rischrasch

Tweet   Dovecote Sometimes, Cairo, with all of its rich fullness and grainy texture, displaces the mind’s quiet.As both vanquisher and subduer, al-Qahira fills the spaces between thoughts with its Life and Living.You would imagine that in order to reclaim some of yourself, it would take a great many hours to escape the city’s penetrating... read more

Mar 12, 2010 Posted by saaleha

Tambourines and tannoura

Tweet To play the castanets, to really play the castanets, one must have a personality that is bigger than all of the room. It is the same with the zills. It must be a personality so expansive and enshrouding that it mutes the collective ear-drum drubbing of the mazamir and slows down the systole-diastole of the daff until all you hear is the clap of brass on... read more

Feb 10, 2010 Posted by saaleha

15 – fi misr

Tweet At a masjid fi misri just before maghrib I find jidatee* with her nose in His Signs, while a metronome of bone on bone keeps time with each fatha, each kasra. Those knees creak as much as the scuffed plastic of her chair. She’s not really my grandmother. I hear only one word out of her hundred. “Ana la atakalam arabiyya”, that’s... read more

Dec 13, 2007 Posted by saaleha

Capsule Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Tweet I knew that Journalist is a dirty word in Bob’stan. But surreal, in all the ragged over-use of that word, is the only one that can describe the furtive act of scrawling “Graphic Designer” in the occupation field on the immigration card. There are other things I learnt in Zim. I found that I could call on the power of GraySkull and... read more