“At The Trial Of God, We Will Ask: Why Did You Allow All This? / And The Answer Will Be An Echo: Why

My Women are Tabla & Qanoun by Nur Turkmani

i don't pay attention to the world ending. it has ended for me many times and began again in the morning.

― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt

Maria Popova, We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life Alive

Letter to Nefertiti // by Sana Tannoury Karam

Beirut’s stony Melkite Greek Catholic cathedral of Saint Elias.

It was initially built towards the end of the 18th century and reconstructed in 1849.

Style: Byzantine, baroque, Islamic

The only remaining Mameluke building in Beirut, Zawiyat Ibn Arraq.

Once a complete private madrasa, only the zawiya (prayer corner) remains of it.

Today, someone seemed to have made it their own prayer corner and unrolled a prayer rug inside.

Date: 1517- used till Ottoman times

Beautiful to see what we treat as “monuments” being reused as such. Do we glorify what is historical only because we know it’s historical? Do we love these stones only because we know they’re hundreds of years old? What’s so intrinsically beautiful about what’s historical?

Can we even call them monuments? Is it history? Is it present?

« Exploring Kabul, I found, required the same principles that help in the reading of mystical Persian poetry, in the relationship between the zahir, or the overt, and the batin, the hidden or implied. This works on the tacit understanding that what is being said is an allegory for what is meant or intended. To talk of the moon, for instance, is to talk of the beloved; to talk of clouds across the moon is to talk of the pain of separated lovers; to talk of walls is to speak of exile. Such wandering leads through circuitous routes to wide vistas of understanding. Like walking through a small gate into a large garden. It is also a useful reminder that in this city, what is seen is often simply one aspect of the truth. What lies behind – the shadow city – is where layers are revealed. »

Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul, Taran N. Khan

I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.

Christine Lai, Landscapes

« To quote the tomb of leftist Jewish Egyptian activist Shehata Haroun, the father of Magda Haroun, the current president of the few remnants of the Jewish community who remain in Cairo: ‘Every human being has multiple identities, I am a human being, I am Egyptian when Egyptians are oppressed, I am Black when Blacks are oppressed, I am Jewish when Jews are oppressed, and I am Palestinian when Palestinians are oppressed.’ »

— Massoud Hayoun, When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History

— Sarah Bakewell, from “Sarah Bakewell on Posthumanism, Transhumanism, and What it Actually Means to be ‘Human’” (via LitHub)