Skip to main content

Theme: Arabic literature in exile

Editorial

Words Widen our World

When the Arab Spring started in Tunisia in 2011 and rapidly spread to the rest of the Arab world many of us saw this as...

TEXT: Jesper Bengtsson September 11 2018
Fiction

Martyrdom

"He wished he could have said something. His throat is so dry it feels he has been choked to death, but the eyes are still alive. He shook."

TEXT: Basima Al-Takrouri September 11 2018
Fiction

In the ice

"Between your experiences of living both in your homeland and your host country, you experience psychological and existential difficulties, so when do you have the peace of mind to conform?"

Text: Afrah Nasser September 11 2018
Fiction

Kurds have only their weddings

"Everyone joins in the fun until the singer switches to a loud lament about the massacre in Halabja—no one can understand the sudden change—and soon the bride is in tears and the groom too and grief...

TEXT: Lukman Derky: Lukman Derky September 11 2018
Fiction

The Walls of Stockholm

"My name is carved into all the trees / and scribbled on all the buses / despite how I cannot write a single word… "

Text: Wafai laila September 11 2018
Fiction

In Saudi Arabia, the Prince has no Clothes

"His capricious and absolutist decisions will only lead to disaster. But the only choice we have is to applaud him, emigrate, or be jailed—and in the worst case, have our throats slashed."

TEXT: Hanaa Alkhamri September 11 2018
Poetry

Dancing like girls

"Don’t dance like a girl / I will dance / Don’t move like a girl / I will move"

TEXT: Khaled Alesmael September 11 2018
Fiction

I am a man and my name is Wissam

"When signs of femininity started showing on my body I was keen to hide them. Not even my own family accepted me."

TEXT: Nasreen (Wissam) Ben Khemisa September 11 2018
Fiction

The House in Manbij

"I come from Manbij a city that just like all other Syrian cities has suffered bombings, death, liberation, and where kings of all forms and colours have passed through."

TEXT: Aboud Saeed September 11 2018
Fiction

I write to the one I love

"I challenge myself: write, your heart is yours regardless of your mother tongue or the tyrant’s language. Rapidly I transform into a brave lover—exactly, I will write to my dearest."

TEXT: Dlovan Kassab September 11 2018

Search