… any attempt to force cultures and peoples into separate and distinct breeds or essences exposes not only the misrepresentations and falsifications that ensue, but also the way in which understanding is complicit with the power to produce such things as the “Orient” or the “West”.’
- Edward W. Said (Orientalism, p. 348, 1995 Penguin edition)
The following article appeared in...
Not to be Ignored
Below is a transcript of an interview conducted at the end of 2010, when there was no thought of conflict in Syria, and the issues of the day for educated young women related to their ‘liberation’. The questions chosen were a response to the times since Ms Ayaan Hirsi Ali had recently visited Australia, where she...
On a crisp winter’s morning in December 2008, a group of university students from Melbourne began their tour of Syria with a visit to the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Damascus, where over 250 Australian soldiers from both world wars have been buried. Kurt, an Australian Army officer, spoke to the students. A veteran of the war in Iraq, Kurt...
I have no power
By Nizar Qabbani
translated by Norma Medawar
I have no power to change you
Or explain your ways…
Don’t believe a man can change a woman
and the claims of men fancying that
woman comes from one of their ribs are false…
Woman never emerges from a man’s rib….
It’s he who emerges from her pelvis
like a fish rising from a basin of water
he...
