We crossed the Galata bridge at a hundred kilometers an hour. Like all his peers, the Turkish taxi driver didn’t know what made him drive at such crazy speed, and harass other vehicles, and insult those cruising slowly as though they were committing a cardinal sin. After the rollercoaster turn following the end of the bridge, we were inevitably held up at the Tarlabaşı intersection;…

A new book by Cambridge University’s Andrew Arsan arguing Lebanon is “a microcosm of the contemporary world” successfully analyzes the country’s ills, offering a helpful framework for Lebanese seeking change, writes Joey Ayoub.

[Editor’s note: This investigation has been nominated for the 2020 Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press. It was originally published in Arabic on 16 May, 2019. The reporting was carried out  with the support of the Network of Iraqi Reporters for Investigative Journalism (NIRIJ), under the supervision of Kami al-Melhem.]   13-year-old Hibatullah stood in a long queue with a group of women…

Survivors of the events in Syria are today trying to regain control of their lives in their countries of asylum. For many, it’s not only a matter of dealing with what’s yet to come—the practical aspects of academic enrollment or finding employment—but also of finding ways to face what has happened; to absorb and understand it, and overcome it. In Germany alone there are over…

[Editor’s note: All events, dates, and places mentioned in this text are real; the names used for people, however, are pseudonyms.]   Near the border strip separating the Syrian village of al-Rafid from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, refugees displaced from the towns and villages of southern Syria’s Daraa Province set up hundreds of tents in the summer of 2018. By the thousands, they were fleeing…

To walk the streets of south Lebanon is to smell the Palestinian orchards nearby, and to sense the weight of the long years of occupation and war, and on top of them the thousands of stories told by the lives of Syrians who have taken refuge on the same land. The population of south Lebanon predominantly hails from the Shia Muslim community, with smaller numbers…

Since the outbreak of the Syrian uprising and the ensuing militarization and bombardment by the Bashar al-Assad regime, large numbers of Syrians have been forced to flee across their country’s borders into neighboring territories. Turkey in particular has been a preferred destination, due to its relative stability and position as a stepping stone to Europe via the Aegean Sea from its western shoreline, especially the…

[Editor’s note: The below is an edited version of a talk given by the author at Berlin’s Thinking Together conference on 25 March 2018 (video available here). An Arabic version of the text was published by Al-Jumhuriya on 29 March 2018.] The day I left Syria in the fall of 2013, I published a short essay titled, ‘On Bidding Syria Farwell… Temporarily.’ I could not…

In early 2016, during a ceremony by the National Commission for the Syrian Science Olympiad at the Opera House in Damascus, Mrs. Asma al-Assad gave an enthusiastic speech about the progress of the educational initiative she has sponsored since 2006, concluding that this progress inspires optimism and shines a light into the prevalent darkness. Thanks to her vaunting phrase “Look where we were, and how…

Laughter of young children, the sounds of their feet racing across the building stairs, finally arrived and concluded with a few words addressed at me: “Give us your bags, auntie.” I felt at ease; these words relieved me some of my travel fatigue and my trepidation of a place I am entirely unfamiliar with. Never in my life had I traveled farther than Aleppo, or…