Features Editor Sana Hussain’s essay explores sexual power plays in Pakistani Urdu writer Ismat Chughtai’s short stories.
“Perhaps the most annoying pro-choice synonym I have discovered for being fat is “bubbly”. As if the extra poundage somehow magically morphs into excess humor and verbosity,” writes Features Editor Maria Amir in the Winter 2014 issue.
“Women are denied agency, defined only in relation to the active gaze of the male viewer, or male characters with whom the viewer is encouraged to relate,” writes Senior Film Critic Tom Nixon in the Winter 2014 issue.
In this excerpt from Elias Khoury’s previously untranslated novella, ‘The Smell of Soap’, the narrator goes to the cinema with a girl he just met. As they watch a documentary on the musician Jamil Al Haddad, the narrator fantasizes about the hours that will follow the film and also remembers his years as a member of an armed militia in Beirut.
Darkness damages desire / Living is less than a drop / Don’t waste your whole body / Now ~ By Bassam Hajjar
Najwa Barakat’s ‘The Bus’ is the story of a group of strangers who share a long bus ride, gradually revealing their stories and their secrets. During a police inspection, the grisly discovery of a severed head on the bus prompts mutual recriminations and soul-searching. The excerpt that follows is taken from Chapter 27.
Hyam Yared’s ‘The Curse’ (La Malédiction), is the story of Hala, a young Lebanese woman born in 1970s Beirut who is stifled by her Catholic-school upbringing, coming of age while the country is under threat of Syrian invasion. This excerpt comes from pages 121-124 of the novel.
The fan is rotating now in my head Allen / And my mouth that looks like a newsstand / Is adorned with silence
Where the author, Articles Editor Ghausia Rashid Salam, negotiates sexual power plays in the arts.