
On the Hungarian Border, No Refugee Escapes Violence
An Algerian woman had first traveled to Turkey, walked across Bulgaria and finally reached Serbia. She hoped to reach France but, along the way, Bulgarian police struck her with batons while they briefly detained her. “If I ever make it to France, I’ll need psychological treatment,” she said.

Ramadan TV Series Lays Bare Turkey’s Colonial Legacy
A new high-profile soap opera that has begun airing in Ramadan and is unsubtly titled “Safar Barlik” (the Arabic transliteration of the Turkish word) is set to bring this rivalry further into the realm of public consciousness and pop culture, and lay bare Turkey’s colonial legacy in the region and its cruelty toward its subjects.

The True Origins of Hummus
A New Lines scoop (pun intended) has placed the magazine squarely in the middle of an historic tug-of-war over the origins of hummus.

How America Fell Out of Love With War — with Samuel Moyn and Faisal Al Yafai
“American presidents, to gain power, have to run against war,” Samuel Moyn tells New Lines magazine’s Faisal Al Yafai. Between Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the rise of the isolationist “America First” Republicans, public support for military intervention abroad might be on the brink of collapse. But is America ready to end its love affair with the use of force?

Medieval Arabic Culinary Literature Offers Lessons for the Present
Excess was in vogue at the zenith of the Abbasid Empire. The wedding of its seventh caliph, al-Mamun, cost 50 million dirhams, according to the historian al-Tabari. It required 140 mules to make three trips a day for an entire year to transport wood for the stove. It then took two days and nights to burn through all the wood as the food cooked above it.