First Person
Seeing Gaza From Afar
An open-source investigator who has spent years documenting Palestine from afar reflects with Palestinians in Gaza and the diaspora on what images of destruction can reveal, and the lives and memories they leave outside the frame.
The Betrayal of Tigray
In the last war, the people of Tigray rallied around the TPLF. We felt we had no choice but to remain united and fight if we were to save ourselves. This time, things will be different. No one that I know wants to fight in another war.
Remembering the Beirut Explosion
During the 2020 Beirut port blast, everyone in the city with a camera phone and social media account became a reporter of some sort, and the catastrophe opened the door to a new way of experiencing history. What the algorithm reshared became instant archival material that still has an important story to tell.
How a Journey to Kuwait During the Iran War Revealed a Divided Gulf
A Kuwaiti writer's flight home was rerouted by war into a 24-hour journey through Riyadh, the Saudi oil town of Qaisumah and, finally, a drive across the border, retracing the path Kuwaitis took after the 1991 liberation.
Walking Beirut’s Transformed Neighborhoods, From Hamra to Gemmayzeh
A personal walk through five neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital becomes a way of reading the country's collapse. Returning after years away, the writer traces a single line from Ain al-Mreisseh up to Hamra, over to Verdun and Downtown, and across the old green line to Gemmayzeh.
How a Lebanese Dish Survived for a Century in Oklahoma
Mlaheeyeh, a dish from a southern Lebanese town, disappeared where it was born, but survived for a century in the kitchens of families who emigrated to Oklahoma. Its story reveals what war truly destroys when it displaces a people.
The Reality of Returning to Gaza
When a Palestinian journalist returned to Gaza after nearly three years in Cairo, arriving just before Eid, she expected destruction and grief. But she was struck instead by how thoroughly loss has been absorbed into ordinary life.