First Person
The Long Road Home to Kuwait
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.
Reading Beirut's Walls
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.
The Afterlife of War’s Images
A veteran war correspondent reflects on the afterlife of photographs — and how they become fodder for conferences and fellowships while their subjects recede into oblivion.
I Grew Up in Iran and the Gulf. This War Risks Breaking the Bonds Between the Two
An Iranian academic who has spent years studying and living across the region reflects on what the recent war risks destroying — not just infrastructure, but the centuries-old transnational ties that have held its people together through every previous rupture.
Far From the Land of Good News
Nada Bakri, whose late husband restored a family home in Marjayoun, reflects on southern Lebanon from afar, tracing the political logic that delivered the region into its current devastation while mapping what it means to love a place you can no longer visit.