News
Eurovision, Samira Said, and Morocco’s Unreceived Love Letter
Revisiting Morocco’s choice to perform at Eurovision in 1980, the first and last Arab country to do so, reveals a complex web of forces at play in our history, and a legacy that stands in evidence of a confused national identity, much less healed from colonial violation than it purports to be
HinDidi: When Bollywood Invited Algeria to Dance
In the aftermath of independence, Bollywood offered Algeria something revolution could not: the freedom to dream, to love, and to imagine a life beyond struggle. Decades later, one Indian film, Janitou, remains a tender relic of a future that never quite arrived
Notes on Lebanese Frenchies and the In Vitro Diaspora
Francophilia has long been a part of Lebanon’s complex sociopolitical fabric. The Frenchies of the country detach themselves from their environment and enjoy a bourgeois French-centric mode of existence. In the wake of ongoing national crises, members of the francophone middle class are becoming increasingly critical of their upbringing and aim to re-appropriate a certain sense of Lebaneseness
Ugliness Looks Back
From a 1960s Iranian leper colony to Kim Kardashian's surgeon, tracing how "ugly" became a diagnosis to be cured rather than a way of being seen
At SeeDjerba, the Tunisian Island Becomes the Gallery
At its 2026 edition, See Djerba turned a Tunisian island's fortresses, shrines and craft villages into a gallery that asks you to look at the place as closely as the art
Amine Houari and The Making of a City
Photographer Amine Houari has spent three years documenting the brutal urban transformation of Tangier, a city deconstructed and reinvented almost to the point of disappearance
Tawsen is Just a Chill Guy
After seven years, two labels, and one imposed silence, Moroccan artist Tawsen releases his debut comeback album Chokran, not with a grudge, but with gratitude