August 16, 2025
Beyond Ruins: Exploring Architectural Nostalgia in Syrian Diasporic Art and the Resilience of Utopian Imaginings
by Sami Ismat
But the immense neglect and physical destruction of these places along the societal fabric puts doubt in whether the new free Syria, with its new and varied diasporic community, can reclaim a healthy and thriving society with a collectivist living philosophy. It is a challenge that requires utopian imagings as well as forms of expression and commemoration of the sacrifices and displacement faced by the people.
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August 7, 2025
“the tart air from Damascus”—New Syrian Poetry
by M. Hakim
In this debut poetry publication by Syrian-American mathematician, musician, and writer M. Hakim, I am reminded of the ways grief acts on language in the most intimate details. In our exchange for editing the poem, Hakim described the ways punctuation is governed not by traditional grammar, but by associations of grief: sentences pairing with each other like ghosts to former inhabitations, spectral residues of once-restricted sites like Qasioun, the gifting of an oud, and the speculative...
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April 16, 2025
Three Poems by Mohja Kahf
by Mohja Kahf
In these three poems by academic and poet Mohja Kahf, Syria is written not only as the site of violent abduction and imprisonment but also as a diverse country suffering from Arab and Sunni supremacy. —Layla Faraj, editorial assistant If you know anything, tell Maimounaif you met someone who’s been in prisonand may have seen them, tell MaimounaYou can’t mourn; to mourn is to desert them.They might still be alive, they are. —Mohja Kahf, Tell Maimouna Tell...
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