The Markaz Review

Like many Kurds living in exile, I feel Kurdistan fading into memory. Soon, I will forget the feeling of being surrounded by dozens of people claiming to be relatives, speaking to me as if I had lived in Slemani my whole life. Soon, I will forget the mountains closing in around the valley at dawn — so close I could feel my own smallness — eating bowls of salted pomegranate seeds in the garden, the humidity making the fireflies stick to our skin as though we were flypaper.

محمود العبيدي، "مورفيوس وزهرة الخشخاش الحمراء 1". رواية مصنع السحاب من إصدارات التنوير، 2026. ركبت هاناكو ذات الستة عشر عامًا في المقعد الخلفي للسيارة التابعة لدار الأيتام في السابعة صباحًا، وبدأت رحلتها برفقة السائق إلى الدير التابع للكنيسة في أحضان الجبل. خُيّل لها أن الطريق لا نهاية لها وهما يمرَّان على بيوت متناثرة، ثم غابات، ثم مزارع وبعدها بيوت من جديد.

On September 27, 2024, Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah. The strike that killed him came on the heels of several other coups, the most diabolical of which were the pager attacks that maimed thousands of the party’s civilian and military cadres, and scores of bystanders. I was stuck in Dubai at the time, awaiting a seat on a flight back to Beirut.

Over the course of my life, I’ve seen art that has upset, revolted, and disturbed me, but the closest I have ever come to getting into a fight over artwork was at this year’s Venice Biennale. For those who are unfamiliar with it, the Biennale dates back to 1895 and is the world’s oldest — and arguably most high-profile — art event in the world, running every other year, alternating with an architectural Biennale.

On the morning of May 11, Tarık Tüten opened the gate of the Hafız Ahmed Ağa Library on Orpheus Street in the medieval walled city of Rhodes, an Aegean island, to a group of convened scholars. It was the first international academic workshop ever held at the library, built around the two-volume work Tüten edited and published in 2025:  Conversation in the Library — Συζητώντας στη Βιβλιοθήκη — Kütüphanede Muhabbet.

ميريام بن، "بدون عنوان". ماء ورد من إصدارات خان الجنوب، 2026. تقع مدينة المرسى الخلابة خارج اللغة. خارج المخيلة. خارج الذاكرة. خارج الحواس المتعارف عليها. أنا وهو هناك، على الكورنيش، في مواجهة البحر. نتناول البوظة التي تسيح على أيدينا. أفكر في بطلات روايتي راكضات، ضاحكات فألمح بابًا أثيريًّا يُفتح في قلب السماء. أشير إليه. يهز رأسه ويبتسم لأنه أيضًا يراه. في أثناء وقوفي على الكورنيش أجعل المدينة تأخذني. أسمع البيوض اللزجة الأرزية الحجم التي تغطي الصخور المخضرة بالأعشاب البحرية وهي تفقس.

It is early January 2026 and my first visit to Lebanon in a little over three years. From my window seat on the plane, I lose myself in the forest of high rises kissing the shore, reaching as high as they can for the sun. The sea shimmers with a jubilance I’m tempted to believe. I like my country from up here. Postcard-ready. Making promises it knows it can’t keep.

شيفا أحمدي، "المنبوذ". 1 أدخلوني على أبي لأودعَهُ الوداعَ الأخيرَ، خلعتُ الأُكرةَ في يدي وأنا أفتحُ البابَ. كان نائمًا على السريرِ – أكرهُ هذا السريرَ لأنه يتركُ أمي عليهِ وحدها – كان مبتسمًا – آه، هذه العضلاتُ المنبسطةُ في آخرِ مشهدٍ لها – قميصُهُ كان باهتًا، قدمُهُ مسترخيةٌ والبنطلونُ واسعٌ، الشرابُ كان خفيفًا، وحذاؤُهُ بجانبِ السريرِ ناحيةَ يمينِ الداخلِ غالبًا خلعتْ أمي حذاءه لا أحدَ يموتُ بحذاءٍ في قدمِهِ.

You’re looking at an image from the May 29 AUB post-graduation party that went viral on Instagram. This was not the official graduation party. In the summer of 1980, I visited Beirut for a month. It was June; I had just finished my freshman year of college, the civil war was five years old, and Lebanon had settled into the absurd rhythms of living and dying in fragments. I was in West Beirut, a section of the capital whose marred face wore the cruelties of Lebanon’s warring children.

Born in Cairo in 1978 and based in London since 2006, Egyptian author Shady Lewis interrogates the social and political afterlives of Coptic identity, migration, state power, and empire across Egypt and the U.K. His fiction traces how historical and political forces — such as religious authority, state bureaucracy, colonial legacies, and migration regimes — upend lives while simultaneously settling into the most intimate textures and affects.