To a beauty in a black veil…An allusion to a famous line of Arabic poetry that begins, “Say to the beauty in the black veil,” attributed to the Umayyad poet Miskeen al-Darimi (d. 708 A.D.).   My mother tells a lot of stories about my weaning days, stories that still make us laugh till we weep. People say she would put various substances on her…

Since the outbreak of the Syrian uprising and the ensuing militarization and bombardment by the Bashar al-Assad regime, large numbers of Syrians have been forced to flee across their country’s borders into neighboring territories. Turkey in particular has been a preferred destination, due to its relative stability and position as a stepping stone to Europe via the Aegean Sea from its western shoreline, especially the…

[Editor’s note: This article was produced as part of Al-Jumhuriya’s Fellowship for Young Writers. It was originally published in Arabic on 19 December, 2018]   When I found myself that day on a bus with my colleagues, en route to a pro-regime parade, I felt I’d been broken in half. One half belonged in the past, when I lived besieged in Homs’ al-Wa’r neighborhood before…

Five years on from the kidnapping of the ‘Douma 4’ activists, Joey Ayoub pays homage to another Damascus suburb symbolic of Syria’s peaceful, democratic revolution.

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 9 December, 2018] Five years. Sixty months. 260 weeks. 1,826 days. Sammour, I must have thought a thousand times about what I would do if I found myself face to face with the monsters who abducted you. I’d abduct their souls, in a nutshell; those dead souls that subsist by ruining life and restlessly spreading…

[Editor’s note: This article was first published by Amnesty International. It is also available in Arabic.] I listen to your favorite song: “Oh dawn, when you rise,” in the voice of Nahawand, and I think of you. Wake all people / my beloved before all! I cannot stop myself from wondering as those who believe in fate do: Why did all this happen to us? Could…

[Editor’s note: This article is part of Al-Jumhuriya’s “Gender, Sexuality, and Power” series. It was also published in Arabic on 6 December, 2018.] In the summer of 2017, as (unfounded) rumors began to spread on social media of Syrians “going to protest against our honorable army,” a wave of hyper-masculine ultra-nationalism mixed with the usual xenophobia saw random Syrian men targeted by Lebanese men. Videos…

[Editor’s note: This article is part of Al-Jumhuriya’s “Gender, Sexuality, and Power” series. It was also published in Arabic on 29 November, 2018.]   Whether we take language to be an invisible, faithful scribe of reality, and of the collective symbolic and psychological system of any given meeting of humans, or whether it manufactures its own social reality subsequently; that’s to say, whether we suppose…

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 26 November, 2018] On this day, twenty-seven years ago, you were released from prison, after four years, one month, and eleven days of a shorter absence. Today, you also complete four years, eleven months, and seventeen days of a longer absence, during which time I have known nothing about you, nor have the many people…

In Aleppo in early 2012, at a discussion between opposition activists, the banners used in demonstrations in a small town called Kafranbel were the topic of conversation. Most of those present spoke of the “originality” of these banners, and their extraordinarily acerbic sarcasm and ridicule. One person joked their authors must be traffic police, referring to the profession long associated with the people of the…