books - The Chronikler

The unlikely demonisation of Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie made a very unlikely target for the fury of conservative Muslims, which is why the opportunistic fatwa issued by a Khomeini in serious decline took the novelist and the world by surprise.

Dreaming of a vanished Syria

“A lot of Syrians are indulging in a nostalgia that requires a lot of denial,” says Syrian-American author Alia Malek. “This is why I’m a student of history, not to live in a fantasy but to learn why and how we are where we are today.”

When you’re a collector… don’t give too much away

Collecting may seem like a harmless hobby but being a collector allows others to gather a whole lot more about you than you let on or probably even know.

FICTION: Escaping terror firma, Part 2 – Breaking out of the fish bowl

We live in a fish bowl. It would be more likely for a pink elephant to fall out of the sky than for me to get Faris alone somewhere. But the pink elephant somehow managed to land right next to me.

A Riche chapter of Egyptian history shuts its doors

For a century, Café Riche was a microcosm of Cairo’s bewildering contradictions, and a “refuge from the pain of loneliness” for intellectuals.

The Viking Allah and the submerged history of Islam in Europe

A mysterious ring in a dead Viking woman’s tomb shows how Northern Europeans came into contact with Muslims and Islam before even becoming Christian.

The Syrian Kurd blinded because he’d seen too much

From the man literally blinded by horrors to the girl whose dream is to read books, we meet the Syrian Kurds fleeing the ISIS onslaught on Kobani.

Fiction: Football

I ask if he is making friends… She tells me he has black skin, lifting her arm to show me in case I don’t comprehend the significance.

The box

Andrew knew the first time he opened the box that it would lead to no good. But he did it anyway. He couldn’t help it.

Reimagining Palestine by inserting the human dimension

The outside world primarily see Palestinians as two-dimensional heroes or villains. A new generation of artists and writers is adding a vital third dimension, the human.