Category Archives: Blog

Sleepless Nights (Layali Bala Noom)
Screening and discussion with filmmaker Eliane Raheb
Harvard University (Belfer Case Study Room)
April 9th, 2014
5:30-8:30 pm

Through the stories of Assaad Shaftari, a former high ranking intelligence officer in a Christian right wing militia, responsible for many casualties in the protracted civil war in Lebanon and Maryam Saiidi, the mother of Maher, a missing young communist fighter who disappeared in 1982, Sleepless Nights (2012) digs into the war wounds and asks if redemption and forgiveness are possible.

For more information, please click here.

Tonight in my tai chi class in Beirut, it was almost impossible to hear my teacher’s instructions over the roar of the army choppers circling the neighborhood. It was a challenge for us all to focus, since the helicopters sounded like they were about to crash into the building…

Today in Beirut, my students and I studied the contents of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. When I was working at the Great Pyramids in Giza, I was given permission to photograph the entire collection of King Tutankhamun in the Egyptian Museum. While many have seen photographs of his iconic funerary mask from the front, the back side of his gold mask is rarely shown. Viewing the mask from the front, you would never know that there were hieroglyphs decorating the other side…

At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold – everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes, wonderful things.’ Then widening the hole a little further, so that we both could see, we inserted an electric torch…

― Howard Carter, Tomb of Tutankhamen

I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within…

— Rumi

Though the unofficial number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon has long surpassed one million, the official number of Syrians registered as refugees exceeded one million this week.

My favorite Czech actress, Anna Geislerová, stars in a new film being shown in New York next week for “Panorama Europe: A Festival of New European Films.”

Honeymoon (Líbánky)
Friday, April 11, 7PM
Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Ave., Astoria
*New York premiere* with Director Jan Hrebejk in person
Call (718) 777-6800 to reserve tickets

Tereza and Radim’s sun-dappled country wedding takes a dark turn when an uninvited stranger shows up bearing an ominous gift: a funeral urn full of ashes. From there, the revelations begin to pour forth in this edgy, elegantly constructed drama of long-buried secrets and lies. Czech maestro Jan Hrebejk assembles a powerhouse ensemble cast headed by his frequent leading lady, Ana Geislerova, “one of the best actresses of her generation.” (The Hollywood Reporter)

Here is a grave mistake that could have easily been avoided…

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?
What man’s law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man’s prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man’s iron chains?

— Khalil Gibran

This was one of my favorite ways to travel in Sudan–every time I left the desert to get groceries in the city…

Since I’m such a big fan of cous cous, I wish I could attend this talk today at Columbia…

Roll, Couscous, Roll!
Wednesday, April 2
Time: 1pm to 3pm
Knox Hall Room 403 (606 West 122nd Street)

The transformation of agriculture under French colonial rule in Algeria was the basis for the making of a colonial culture there. But should we agree with French colonists that couscous was an essential component of North African culture? A historian Ramzi Rouighi, Associate Professor of History at the University of Southern California, explains.

As space is limited, people will be accommodated on a first-come-first-served basis. This event is part of the Ifriqiyya Public Lectures and is sponsored by the Institute of African Studies and the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS).

Today in Beirut, my students and I discussed the influence of Aristotle on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

There was a certain Simonides who exhorted people to put aside the knowledge of divine things and to apply their talents to human occupations. He said that “he who is a man should know human things, and he who is mortal, things that are mortal.” Against Simonides, Aristotle says that “man should draw himself towards what is immortal and divine as much as he can.” And so he says in the De animalibus that, although what we know of the higher substances is very little, yet that little is loved and desired more than all the knowledge that we have about less noble substances. He also says in the De caelo et mundo that when questions about the heavenly bodies can be given even a modest and merely plausible solution, he who hears this experiences intense joy. From all these considerations it is clear that even the most imperfect knowledge about the most noble realities brings the greatest perfection to the soul. Therefore, although the human reason cannot grasp fully the truths that are above it, yet, if it somehow holds these truths at least by faith, it acquires great perfection for itself…

— St. Thomas Aquinas

Last night, my Iranian friend kept referencing Persian verses from the poetry of Hafiz in a conversation we were having on madness, and this mad world…

You don’t have to act crazy anymore —
We all know you were good at that.

Now retire, my dear,
From all that hard work you do
Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart.

Look in a clear mountain mirror
See the Beautiful Ancient Warrior
And the Divine elements
You always carry inside…

— Hafiz