Our Logo as Stickers: our visuals are designed by Marwa Gadallah (Photo Credit: N.A. Mansour)
Hazine fundraised for the very first time in the summer of 2020 and since then, with your support, we’ve been able to pay our web hosting fees, launch a new visual identity, and translate some of our materials into Arabic, including an essay on Arabic typography and our digital visual resources guide. Most importantly, we have been able to pay our writers and editors: this has resulted in all sorts of new content, to resource guides for learning non-Arabic Sudanese languages, an inclusive pedagogy series, interviews and more. We are so grateful for the funds we received during last year’s campaign and what that has allowed us to achieve.
We value being able to pay our writers and editors, as well as expanding into Arabic; it is very rarely done in academia and publications like Contingent have paved the way in terms of paying their writers and team. We are grateful to them and hope to follow in their lead. Additionally, we are focused on providing a space and support for writers who might not be able to publish such work elsewhere: encouraging creative and intellectual freedom requires time and energy from our team and our writers. In order to offer more competitive fees to our writers –many of whom are freelance writers or graduate students from outside the US and Europe– and to fairly compensate our editors for their intellectual labor, we are launching our 2021 fundraising campaign, with an aim of raising 10,000 USD. In addition, the funds we raise will allow us to bring on guest editors for special series, further diversifying our content.
This year, in order to thank our donors, we’re able to send a small gift according to a tiered system. Our gifts are based on our visual identity, which is rooted in Islamic art and spearheaded by our arts editor, Marwa Gadallah. The best way to support our work is to set up a monthly donation to help us plan for the year.
You can also make a one-time donation equivalent to a year at one of the following levels ($5, $10, or $20) and receive the related thank you gifts:
Set up a recurring donation of at least $5 a month and you’ll receive a bookmark, a postcard and a sticker.
Set up a recurring donation of at least $10 a month and you’ll receive a bookmark, a postcard, a sticker and a magnet.
Set up a recurring donation of at least $20 a month and you’ll receive a bookmark, a postcard, a sticker, a magnet and a tote.
Note to our current monthly donors: we will honor your continuing contributions and send you rewards that match the tiers. Please contact us at hazineblog{@}gmail.com if you haven’t heard from us already to send us an up-to-date postal address.
All of our donors will receive some small token of our thanks.
Use the form below to donate; please include your mailing address in the ‘Notes’ section. We are grateful for your continued support.
Lamma Issue 1 (2020) featuring “Lost” by Tewa Barnosa
Fixing academic publishing might very well not be possible or desirable: Producing an equitable system that makes knowledge open to all and eases the editorial process for all those involved in producing an actual work of history or art is well beyond the desires of the university press or the academic corporation (Routledge, anyone?). At Hazine, we like featuring those who think outside of the box and even the institution. We also like featuring projects that are just beginning their journey, so that, if you’re looking for new ways of thinking about the world around us, or thinking of embarking on a project yourself, you have others to turn to.
Even if fixing academic publishing might not be possible, the people developing the practices and perspectives we need are the ones who lay the path towards more equitable systems of knowledge production. Lamma, we at Hazine hope, will be amongst them. Formally Lamma: The Journal of Libyan Studies (Punctum Books), its first issue was released in 2020 and was a bright spot in the ‘academic’ publishing landscape: It is open-access, it featured content in Amazigh, Arabic and English, and it focused on Libya. It also dismissed the assumption that only academics should be involved in ‘academic’ spaces: In Lamma, artists and writers think together. In this interview, Lamma’s editors tell us how they conceive of their project, from how they practice compassionate editing to how Libya has been marginalized in academia and how they will counter its marginalization and dream of a Libya beyond the nation-state.
How did Lamma come about? How was the idea for Lamma conceived?
When we were graduate students, we all regularly encountered people researching a modern Libyan topic, but who were isolated and not in dialogue with other scholars of Libya. There was a lack of community, and the few existing venues did not seem invested in curating and publishing work on modern Libya. They also had a disconnect with Libyan scholars. In our experience, it was also difficult to find research on Libyan topics and connect with mentors, and even more difficult for students in Libya to do so. Initial ideas of how to address these issues included compiling an edited volume on a contemporary topic, or forming an association of scholars and students. But without any kind of regular funding, the latter seemed hard to implement, and on its own would not have created a platform for accessible research, which was the main goal. Once we became aware of major open-access initiatives like punctum books, an independent collective devoted to non-conventional scholarly work who ultimately became our publisher, and others, it was easy to decide that an open-access publication—especially one that blended academic work with essays, commentaries, reviews, and art—was the way to go.
When we were graduate students, we all regularly encountered people researching a modern Libyan topic, but who were isolated and not in dialogue with other scholars of Libya. There was a lack of community, and the few existing venues did not seem invested in curating and publishing work on modern Libya. They also had a disconnect with Libyan scholars. In our experience, it was also difficult to find research on Libyan topics and connect with mentors, and even more difficult for students in Libya to do so. Initial ideas of how to address these issues included compiling an edited volume on a contemporary topic, or forming an association of scholars and students. But without any kind of regular funding, the latter seemed hard to implement, and on its own would not have created a platform for accessible research, which was the main goal. Once we became aware of major open-access initiatives like punctum books, an independent collective devoted to non-conventional scholarly work who ultimately became our publisher, and others, it was easy to decide that an open-access publication—especially one that blended academic work with essays, commentaries, reviews, and art—was the way to go.
Who are your team members and how does your team work collaboratively?
The work of Lamma is truly collective and many different voices and perspectives have shaped its development. The editorial collective is composed of Adam Benkato, Leila Tayeb, and Amina Zarrugh, all of whom are Libyan American scholars. The editorial collective is responsible for the day-to-day management of the journal, including seeking out contributions, distributing submissions for peer-review, corresponding with authors, and finalizing and editing each issue of the journal. An active and engaged editorial board also contributes to reviews and advises the editorial collective. At every level, our team works collaboratively across multiple geographies to make critical decisions about how to identify innovative studies related to Libya, how to integrate a wide range of work into a single issue, and how to divide labor in ways that are equitable and manageable. Some of the most exciting aspects of our work together has been brainstorming future special issues that we think would engage and intrigue readers and offer alternatives to hegemonic ways of thinking about Libya.
How is Lamma innovative in the peer-reviewed publishing space?
As a peer-reviewed journal, Lamma is committed to publishing innovative scholarship, broadly conceived, that advances the field of Libyan Studies. We are especially committed to supporting and advancing the scholarship of junior scholars and view the peer-review process as an opportunity for mentorship across generations of scholars. Rather than serving as “gatekeepers” to publishing, we actively seek out reviewers who are committed to constructive feedback and to offering insights about submissions that enrich not only contributions to the larger field but offer fulfilling experiences to contributing authors. In this process, we seek to advance a more humane model of the research process and of academia more generally. As part of our interest in broadening the scope of scholarship about Libya and offering our readers a range of perspectives, Lamma is an open-access journal that is available to anyone, regardless of socioeconomic status. We also intentionally seek submissions from scholars in the broader North African region and scholars from Libya, whether they live in the country or are part of the diaspora. Our submissions are accepted not only in English but also in any contemporary language of Libya, including Arabic, Tamazight, and Tebu, among others. Collectively, these commitments represent a critical turn in peer-review publishing towards accessibility and centering a range of voices that, owing to the hegemony of English in scholarship, have been underrepresented in academia.
What have been the triumphs and challenges of launching a new peer-reviewed journal?
There have been many exciting aspects of launching a new peer-reviewed journal. One of the greatest joys has been the process of learning about incredible work that is being done about Libya around the world. This breadth of work ranges widely from studies of linguistics and gendered language to the translations of short stories by Libyan authors whose work will be positioned to reach new audiences. Our collective work at Lamma has also led us to further appreciate the rich and vibrant art culture among Libyans and non-Libyans alike, many of whom are asking critical questions about how we narrate the multiple meanings of Libyan social life. The experience has also been a humbling one as we have faced the challenges that accompany working as a small but committed team that is also balancing demands of our own writing and teaching. Like any new journal, we are seeking to build an identity and become a space for people to learn about and contribute to knowledge about Libya. This process takes time. We warmly welcome the contributions and support of anyone who is also committed to this kind of work.
Tell us about Lamma’s visual identity, specifically the cover for the first issue.
As a journal dedicated to expanding the reach and relevance of Libyan Studies, our journal is shaped visually by the contributions of Libyan artists, photographers, and graphic designers. The cover of the first issue features the artwork of Tewa Barnosa, a Libyan artist now based in Europe, whose work broadly addresses the social construction of history, in particular how certain experiences and narratives are subject to erasure and denial. The piece featured on Lamma’s cover, called “Lost” (فُقد), is exceptionally fitting for the first issue of Lamma because it features a mid-century photograph of an iconic statue in Tripoli, referred to in short as the “Ghazala” by those living in the city, that has been a site of cultural contestation. The statue, designed by Italian artist Angiolo Vannetti in the 1930s, features a woman surrounded by water gently embracing a gazelle. A revered symbol to some, the piece went missing in 2014, shortly after the 2011 revolution. The statue’s disappearance symbolizes contested and competing perspectives on politics and colonization, gender and representation, and religious interpretation. As such, Barnosa’s piece complements the vision of Lamma as an intellectual space for readers to consider the ongoing impacts of history – that which is documented and ignored – for contemporary Libyan society.
If a writer was to submit to Lamma, what is the process like?
Given that we are in the early stages of Lamma’s development, we have had very intentional dialogues with potential authors about their research and how they might contribute to Lamma. We regularly invite scholars whose work we have seen presented at conferences or who have published in other venues, to contribute to our journal. This approach has not only been critical for us to grow the journal but also helps us curate a diverse set of scholarship, including from junior scholars in the academy. When a writer submits a manuscript to Lamma, we distribute the article for peer review, which often includes a member of our editorial board. We view the peer review process as an opportunity for mentorship and we dialogue directly with authors about how to incorporate constructive suggestions into their manuscript revisions. Please consult our website for further details on how to submit—we welcome your contributions!
How do you pay homage to Libya’s cultural diversity in Lamma?
We pay homage to Libya’s cultural diversity in a multitude of ways in Lamma. At present, we accept submissions in any language that is utilized in contemporary Libya. Given the institutionalized erasure of languages during the Italian colonial era as well as by the former regime, we intentionally seek submissions in languages beyond English and Arabic. Our journal’s mission statement first appears in the issue in the Indigenous languages of Tamazight and Tedaga, which were generously translated by Madghis Madi and Hasan Kadano, respectively. In addition, we highlight the work of Libyan artists, including those in the diaspora, on the cover of each issue. By inviting scholarship and artwork among the diaspora, our approach to Libyan Studies emphasizes the importance of thinking about diversity beyond the artificial borders that have come to define Libyan statehood.
What other Libyan cultural and academic projects are you excited about?
We are excited by a number of initiatives and projects, some curated by Libyan artists and researchers, and others by international networks of scholars.
Several grassroots, civil society initiatives in Libya that have a broad focus on the arts and culture are Bayt Ali Gana (Tripoli) and Tanarout (Benghazi). Unfortunately, these are under increasing pressure from oppressive state and non-state actors; for example, the Tanweer initiative (Tripoli) was recently forced to shut down and cease all physical and social media activities. Another initiative, initially based in Libya and now international, is the WaraQ Foundation which has curated a number of critical artistic interventions in Libya, in other countries, and online. The background of some of these initiatives is discussed in an essay by Hadia Gana, the founder of Bayt Ali Gana, in Lamma’s first issue. We are also excited by the Scene Culture and Heritage project based in Tripoli which aims to foster engaged participation and awareness of cultural heritage. Most recently, the architectural collective Tajarrod founded by Sarri Elfaitouri in Benghazi has done some critical and innovative work with public space; Elfaitouri describes his work in an essay upcoming in issue #2.
We would also like to mention ground-breaking literary projects like the fiction anthology شمس على نوافذ مغلقة (Sun on Closed Windows), edited by Khaled Mattawa and Leila Moghrabi in 2017. Publishing the short fiction of a wide range of new and established Libyan writers, it has also sparked discussion and controversy with various authorities who seek to control cultural productions. While it shines a much-needed light on the current promising state of Libyan literature, the public controversy has had difficult and discouraging consequences for some of the participating authors, such as Ahmed Bokhari and Leila Moghrabi herself, who no longer live in Libya.
Finally, we want to situate ourselves with respect to some other initiatives based in the Western academy which we hope will benefit research on Libya: the Center for Maghrib Studies at Arizona State University as well as the newly-launched Tamazgha Studies Journal (formerly CELAAN).
What are your goals for Lamma and for Libyan Studies overall? What sort of research would you like to see on Libya?
The name of the journal, Lamma (لمّة), means “a gathering” in Arabic and this term truly represents the spirit of the journal, which is designed to be an intellectual space for scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners to gather in conversation together. Rather than an academic journal that aspires to become the authority on all Libyan matters, the journal is instead a site where multiple ideas, perspectives, and conceptual approaches share space and are brought into conversation together. We envision Lamma as a place for multiple generations of scholars, artists, and activists to inform and shape one another’s approaches so that knowledge flows in many directions. The field of Libyan studies has long been disproportionately shaped by political scientists and non-academic policy experts whose research and writing has focused on top-down power structures and international relations. While undoubtedly critical issues to understand, the broader field of Libyan Studies must also speak to micro-level dynamics and ask questions about how individuals shape culture, politics, and institutions in Libya as much as the state has shaped individual lives.
We are particularly invested in a micro-level, socio-cultural shift in Libyan studies that foregrounds qualitative methods such as ethnography and in-depth interviews as well as longitudinal work that represents an investment in and commitment to developing knowledge about Libya that is deeply connected to communities and to Libyan people, who must be understood as subjects, rather than objects, in scholarship. We hope that the journal will become a place where this kind of approach to Libyan Studies flourishes.
Adam Benkato is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at UC Berkeley, where he researches and teaches on late antique Iran and Central Asia and modern North Africa. He maintains a blog of old and new research on Libya, The Silphium Gatherer .
Leila Tayeb is a Humanities Research Fellow at NYU Abu Dhabi and an incoming Assistant Professor in Residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. Her research is in performance and politics in Africa and the Middle East. Her writing has appeared in the Arab Studies Journal, the Journal of North African Studies, Lateral, and others.
Amina Zarrugh is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Texas Christian University. Her research focuses on politics and forced disappearance in North Africa and race/ethnicity in the U.S. Her work has appeared in journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, Critical Sociology, Middle East Critique, Teaching Sociology, and Contexts, among others.
The cover image for Rumooz, an Arabic-language podcast focusing on the biographies of historical figures from al-Jazeera Arabic.
When we at Hazine released our first podcast list in 2020, the goal was both to boost high-quality podcasts and also, to give our audience something to listen to in the early days of the pandemic. While this new list fulfills some of those same goals, it is meant to add to the 2020 list, not to replace it, as it documents some of the growth in the field over the last few years: Both independent podcasters and more formal institutions, like university centers or museums, have launched different projects over the last few years. Audiences are clearly asking for more content, particularly on the Arabic-speaking world and in Arabic specifically. Like our 2020 list, most of the podcast series are interview-based, allowing communities to document their own narratives and discourses in real-time. Many podcasts are also scripted, like Rumooz, which tells the story of a different historical figure from a first-person perspective each episode. Others are conversations between hosts and occasional guests, like The Middle Geeks. For now, we’re just excited for what podcasts the next few years will bring us.
I get off the bus near Al-Ahram Newspaper’s offices in the Ramses neighbourhood at around noon and make my way across the street and underneath Al-Galaa Bridge where street vendors sell anything from clothing to food items. As I navigate through the busy streets around people and cars, I think about the COVID-19 pandemic and I wonder at the countless Egyptians who need to pass through these crowds to make a living every day.
As I approach Cinema Radio, there’s a room to my left where I find a collection of furniture. I see a set of round double reflection mirrors, each divided down the middle –either horizontally or vertically– into two sections, each offering a different reflection. Below them is a cabinet set named Isfet, which, in ancient Egyptian culture, represents “chaos and darkness,” the opposite of another piece of hanging furniture named Maat, which represents “order and light.”
When I, like many others, joined the vinyl resurgence in the early 2010’s, I migrated to the tightest corner of the store, housing reissues and compilations of forgotten gems: Sudanese jazz, Senegalese funk, the fury of Afro-Colombian vallenato. The sleeves were bold and colorful, promising buzzwords popping from the cover.
Record store finds (except for album covers photographs are the author’s).
In the intervening decade, the convergence of a growing audiophile culture focused in Europe, Japan and North America, the explosion of online radio stations and the investigative potential of social media have brought record-digging culture into another realm. A new generation of listeners are hungry for novel sounds and more discerning about the origins behind the albums, as equally interested in the musicians’ backstory and placing the work in a broader musical history as the record itself. Like clockwork, a growing industry of established outlets in Europe such as Strut and Soul Jazz Records as well as independent labels like Matsuli Music have sprung forward to meet this demand.
But most of these Western labels are firmly rooted outside the communities they mine for music; listeners, aficionados and the artists themselves are starting to question the neo-colonial tensions underpinning the production, marketing and consumption of these records. Who makes this music? Who listens to it? Who profits?
Documenting the present isn’t completely dissimilar to documenting the past. There’s gathering up all the pieces to build a narrative and to some extent, a ticking clock. Stories get harder to tell the more time has passed.
Wine professional Farrah Berrou, on her podcast B for Bacchus, does both. She explores the wine of the Fertile Crescent today by talking to wine makers, researchers, and writers, then she delves further into the past by highlighting the work of historians and archeologists who work on topics that intersect with wine. Berrou’s goal is never just to promote Lebanese wine, but to also use wine as a prism for how we think about different cultures and peoples, whether it is on her podcast or in her writing. Since launching in 2019, Bacchus has evolved to include not only the podcast, but also Aanab, a biannual newspaper designed and largely written by Berrou. Her Patreon account has also grown into a way, not only to support Berrou’s own production of paper goods, but also to support other regional artists and makers through commissioned content by other writers, photographers, and creators in Aanab,
*Berrou was recently interviewed for the first episode of Season 3 of Bacchus by one of Hazine’s editors, N.A. Mansour. You can listen to the episode here.
How did you get into wine, and specifically Lebanese wine?
It was a very practical side-effect of working in my family’s business of US imports. I’d left advertising and joined my dad’s mission to open a new branch of our retail stores. We were like the Costco (or any big-box store of the US) of Lebanon. He’d wanted to include an alcohol section in this new branch and told me to run it. I didn’t know the first thing about wine or spirits so I started going to tastings and doing online classes. I started looking at our own wine landscape and history. The more I learned, the more I realized there was a gap in global wine education when it came to wines of Lebanon or the neighboring region. Other parts of the world had full chapters. If Lebanon was mentioned, it would be a couple pages split withTurkey, Greece, and other places. It’s not that we were misrepresented; we weren’t allocated enough space for that to even happen.
Could you tell us a bit about B for Bacchus, and the origins of your platform?
B for Bacchus started informally during the summer of 2019. I say “informally” because I wasn’t sure what it was going to morph into, I just knew I wanted to show other people what I was learning. I hosted wine tastings at our store on the specialty floor that I managed. We created a whole “classroom” space that was on one large shared table with a screen where I’d explain the ancient history of wine in Lebanon to modern day challenges over the span of 2 hours. I kept it limited to 12 people because I wanted it to stay intimate yet casual so even novices wouldn’t be intimidated. I didn’t want it to be stuffy nor did I want it to seem like I knew everything about Lebanese wine because I didn’t – I still don’t. It was tough to market the classes given the location (being in a grocery store instead of a hip, central spot) but every one of the classes I had hosted there had the vibe I wanted: people unwinding over boutique Lebanese wines, wine-fudge brownies, Cheerios, and cheese. A few months later, right as the revolution began in October, I moved to podcasting and eventually, wine writing for foreign publications, like The Wine Zine, Eater and Tim Atkin MW’s site.
What kinds of voices are you trying to highlight on your podcast?
It started off as interviews with winemakers and winery owners. We’d discuss their story or how they got into the field. It felt like we only ever heard from them through the words of foreign writers on the off-chance that Lebanese wine would get featured in the New York Times, Forbes, or Bloomberg. Now I’m moving away from the winery spotlights and trying to make the content richer. This was a side-effect of lockdown. I started experimenting with shorter episodes that were just me talking about a random deep dive I went on. Season Two had historians, a special episode on arak that was a compilation of audio from listeners, and an interview with Michael Karam on his work for the Wine and War documentary. It’s important to have a place where we can unpack our own stories together, write them the way we understand them – or don’t. There is room for experts NOT from the region but I want to prioritize our perspective.
Berrou designs wine-themed cards, which are for sale on her website.
Is there a particular audience you are trying to reach?
Given that it’s in English, that alone is limiting in a way. My main audiences are in the US, Lebanon, and diaspora hotspots. Because it’s a niche of a niche, it could be of interest to anyone with a curiosity for wine even though, most of the time, it’s not even about wine all that much. I don’t do tasting notes or flavor profiles. I don’t think people care to listen to that and I don’t care to dissect it either. Anyone who’s up for culture from a new angle would find at least one episode to indulge in.
How do the winemakers and wineries you profile document their history? And how do newer wineries and winemakers engage with history/local practices to make their wines?
A few of them have some of their memorabilia on display at the wineries. I couldn’t comment on their private documentation but a lot of what you can access publicly is mainly foreign and local journalism. Whether or not these articles are 100% accurate and/or paid promotion isn’t always clear. I will say that as someone who is an independent researcher unattached to any institution, it can be tough to find sources. I also assume that a big chunk of my source material would be in Arabic and not splattered all over the internet. I get the sense that many of the newer players learn from their elders. Whether that’s older generations in their families or in the villages, there is a know-how that is passed on generationally that is separate from the training they get abroad. A lot of that knowledge isn’t documented, just oral. Chateau Musar’s Hochar family is seen as an example to follow given the brand they have built over the last century. The newer producers look up to Chateau Musar’s approach with low-intervention winemaking – nothing added and nothing taken away – but also with how they jumped head-first into the international market at the onset of the civil war. Now, Musar is an internationally recognized, natural wine leader that carved out its own identity and used indigenous grapes before it was trendy.
How is knowledge around wine making documented or shared, and how are practices recovered or “rediscovered”?
This is something I’m still trying to figure out. The Jesuits of Lebanon have great archives but access to them is another story. I get a lot of my information from journalists that did a lot of legwork before I came to the scene, like Michael Karam and Nabila Rahhal, but I also depend a lot on first-person interviews that I conduct myself through the podcast or otherwise. The issue with that is, like all oral histories, it’s biased and hard to verify. Nonetheless, these accounts and their documentation are crucial. My work –both written and audio– is now being archived by the UC Davis Library’s wine collection which is such a win. From their own admission, they have very little on the history of Lebanese winemaking. It’s an honor to be able to do something about that but also to know that my work isn’t just floating in the ether. It could help future generations understand more about our role in this industry. And for others from the region, there is finally some representation at America’s top enology school.
How is the work around producing distinctly Lebanese wine valued?
Honestly, it’s not. It seems like there is an appetite for the wine itself but there hasn’t been anyone to really challenge the marketing spiels that go along with the bottles or the press releases that get reprinted here and there. It becomes a reductive dichotomy of wine and war, pleasure and pain, luxury and loss. Nuance, richness, and consideration are lacking in the coverage we see today and that makes me wonder why we’re not given more space to be multidimensional people. I also feel that my own work as someone who wants this industry to be better is misunderstood too. If people want someone to regurgitate a tech sheet or wax poetic about Lebanon’s joie de vivre, they won’t get that from me. I want to be Lebanese wine’s cheerleader but I’m not here to be a mindless megaphone or biased brand ambassador.
Now if the question was about the value associated with producing the Lebanese wine in terms of a recognizable style or flavor profile, that’s a whole other thing. The country is between a rock and a hard place. You want to stand out because it’s a matter of survival: do you do it by taking risks to stand out or playing it safe to guarantee return on investment? No matter where they’re from, indigenous grapes require an extra level of education for the typical consumer and not everyone is curious or willing to fork over cash for something new. Sometimes people want to buy what they know or what they know they’ll like. The definition of Lebanese wine is still being written but I feel it will always be unfinished. I like that about it, there’s more room for play. When it comes to customers though, predictability can win over curiosity.
You worked professionally as a graphic designer. What is your design outlook and how does it feed into your Bacchus work?
The mailers Berrou sends to her patrons (support her Patreon), with her packing manager, Penny.
I’m a stationery freak so I love that I’m able to execute ideas as they come. I’m not an illustrator but I have a simple, graphic style that I only developed through my own personal projects. Funnily enough, I don’t enjoy doing design work for anyone but myself and I’m much more of a conceptual/product designer. I like tangible, functional things. Working in advertising and graphic design gave me the skills to apply this wine theme to different channels. In November 2020, I decided to send out mailers every 3 months to Patreon subscribers. It used to be a collection of paper goods by creatives from the region but I’ve shifted it to a more collaborative format this year. Now, subscribers will still get four mailers: two of Bacchus cards or paper goods before they’re for sale on the shop and two with the latest issue of my biannual newspaper, Aanab, which is also sold separately on my shop. It’s a lot of work but assembling a thoughtful bit of snailmail is my love language and I’m looking forward to expanding Aanab and incorporating commissioned work from others too. The mailers let me be Santa every season and Aanab allows for me to publish without needing anyone’s approval first. The downside is that I have to do it all myself; from editing podcast audio to digitizing sketches to packing mailers. Despite it being a ton of work, I enjoy getting lost in the details.
Aanab, Berrou’s newspaper.
Do you have any projects or new directions you’re hoping to take your platform in?
I want to see where Aanab is going to go. So far, I’ve covered the French influence on Lebanese wine and a personal essay on why this work is important even if it doesn’t always feel like it. I want to expand its sections and coverage little by little. I also need to get back to the podcast as that’s really one of the pillars of the body of work but there is a part of me that wants to start fresh with a limited-run podcast – one that is still about wine and the region but with a coherent storyline throughout the episodes. Other offshoots like WineWomen&ME (highlighting women in wine from the region on socials) and Virtual Table (the online version of the classes I was hosting in Beirut) have potential for more but I don’t want to create more pressure for myself so I’m also trying to prune the vines so my energy is channeled effectively. Like I said, I have to be realistic with the fact that I’m the only one nurturing these roots.
If people want to learn more about wine or spirits of the Mena region, are there additional resources, voices, and projects you might point people to?
LSE’s podcast, Instant Coffee, had me on as a guest and simultaneously introduced me to the work of Jamal Rayyis and Arthur Asseraf who were featured in the same episode. Other names to look into would be Patrick McGovern, Elizabeth Saleh, Helene Sader, Nawal Nasrallah, and Graham Pitts. I’ll keep sharing whatever and whoever else I find!
Farrah Berrou
Farrah Berrou is a writer who splits her time between Los Angeles suburbia and Beirut, Lebanon. She is a Contributing Editor for NY-based The Wine Zine, the creator of the B for Bacchus platform/podcast and its biannual newspaper, Aanab. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
Hazine is seeking 4-5 pieces focused on publishing or bookstores specializing in marginalized or unofficial languages. We’re open to different geographical areas, but focused on places where Arabic, Persian, and Turkish are the lingua franca.
We’re interested in pieces and projects that cover language preservation, book design and typography, publishing as infrastructure for knowledge production and education, and bookstores fulfilling these roles and providing community support. Formats could include essays, resource lists, and interviews with projects or companies you’d like to profile; and topics can be current or historical.
The view upon entering Elshahed’s “Cairo Modern” exhibition at New York City’s Center for Architecture. Most of the featured photographs have been reprinted from al-Emara magazine.
On a tree-lined side street just around the corner from Washington Square Park – and close enough to Zooba, the hip Cairo- and now New York-based Egyptian street food restaurant, to warrant traipsing over for lunch– scenes from everyday life in Cairo are on display at New York City’s Center for Architecture.
A backlit black-and-white image at the center of the room shows a woman in a striped shirt and knee-length skirt, flanked by palm trees and bamboo lawn furniture, the sort that’s still ubiquitous at sporting clubs and cafés across Egypt, posing for the camera on the Nile’s Mounira Island. A thirty-one-story high-rise towers in the background. Another image shows a pair of students seated in those same bamboo chairs on the lawn outside the American University in Cairo’s six-story Science Building, its large glass windows protected by an elaborate brise soleil.
Panel from Cairo Modern. A pair of students talk on the lawn of the now-demolished AUC Science Building. When the university moved to a new campus in New Cairo, it sold off valuable land downtown allowing for such demolitions. This type of distinct architecture has not been preserved well in twenty-first-century Cairo.
While the scenes feel timeless, the focus of the exhibition is not the characters at all. Instead, the focus is on the built environment they inhabit. The images have been brought together, in part, to challenge the anthropocentrism of history and underscore the impermanence of modernist buildings in this city on the Nile. The Sabet Sabet Building, built in 1958, which rises in the background of the image from Mounira, still stands in Garden City. But the Science Building on AUC’s downtown campus, designed by architect Medhat Hassan Shaheen and built in 1966, has been abandoned and demolished, victim to what academics callCairo’s urbicide.
Content Warning: This exhibition review includes mention of revolution, police brutality, surveillance, the military and other forms of state violence.Images also containsimilarly sensitive material.
All photos are credited to Yaman To’meh.
The Exhibition: Arab Comics Today, 2021
In the presence of defined spatial memory, comics are the art form for expression: Each designated frame expresses a certain memory , with the blank spaces between the panels suggesting causality or sequence. Comics become a mapping of the bodies: an archive recording space and time with the complexity of the events documented. Comics are a form of preservation of the particular event being depicted within an intimate diary-like frame, especially when drawn by hand; they are a testimony to the artist’s archive of memories, a frozen moment to resurrect and to be built upon reality as it forms.
In 1938, Sarola Kasar, a village on the western peninsula of what is today known as India, arranged its annual fair in honour of Nirgunshah Auliya, a fakir, an ascetic, venerated by local Muslims. A British survey of the village says the band of musicians and tamashas (theatre troupes) hired for the event commenced only after 10 PM. Despite the fact that tamashas in the region had for long been a vibrant and spontaneous art form which embodied the spirit of social change and still do, the British officers included them in the list of apparent problems plaguing the village. This was part of the colonial ethos that developed in the 19th century, which deepened after a subcontinental rebellion in 1857. Colonial law proscribed what they viewed as native, vulgar, and unproductive and criminalized those engaged in such practices. The consequent Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 marked several castes for whom music and dance was a hereditary necessity as indulging in criminal activities.
BlackFlash Issue 38.3 “Infinities” featuring Samar Hejazi’s Little Blue-six (2021) from The Intricacies of Wholeness series
Canadian arts magazine, BlackFlash, has long been platforming the diverse and divergent in visual contemporary art. In its latest issue for Fall/Winter 2021, Infinities (38.3), it focuses on Islamic art, defined loosely, generously and inclusively; applied to everything from Instagram posts to ceramics to Microsoft Word, as a medium. The issue represents an important moment in the history of Muslims living in Canada, which understands them as part of the art scene, but also seeks to highlight how many immigrant Muslims are also taking accountability as settlers living on colonized land; the essays and artists in the issue question their relationship to the land and their responsibilities to its Indigenous peoples, as well as other systems of oppression such as anti-Blackness and Islamophobia. Infinities even looks beyond Canada and includes on its front cover an image of Palestinian tatreez by artist Samar Hejazi, which, as a medium, by sheer means of its existence, is a stand against Israeli settler-colonialism.
One of the reasons the Hazine team was so excited to highlight BlackFlash was that the prospect of an Islamic arts issue of BlackFlash was novel: documenting such a project is critical to anyone who identifies with Islamic art –Muslim, however that is defined, or non-Muslim alike– and might want to embark on a similar project. The careful curation of BlackFlash 38.3 is due to its guest editor and BlackFlash editorial committee member, Nadia Kurd. She tells us in this interview how this issue came to be, how it fits into BlackFlash’s overall vision, working with writers, and how Infinities might inspire the Canadian art scene.
All images provided by Nadia Kurd.
You can order a digital or physical copy of Infinities here, read much of the issue online here and enjoy some of the web features related to the issuehere. Additionally, Kurd commissioned a series of responses to the issue, which are forthcoming.
