The Dream of Fluency
The first year in Amman, I encountered lots of things I didn’t expect. I didn’t expect that my Arabic voice would sound different than my English voice. That people would laugh at me for saying something correctly. That in the same day I would feel the heights of exhilaration (after correctly expressing my opinion, perhaps) and the depths of humiliation (finding myself tongue-tied when greeting the trash man).
A Tired Sort of Beauty
Busy bazaars, solitary courtyards, aquamarine domes, and dilapidated houses. Photographer Leeza Taylor sends these pictures from Uzbekistan.
‘The Most Important Blessing Is Bread’
In Amman, writes Heather M. Surls, reverent care for bread is an economic necessity, a religious discipline, and a cultural obsession.
First Impressions
Limited knowledge leads to conjecture in films by Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Denmark’s Susanne Bier.
Ancestral Echoes
A writer goes in search of his last name in Scotland: “In the end, perhaps the outside elements are what unite us. Perhaps what flows from without trumps what flows from within.”
