Lives

Bahrain on Horseback

By Laura Dean August 14, 2019

The author returns to the landscape of her childhood to discover it has disappeared, along with many political dissidents.

ConflictMENA

Essay

Bint el-Balad

By Nour Malas August 6, 2019

A journalist reflects on the difficulty of maintaining professional boundaries while covering the Syrian refugee crisis

ConflictMENAPolitics

Interview

Alex Kotlowitz: Violence and Resilience in Chicago

By DJ Cashmere July 26, 2019

“To label this kind of trauma as ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ is perhaps a little dangerous, because there's nothing ‘post’ about it.”

Conflict

Fiction

Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam

Fiction by Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies May 6, 2019

I admit I felt something strange as I listened to the popping of the bones as they were devoured by the fire: Murad spoke, and I saw. It was grief. Grief squeezes the heart till you feel you’re about to die and your heart bleeds tears into your eyes.

Conflict

EssayLives

The History Before Us

By Jessica Jacobs January 21, 2019

How can we be sure the atrocities of the past will stay in the past?

ConflictHistory

Fiction

The Emperors of Existence

An excerpt from the short story collection by Sándor Jászberényi, translated from the Hungarian by Paul Olchváry December 28, 2018

It’s not good if you’re a man, and alone, when others are fucking your kid’s mother. I got on my leather jacket and left. I took a cab all the way down the Corniche, along the Nile.

ConflictMENA

Report

Footsteps in a Marked House: The Complex Role of Women in Pakistan’s Police Force

By Nazish Brohi December 20, 2018

Women's recruitment into elite commandos, formed in response to post-9/11 terrorism, was not driven by a desire for diversity in the workplace, but by the need to conduct raids and arrest militants without alienating local communities.

Female Fighters Asia & OceaniaConflictGender

EssayLives

Our Last Days in Country

By Curtis J. Graham November 29, 2018

A young Marine on being eighteen and deployed a few miles from the D.M.Z., meeting girls and waiting for ghosts.

Asia & OceaniaConflictTravel & AdventureUSA

Interview

Marie Brenner: Public Stories and Private Wars

By Matthew Miles Goodrich November 8, 2018

The investigative journalist discusses her outspoken father, a notorious encounter with Donald Trump, and the legacy of an impassioned late colleague

ConflictPolitics

Lives

Fragments From a War-Torn Childhood

By Amir Ahmadi Arian September 12, 2018

The Iran-Iraq war that made me who I am ended thirty years ago. Keeping quiet will not make it go away. I don’t believe in talking through it, either. Between silence and speech lies the act of writing. This is where I seek my remedy.

ConflictMENA

News

Ballots and Bloodshed: The Militarization of Local Politics in South Africa

By Christopher Clark September 4, 2018

Political violence in the province of KwaZulu-Natal reveals a bloody history still haunting the country’s democracy.

AfricaConflictPolitics