Category: BlogPage 11 of 16

Losing Our Young Syrians

JULY 22, 2015, Counterpunch.org. When a former Syrian student of mine, Walid, announced that he’d resolved to pay smugglers to get him to Europe, I thought of his…

A Short History of Syrian Orphans

FEBRUARY 5, 2014, Counterpunch.org. How can I distinguish between a 4-year old alawite corpse and a 6 month old miasmatic christian infant, between an orphan and a refugee?

The Empty Classrooms of Qalamoun

DECEMBER 6, 2013, Counterpunch.org. Poetic designations like Qalamoun are propelled into international consciousness as new sites of combat and desolation. Because Qalamoun lies strategically on the main route…

Intimacies From An Awful War: “For Sama” by Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts

 JUL 31, 2019, ArabAmerica. If you think you’ve seen enough of conflict, especially the war in Syria, you haven’t. From love of nation and loathing of military rule,…

Kirkuk the Consolation Prize?

OCTOBER 20, 2017, Counterpunch.org The Iraqi government has every right to assert control over Kirkuk and its environs. (One only wonders why it waited this long.) The city…

Iraq Outside History

MARCH 16, 2018, Counterpunch.org “Scientists Outside History” was published in the September 1996 issue of Natural History, the popular educational journal of the American Museum of Natural History….

Awaiting the Next Rumble in Nepal

MAY 18, 2015, Counterpunch.org. Is Nepal in danger of being buried in data overload? The deluge of data about quake conditions may be part of the culture of…

Three Women in Search of Muna’s House: a Nepal Guide to Gongabu

MAY 13, 2015, Counterpunch.org. There’s a patch of Nepal I’d never seen before–it’s called Buspark or Gongabu, (‘cock-field’). Since there’s no guidebook available—I find it inadvertently on my…

Nepal: Signs of Progress, If Not Hope

MAY 11, 2015, Counterpunch.org. Our night skies are still battered by the sounds never heard over Nepal before—they are the monster cargo planes departing after disgorging millions of…

Dispatch From Kathmandu

MAY 6, 2015 on Counterpunch.org. Kathmandu, Nepal. Revisiting a school I know well in Kathmandu city, I meet Tilok just as he and his wife, a school teacher,…