12.1 Meet The Postcard Women! by the Zay Initiative
2022-09-20 20:00 - 21:30 (Asia/Dubai) | WA
Sit down and make yourself uncomfortable: Meet the postcard women in conversation with Dr Reem El Mutwalli in this special 90 min webinar.

About this event

Meet founder of the Imaginarium postcard project, artist and art historian Salma Ahmad Caller, and the artists, experts and researchers – Afsoon, Alia Derouiche Cherif, Hamida Zourgui, Hala Ghellali, and CritTeam’s Eugenia López Reus & Miguel Jaime, who all have been involved in the Making The Postcard Women’s Imaginarium project since 2018.
These artists each have personal histories entangled with the narratives of the Postcard Women. They have been making work in response to colonial postcards of women from the late 1800s and early 1900s that were posted from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe.
Their work challenges and questions the racial stereotypes that these postcards create, decolonises the lens, and takes a deep dive into the MENA region and cross-cultural legacies of heritage and adornment that make this archive so fascinating, important and problematic.
In reclaiming the Postcard Women these artists ask us to sit down and make ourselves uncomfortable by looking closely at how women from these regions have been constructed as marginalised, exoticised primitive ‘others’ and to now take the women out of the one-dimensional colonial space-time and re-contextualise them. And in so doing to interrogate not only the orientalist and colonial frames surrounding each woman but our own complicity in maintaining the hierarchical typology that these cards were part of instilling.
REGISTERING WILL GIVE YOU ACCESS TO THE 90 MINUTE LIVE SESSION, A RECORDED VERSION TO CATCH UP IN YOUR OWN TIME WHICH WILL BE SENT TO YOU WITHIN 24 HOURS AFTER THE WEBINAR
OUR GUEST SPEAKERS:
Salma Ahmad Caller was born in Iraq to an Egyptian father and a British mother and grew up in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. She now lives in the UK. An artist, art historian and writer, Salma considers herself a disruptive body, a hybrid of cultures and faiths. Her work explores her mixed- race identity, cross-cultural experiences, text/image relationships and forms of embodiment, materiality and memory, drawing on personal intimate family histories and vulnerability as a way to destabilise larger narratives. Uncanny juxtapositions and hybrid forms are used to investigate how the private and political collide and intertwine, using techniques of collage, assemblage, drawing, watercolour, photography, projection, installation/sound and more recently film. Salma also writes art theory, poetry and creative non-fiction. Her theoretical background in research on the meanings of ornament in non-Western cultures through frameworks of anthropology of art and cognitive science/physiology, are used to decolonise and break down boundaries, categories, typologies and terminology that characterise hegemonic colonial and patriarchal formations. With a Masters in art history and art theory, and a background in medicine and pharmacology, and several years teaching cross-cultural ways of seeing via non-Western artefacts at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, she now works as an independent artist and teacher.
https://www.salmaahmadcaller.com
Afsoon is an Iranian born, London based artist. She works predominantly in collage but has used various media such as linocut, watercolour, photography, ceramic, pastel and etching. She usually spends long periods researching her chosen subject to make pieces that often combine text with images while merging Occident and Orient ideas. Her work is humorous, playful and sophisticated and feels simultaneously familiar and foreign.
Afsoon has taken part in numerous solo and group shows, biennales and museum exhibitions. Her pieces can be found in prominent collections such as the British Museum, LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum), and the Berger/YSL Collection.
www.afsoon.co.uk
Alia Derouiche Cherif is a visual artist born in 1969, who grew up in Tunis. In 1991, Alia obtained her MA in interior design, and in 1997 a doctorate in science techniques in arts at the University ITAAUT. She has been teaching fashion design for over 20 years and has participated in various key group exhibitions in Tunisia – Bardo museum, Alain Nadaud gallery, Musk & Amber gallery, Elbirou gallery, Effesto gallery, Le Cap gallery, City of Culture of Tunisia.
Alia’s outstanding solo exhibitions took place at the Musk & Amber Gallery Tunisia, in September 2018 and 2019, and again in October 2021. Her rich work collages together many layers of Tunisian cultural heritage both past and contemporary. Her painting fiercely reclaims ornamental techniques from Orientalist painting by asserting the complex meanings and cultural contexts of Islamic and multi ethnic Tunisian patterns and calligraphic forms.
CritTeam (Eugenia López Reus and Miguel Jaime) is an art-research duo that emerged in the UAE in 2013. Their work explores intersections of art, architecture and culture, questioning common notions of tradition, ornament, and identity. CritTeam’s work is rooted in both digital and traditional media such as photography, photo collage and drawing, which they expand to include theoretical writings, video, installations, and design proposals. Their practice explores post avant-garde discourses of colonialism, orientalism, modernism, and non-western ornamental art. They both hold PhDs in architectural design and have been educators and researchers at universities of Europe, America and the Middle East. Their work has been published and exhibited at various institutions in Europe and the Middle East such as the Sharjah Art Foundation (2016 & 2017), the University of Edinburgh (2017), The XIV Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (Santander 2018), The 8th Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art WTA at Museum of Garment and Ethnologic Heritage Research Center (Madrid 2019), “The best design of the year” at Barcelona Design Museum DHUB (2021), among others. CritTeam has been nominated for the Art FAD Awards 2021 for best Artistic Creation by FAD’s Artists and Artisans’ Association. Since 2018 CritTeam is based in Barcelona.
Hamida Zourgui is a French-Algerian mixed media artist based in London. After completing her MA in art history and sociology she worked in museums and art spaces as a mediator and free lance art journalist. Growing up in France with an Algerian background has always played a major role in the construction of her identity, which then became the core and heart of her artistic expression. Hamida’s mixed media artwork focuses on the creation of bridges between her two cultures. Dual citizenship is echoed in the duality of references, and in the inspiration behind her themes and preoccupations. For Hamida her work is crucially an homage to colonised women and colonised bodies. Orientalism is a word anchored in her research, as it is often the only lens employed to represent/misrepresent Algerian women in art and imagery.
Hamida’s digital and analogue photographs are incorporated and transformed within collage works. These Arabic pop-art inspired transformations aim to narrate a new Algerian woman, giving her a renewed potent visual presence. Nostalgia, womanhood, and colonisation are three themes to constantly grapple with and reconcile with present realities of Algerian women.
As part of the Muslim female artists collective VariantSpace Hamida has had her work shown in London and New York. Her talks were an important part of the Pop Art from North Africa Collective exhibition at the P21 Gallery in London.
Hala Ghellali was born and grew up in Tripoli, Libya. She lived in France where she completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in comparative literature. After several years of teaching at the University of Tripoli, she lived in Italy, Egypt and Syria before settling in the USA. She is particularly interested in Libyan history, cultural heritage, vernacular poetry and the current art scene. Hala’s family ancestral connection to the art of weaving and traditional clothes has been a source of inspiration for her own research and work. Passionate about Libyan adornment and jewelry making, she has extensively researched its history, meanings and ties to neighboring countries. Her research and writing also embrace photography with a focus on orientalist photos and postcards made in local studios during the italian colonization. She has also co-curated an exhibit on jewelry and orientalist photos and postcards.
Her book on Libyan adornment and jewelry, the outcome of years of intensive research will soon be published.
FOUNDER OF THE ZAY INITIATIVE
Dr. Reem Tariq El Mutwalli, is a published author, lead curator and public speaker. With over 30 years of experience, she is an expert consultant in Islamic art and architecture, interior design, historic dress and UAE heritage.
She is also the founder of the Zay Initiative. A non-profit UK registered initiative advancing the preservation of cultural heritage, through the collection, documentation and digital archiving of Arab historical attire and their stories. Our goal is to empower and sustain global cross-cultural dialogue to inspire creative minds.

Arab Street Food: Shawarma at the Pantry with Nadia Tommalieh
2022-09-21 18:00 - 21:00, 2022-09-22 18:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | WA
Across the Arab world, you’ll find variations on their most famous street food: shawarma. Traditionally cooked on a vertical spit that turns, shawarma is universally loved as a picnic spread, a main course, or an iconic street-food sandwich. In this class NADIA TOMMALIEH will show you everything you need to make shawarma wraps at home, starting with fresh-made saj bread. You’ll fill your warm bread with spiced and thinly sliced beef shawarma, tahini-based tarator sauce; batata harra (crispy cubed potatoes in a citrus cilantro sauce); avocado bil labaneh w za’atar (mashed avocado, jalapeno, yogurt, and Za’atar); and mkhalal left (pickled turnips).

Arabic Chat Hour
2022-09-22 19:00 - 20:00, 2022-10-06 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | WA
Whether you’re a native speaker or learner, this is a great chance to practice listening and speaking in Arabic!
Zoom room number provided upon registeration.

This Is America – Johnny Gandelsman & Kinan Azmeh
2022-09-23 17:00 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | WA
via livestream
Purchase Tickets
$10 Museum Members
$12 Students/Seniors
$15 General Public
Purchase Tickets for Livestream ($5)
Celebrating a 20-year friendship, violinist Johnny Gandelsman and clarinetist & composer Kinan Azmeh explore the sounds of their adopted home through music written by American and U.S.-based composers.
Meet Kinan and Johnny at artist-in-residence Amanda Ekery’s workshop, Songwriting: History, Memory and Understanding, taking place 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, the day before the concert! Musicians and workshop participants will be writing original music from prompts that require inquiry into their personal history under the guidance of Amanda. Free with RSVP; click here for more info!
Grammy award-winning violinist and producer Johnny Gandelsman‘s musical voice reflects the artistic collaborations he has been a part of since moving to the United States in 1995. As a founding member of Brooklyn Rider and a former member of the Silkroad Ensemble, Gandelsman worked with many luminaries. Gandelsman integrates a wide range of creative sensibilities into a unique style amongst today’s violinists. Gandelsman has been producing records since starting his label, In a Circle Records, in 2008. In addition to “This Is America,” recent credits include Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein’s PBS documentary “The US and the Holocaust,” Silkroad Ensemble’s “Falling out of Time,” as well as Brooklyn Rider’s Grammy-nominated “Healing Modes” & “Spontaneous Symbols” (In a Circle Records). Photo credit: Marco Giannavola
Syrian-born, Brooklyn-based genre-bending composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh has been touring the globe with great acclaim as a soloist, composer and improviser. He is a Silkroad ensemble artist with whom he won a Grammy in 2016. Azmeh is a graduate of The Juilliard School, the Damascus High Institute of Music, and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering, Azmeh holds a doctorate in music from the City University of New York. He is currently working on his first opera, Songs For Days To Come which will be premiered in June 2022 at The Osnabruck Theater, Germany. Photo credit: Liudmila Jeremies www.kinanazmeh.com

Anees: Lebanese-Palestinian Rapper at Chop Suey!
2022-09-25 19:00 - 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Chop Suey, 1325 E Madison St, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
ANEES IS AN INDEPENDENT SINGER-RAPPER FROM THE WASHINGTON D.C. AREA.
HIS MUSIC IS A GENRE-LESS TREAT OF EAR CANDY MELODIES, SUBLIME RHYME-SCHEMING AND VULNERABLE LYRICISM. HIS RARE FUSION OF POP AND HIP-HOP WITH AN R&B TONE OFTEN DRAWS COMPARISON TO ARTISTS SUCH AS MAC MILLER, RUSS, AND CHANCE THE RAPPER.
ANEES WRITES SONGS WITH FINE-GRAINED INTENTION. HIS LYRICS ARE CRARFTED TO INSPIRE INTROSPECTION AND GOOD VIBES. HE BELIEVES PASSIONATELY THAT MUSIC IS MEANT TO HELP OTHERS HEAL.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/music/who-is-anees-the-palestinian-lebanese-rapper-featured-on-justin-bieber-s-instagram-1.1201220

NWFF Movie: Boycott (virtual)
2022-09-28 - 2022-10-02 | Virtual
When a news publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona, and a speech therapist in Texas are told they must choose between their jobs and their political beliefs, they launch legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech across 33 states in America.
Boycott traces the impact of state legislation designed to penalize individuals and companies that choose to boycott Israel due to its human rights record. A legal thriller with “accidental plaintiffs” at the center of the story, Boycott is a bracing look at the far-reaching implications of anti-boycott legislation and an inspiring tale of everyday Americans standing up to protect our rights in an age of shifting politics and threats to freedom of speech.

Mizna: Arab Film Fest (Virtual Screenings)
2022-09-28 - 2022-10-02 | Virtual
The Arab Film Fest opens THIS WEEK! Do you have your tickets yet?
The fest takes place September 28–October 2, 2022 in hybrid format. The theme, Life in Diaspora, engages and interrogates SWANA diaspora as an experience and filmmaking practice.
Check out the in-person screening schedule and the virtual screening line up.

FILMS TO LOOK FORWARD TO

MEMORY BOX (DIR. JOANA HADJITHOMAS, KHALIL JOREIGE, 2021) // LEBANON
Maia, a single mother, lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter, Alex. On Christmas Eve, they receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, tapes, and photos Maia sent to her best friend from 1980’s Beirut. Maia refuses to open the box or confront its memories, but Alex secretly begins diving into it. Between fantasy and reality, Alex enters the world of her mother’s adolescence during the Lebanese civil war.
Opening Night Tickets: 9/28 at 7pm, Walker Art Center
+ Post-screening discussion w/ director
+ 5:30pm Opening Night Reception
Virtual Tickets
+ Don’t miss the free filmmaking workshop with Khalil Joreige on 9/27

FADIA’S TREE (DIR. SARAH BEDDINGTON, 2021) // LEBANON, PALESTINE, UK
While millions of birds migrate freely in the skies, Fadia, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, yearns for the ancestral homeland she is denied. She challenges the director, Sarah, to find an ancient mulberry tree that stands witness to her family’s existence.
This film screens in honor of the memory of Shireen Abu Akleh, made possible by the estate of Dr. Inaam Matar.
Free Screening: 9/29 at 4pm, Trylon Cinema
Virtual Tickets
+ Virtual Conversation w/ Fadia Loubani and Leila Awadallah

YOU RESEMBLE ME (DIR. DINA AMER, 2021) // EGYPT, FRANCE
Produced by Spike Lee, Spike Jonze, and Riz Ahmed, among others, You Resemble Me blends documentary and narrative techniques to tell a harrowing story about loss, displacement, and violence. Cultural and intergenerational trauma erupt in this story about two sisters on the outskirts of Paris.
In-Person Tickets: 9/29 at 9pm, Trylon Cinema
Virtual Tickets
+ Virtual Conversation w/ Dina Amer and Adey Almohsen

MIGUEL’S WAR (DIR. ELIANE RAHEB, 2021) // LEBANON
Miguel’s War is a documentary film portrait of Michel Jleilaty, a gay man from Lebanon who has been living in Spain as an adult under the assumed name Miguel Alonso, as he revisits the childhood traumas that made him want to escape his homeland.
In-Person Tickets: 9/30 at 9pm, Trylon Cinema
Virtual Tickets

MAY GOD BE WITH YOU (DIR. CLÉO COHEN, 2021) // ALGERIA, TUNISIA, FRANCE
Cléo wonders if she has to choose between being a Jewish and an Arab woman. She pays visits, again and again, to her four grandparents, Jews from Algeria and Tunisia, exiled in France in the 1960s. She is determined to confront them with the meaning of these two identities she inherited from them. With humor and self-mockery, she questions the contradictions and the un-thoughts, staging the many different versions of her constantly rewritten family history.
In-Person Tickets: 10/1 at 3pm, Trylon Cinema
+ Post-screening discussion w/ director
Virtual Tickets

MARINER OF THE MOUNTAINS (DIR. KARIM AÏNOUZ, 2021) // ALGERIA, BRAZIL
In January 2019, filmmaker Karim Aïnouz decides to take a boat across the Mediterranean and embark on his first journey to Algeria. Accompanied by his camera and the memory of his mother, Iracema, Aïnouz provides a detailed account of the journey to his father’s homeland. The film follows a winding path through languages, memories, relatives, and histories, all the while interweaving the present, past, and future.
In-Person Tickets: 10/1 at 5pm, Trylon Cinema
Virtual Tickets

The Arab Spice Pantry at the Pantry with Nadia Tommalieh
2022-09-28 18:00 - 21:00, 2022-09-29 18:00 - 21:00, 2022-10-06 18:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | WA
Much of what’s distinctive about Arab cuisine comes down to the spices, and in this class NADIA TOMMALIEH will show you how to integrate these inimitable flavors into your kitchen. You’ll learn about sumac, baharat mshakaleh – the most famous spice blend, and the Tommalieh family’s za’atar recipe, before working them into shushbarak (Baharat-spiced lamb and beef dumplings with yogurt and fried garlic, mint, and pine nuts); jebneh makliyeh bi khobez (fried cheese in crispy Arabic bread with tomato and and za’atar spice); and salatet bandora with toum bi sumac (tomato, garlic and herb salad in sumac and pomegranate dressing).

TAMINO at Neumos
2022-09-28 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Neumos, 925 E Pike, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Rising Belgian-Egyptian musician Tamino is pleased to unveil the details of his second album, Sahar, due out 23rd September on Communion Records. The grandson of one of Egypt’s most famed singers and film stars, Tamino channels his own lineage, as well as the folk and rock music traditions from the Middle East and Europe for a borderless and timeless record. To coincide with its announcement, Tamino shares new single ‘Fascination’. Listen HERE Created in the wake of the international acclaim that followed his debut album Amir, Sahar was born in Tamino’s Antwerp apartment. Already adept at playing guitar and piano, Tamino took up the oud, an Arabic lute, under the mentorship of a Syrian refugee living in Antwerp. The instrument served as a key tool in the songwriting process and provides a melancholic soundscape that is threaded throughout the project. The record is a distillation of Tamino’s solitary reflections, and a product of work with close collaborators including Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood, producer/engineer PJ Maertens, and drummer Ruben Vanhoutte. Tamino’s 2018 breakout debut album Amir was met with widespread acclaim from critics and fans alike. The Antwerp-based musician’s fanbase stretches across the world, from the Middle East to North America, and the album has collected over 126 million streams. As previously announced, Tamino plays two intimate shows later this month in Paris and London, with both selling out in under five minutes. Later this Autumn, he will take Sahar out on the road, with a tour of North America, followed by a handful of dates in Europe. He headlines London’s KOKO on 24th November. Tickets go on general sale from 10am local time on Friday 10th June via www.taminomusic.com. For all pre-sale news, sign up to Tamino’s mailing list at www.tamino.lnk.to/mailinglist

NWFF Movie: Boycott (in person)
2022-09-29 18:30 - 2022-10-03 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 2, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
When a news publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona, and a speech therapist in Texas are told they must choose between their jobs and their political beliefs, they launch legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech across 33 states in America.
Boycott traces the impact of state legislation designed to penalize individuals and companies that choose to boycott Israel due to its human rights record. A legal thriller with “accidental plaintiffs” at the center of the story, Boycott is a bracing look at the far-reaching implications of anti-boycott legislation and an inspiring tale of everyday Americans standing up to protect our rights in an age of shifting politics and threats to freedom of speech.

Watch in person: Sep. 29 at 6:30pm

Vegetarian Syrian cookery class with Amani (online)
2022-09-30 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/London) | WA
Learn the secrets of Syrian cooking in Amani’s online cookery class!

About this event

Join Chef Amani in preparing a wonderful Syrian meal for her online cookery class! She is a wonderful teacher, chef and story-teller. She will share the secrets to traditional Syrian dishes. This is your chance to learn a brand new cuisine, support an amazing cause, and eat great food.
The class will be conducted as an interactive virtual cook-along. The classes usually range from 1-2 hours long. The chef will lead the group step by step through the recipes; stopping frequently to answer questions, share anecdotes, and provide feedback on your dishes!
Before the class, we will send you a list of ingredients, quantities and equipment so you can join ready to learn! We will also send you a reminder email 3 days before the class takes place that will include the Zoom link, titled “Your upcoming online Migrateful Class”. You can also find the Zoom link on the Online Event Page, accessible through the link included in the Eventbrite reminder email. We will also include the zoom link in the Eventbrite Order Confirmation email.
Chef Amani’s cook-along dishes will be Mosakaa (Aubergine & Tomato Mezze), Fatosh (Arabic Flatbread, Vegetable and Herb Salad) and Jajik (Cucumber & Yogurt Salad)
This menu is Vegetarian and can be made Vegan. Allergens include: milk and gluten.
​Equipment List

1 frying pan (for deep frying)
1 slotted spoon/ tongs (for deep frying)
1 medium saucepan
2 mixing bowls
3 mixing spoons
1 chef’s knife
1 chopping board

serving dishes and utensils of choice
*Students preferring to bake, not fry, will need a baking tray.
Ingredients List

1 large aubergine
1 large cucumber
2 medium tomatoes
1 small head of lettuce (such as gem lettuce)
15g of fresh parsley
1 large onion (brown or red) as well as 1⁄4 onion
4 cloves of garlic
1⁄2 lemon
250g plain yogurt (Greek yogurt works well)
1 round of khubz (Arabic flatbread; substitute
with pitta bread, tortilla, other flatbread)
1 x 400g tin of chopped tomato
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
1 tbsp sumac
2 tsp dried mint (fresh, if preferred)
500ml vegetable oil (for deep frying) and 3 tbsp
vegetable oil for frying onions and garlic
Salt and pepper

OPTIONAL (recipes combined)

Cumin or chilli powder
Small bunch fresh parsley or mint
1 clove of garlic
Handful of pomegranate seeds
Splash of vinegar

Message from Amani: “I am Amani, an Arab from Aleppo, Syria. I live with my mother and my younger sisters. I left Syria in 2013 when I lost my father, and my brother in the war and we fled to Lebanon and stayed there for six years, which were hard and difficult years. I worked there more than one job and studied, and then we applied to travel to the United Kingdom and it was approved after many years of waiting.
When I came to the UK, I started to learn the English language. I started out like a butterfly- I was locked up and then saw freedom. Then I got a job with Kent Refugees Action Network and I used to help them with cooking sometimes. One day I cooked with my mother and some students for about 60 people, and this was my first step in my dream of being a great chef.
I love writing and I would like to publish a special book in my name and tell about what I have suffered from the war. I love cooking because I see cooking is the path to kindness and love, for food is a language that no one can hear except generous people. My teacher proposed this institution to teach cooking and I agreed to join. I am happy and grateful for my joining Migrateful because I can now see my dream clearly with them.”
Payments made through Paypal can take up to 48 hours to have the order confirmed. To guarantee your spot on a cookery class we recommend using a debit or credit card.
Please note, we only process refunds and ticket transfers if we are notified 7 days before the class takes place.

Hugo Literary Series 2022-23 Season
2022-09-30 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Reincarnation: September 30, 2022, 7 pm
Featuring Omar El Akkad, Lilliam Rivera, Joshua Mohr, and Brenna Bruce

“Every year, Hugo House commissions new prose, poetry, and songs based on a writing prompt. During the Hugo Literary Series, artists share the results. This year, our artists will explore the theme re/birth to celebrate, if not the end of the pandemic, then at least some way of us living in the world with it, and the revival/resurgence of creativity that has been dormant for two long years.”

Virtual screening of the film "Hanna K"
2022-10-01 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Hanna K. is a 1983 American drama film (1H40M) directed by Costa-Gavras, starring Jill Clayburgh and Gabriel Byrne. The film was an attempt to depict the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in human terms.
Hanna K. is the story of Hanna Kaufman, a child of Holocaust survivors and an American-Jewish immigrant to Israel, who is a court-appointed lawyer assigned to defend a Palestinian, Salim Bakri, accused of terrorism and infiltration. Salim claims that he was trying to regain possession of his family house. Hanna saves him from a jail sentence, but he is deported to Jordan. Salim eventually returns, is jailed for illegal immigration, and he again asks for her services. Hanna investigates the story and discovered that Salim’s family home is now a tourist attraction in Kafr Rimon, a settlement built and lived in by Russian Jews. Bakri’s former village of Kufr Rumaneh has disappeared except for a few stones and trees.

The Magical Writer: QTIPOC Authors Dissect Magic Realism
2022-10-01 12:30 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | WA
As a genre, magic realism feels like a blessing and a curse. It offers space to marginalized folks to tell their stories without feeling triggered by it, and open space for a richer approach to imagination. Yet, it also feels like a stamp of approval for us to reach a wider audience, an evaluation of the magical Indian, the capable Black, the exotic Arab, or the mysterious Asian troupes.
In this panel, we will be discussing the origin of the term, asking ourselves if we identify with it, and looking at the relationship between QTIPOC authors and the way the term is understood by the mainstream White, heteronormative society.
Curator Danny Ramadan brings together some of the most exciting voices in Canada: Joshua Whitehead (Johnny Appleseed, Making Love with the Land), Larissa Lai (The Tiger Flu, Iron Goddess of Mercy), and Rasiqra Revulva (Cephalopography 2.0).
Curated and moderated by Danny Ramadan

Sudan Archives at Neumos
2022-10-01 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Neumos, 925 E Pike, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
“As Sudan Archives, Brittney Parks has combined left-field strains of R&B, hip-hop, and experimental electronic music with hypnotic string loops and the fiddling style of West Africa, as heard on a pair of EPs and her debut full-length, Athena (2019). She masterfully bridged the gap between her early glitchy, avant-garde compositions and timeless songwriting on the “stunning, reflective” (Pitchfork) Athena, and returned in 2022 with two new songs (Home Maker, Selfish Soul).The self-taught violinist, singer, songwriter, and producer started playing violin in her native Cincinnati, Ohio. After Parks moved to Los Angeles to study music technology, she started producing beats on a tablet computer with the addition of her vocals and strings, the latter increasingly inspired by immersion in Sudanese music. For her first LP (Athena), she took a collaborative approach and worked with a group of fellow producers who included Paul White, Rodaidh McDonald, and Wilma Archer after self-producing her first two EP’s. “A swaggering statement of intent with all the idiosyncratic charm that makes her music so memorable” – Pitchfork (Best New Track, 2022) “The US singer and violinist’s debut album contains some of the most viscerally gorgeous music put to record this year” – The Guardian “Athena is … a record of true beauty and resilience.” – CRACK” (Promo Copy)

Imarhan at the Tractor Tavern
2022-10-03 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Tractor Tavern, 5213 Ballard Ave NW, Seattle, WA, 98107, United States
“In early 2019 the members of Imarhan began literally laying the groundwork for their third album. The Tuareg quintet was building a professional recording studio, the first ever in their home city of Tamanrasset in Southern Algeria, from the ground up. By March of 2020 the studio was filled with high-end audio gear otherwise inaccessible to the vast majority of musicians in much of the Saharan region. The group christened it Aboogi, named for the first semi-permanent structures their nomadic forebears built when establishing settlements and villages, and began tracking the first album they were able to record on their native soil. It seemed only natural to also call the resulting collection of songs Aboogi, a nod to the new collective space they had established, as well as the resilience of their culture and communities.
The diversity, beauty, and struggles of life in Tamanrasset are reflected in the songs on Aboogi. Following the exhilarating, eclectic Temet – which OkayAfrica declared “doesn’t just take the next step in Tuareg music; it sends it into hyperspace” – Imarhan has made an album that is as serene and open as the desert it emerged from. “Aboogi reflects the colors of Tamanrasset, what we experience in everyday life,” says bandleader Iyad Moussa Ben Abderahmane, aka Sadam. “We give space to the wind and the natural energies, to the sun and the sand. We want to express their colors through music.” There is incredible warmth embedded in these steady,
lilting rhythms and patiently strummed acoustic guitars, derived not just from the natural environment but from the community that surrounds them. That warmth may come from the Saharan sun and those living under it, fostered by many generations of musicians that came before them, but it emanates outwards as Imarhan become leading ambassadors for their people and culture around the world.”

Maya Abu-Alhayyat, Zeina Hashem Beck | Live Reading + Book Release
2022-10-06 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | WA
Free with RSVP
Register for in-person attendance OR Register for virtual attendance
AANM presents a live bilingual poetry reading featuring an incredible lineup of poets: Maya Abu-Alhayyat and Zeina Hashem Beck. Join us as the poets read excerpts from their new works, exploring such themes of language and notions of home.
Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is the director of the Palestine Writing Workshop, an institution that seeks to encourage reading in Palestinian communities through creative writing projects and storytelling with children and teachers. She has published four collections of poems, four novels, and numerous children’s stories, including The Blue Pool of Questions. She contributed to and wrote a foreword for A Bird Is Not a Stone: An Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry, and she is also an editor of The Book of Ramallah. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Cordite Poetry Review, The Guardian, and Literary Hub. Abu Al-Hayyat lives in Jerusalem and works in Ramallah.
Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet and the author of two previous full-length collections of poetry: Louder than Hearts (Bauhan Publishing, 2017) and To Live in Autumn (The Backwaters Press, 2014), as well as two chapbooks: 3arabi Song (Rattle, 2016) and There Was and How Much There Was (smith|doorstop, 2016). Educated in Arabic, English, and French, Zeina has a BA and an MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. Her poem “Maqam” won Poetry’s 2017 Frederick Bock Prize, and her work appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. Zeina is the co-creator and co-host, with poet Farah Chamma, of Maqsouda, a podcast about Arabic poetry produced by Sowt. She recently moved to California with her husband and two daughters.

Rusha Latif with Isma'il Kushkush
2022-10-06 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
This virtual program brings to readers here (everywhere) the work of Rusha Latif, a San Francisco Bay area writer/researcher and a first-generation Egyptian American. Travels and research undertaken in Cairo a decade ago and since have now become her new book, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (American University in Cairo Press).
“As its excellent subtitle indicates, this book debunks many myths related to the so-called leaderless revolutions through meticulous fieldwork investigation of the young leaders of Egypt’s 2011 uprising in its Cairene epicenter. It is a much-needed contribution to the study of the twenty-first century’s pattern of uprisings, showing how a popular movement that goes beyond an ephemeral explosion of anger is necessarily led by more than a virtual network.”―Gilbert Achcar.
“In a moment characterized by the revival of authoritarian regimes and democratic setbacks, this book is a welcome analysis that puts youth activism in post-2011 Egypt in a revealing historic, sociological, and political perspective. Using primary sources, including in-depth interviews with the youth leaders of the January 25 Revolution, Latif’s work offers indispensable insights into the mobilization strategies and trajectories of the youth groups that resisted three successive regimes between 2011 and 2013. Her book powerfully explains how youth activism has forever changed Egyptian politics.”―Amr Hamzawy.
“Rusha Latif . . . embedded herself with young activists and writes about what the world can learn from a defeated revolt.”―Leila Fadel, NPR.
Isma’il Kushkush will join Rusha in conversation. He is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, CNN, the Associated Press (AP), Guernica Magazine, and others. He has covered political, economic, social and cultural stories from Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi, Sweden, Israel the Palestinian territories and the United States. He is currently based in Khartoum, Sudan.

BuildPalestine Summit 2022
2022-10-07 - 2022-10-08 | Virtual
Our partners at BuildPalestine are planning their third annual summit under the theme of “Designing for Unity”. You are invited to join an exciting 2-day virtual gathering of the global Palestinian community to design the future of Palestine.
What does it mean to be Palestinian today? Furthermore, in the midst of struggle, how do we not lose sight of the society that we aspire to build? How do we ensure that unity is a reflection of the rich diversity that is the Palestinian experience? Can we actively ‘design for unity’ in a way that crosses geographic, economic, and political divides within Palestine and beyond?
Join 65+ speakers in discussion panels, workshops, and special talks with influential speakers, and get to know Palestine’s most dynamic social entrepreneurs to inspire you to make a change.

Movie: No Simple Way Home
2022-10-07 16:30 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N,, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
Born and raised in exile, a daughter returns home to South Sudan to document her mother’s path to becoming vice president and leading the country towards a peaceful future.
VIRTUAL TICKETS AVAILABLE October 6th – 13th: Buy Tickets: Virtual
IN PERSON: Friday, October 7, 2022 at the SIFF Cinema Uptown at 4:30 PM

Artist Talk: Yousr Shaltout
2022-10-09 10:00 - 11:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | WA
Yousr Shaltout is an Egyptian /Lebanese medical student and Tatreez artist based in New Jersey. Yousr is self taught, and first fell in love with the art as well as its political and cultural significance four years ago. In 2021, Yousr was awarded the NJ Council of the Arts Folk Arts Apprenticeship Grant. Under the apprenticeship, Yousr created her first thobe under the mastery of Wafa Ghnaim of The Tatreez Institute (Tatreez & Tea). Yousr’s next project is to design, sew, and embroider a thobe for her medical school graduation in 2024 as the culmination of her skills in the craft. It will combine the various styles of embroidery from Palestine and those from her roots in Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria to showcase that Tatreez is an art form shared across the Arab world with distinct regional and cultural styles and motifs.
Yousr is the proud owner of a small business selling tatreez patterns and tatreez inspired items. You can support her work at tatreezing.etsy.com or by following her journey at her Instagram @tatreezing.
Learn more about Yousr’s thobe project and concept, by registering to this artist talk.

Author Sahar Mustafah in conversation with afikra
2022-10-10 07:00 - 08:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Join Sahar in a virtual conversation with afikra, a grassroots movement that evolved into a global media and educational platform focused on the history and culture of the Arab world. RSVP

P&P Live! Muhammad Najem, Nora Neus, & Julie Robine
2022-10-11 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Muhammad Najem had mostly known a life of war during his childhood in Syria; he was only thirteen when a bombing killed his father. Realizing that people did not know what families like his were living through, he began reporting on the war using the camera on his phone and social media. Through interviews with kids like himself, he revealed a painful truth: that ordinary Syrians were being bombed by their own government and were spending their days hiding in underground shelters. Despite strong personal losses and tremendous risk for his family, he continued reporting, and his stories began to gain notice around the world. Muhammad Najem, War Reporter: How One Boy Put the Spotlight on Syria is the graphic memoir written by Muhammad Najem and Nora Neus, the CNN producer who helped bring international recognition to his reporting.
Muhammad Najem is an internationally recognized journalist from Eastern Ghouta, Syria. He began his reporting career as a child, under near-constant bombardment by the Assad regime, by taking videos on his cell phone and posting them on social media. His story went viral in 2018, putting a target on his and his family’s backs. In 2019, he and his family fled Syria and moved to Turkey.

"It Won't Always Be Like This" Author Talk with Malaka Gharib & Hannah Bae
2022-10-11 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
This is an online program. Join the 53rd Street Library for a conversation with Malaka Gharib, the award-winning author of I Was Their American Dream, to discuss her latest work It Won’t Always Be Like This. A chronicle of growing up with her Egyptian father’s new family, forging unexpected bonds and navigating adolescence in an unfamiliar country It Won’t Always Be Like This is a touching time capsule of Gharib’s childhood memories—each summer a fleeting moment in time—and a powerful reflection on relationships, values, family, and what happens when it all collides. Malaka will be joined by freelance journalist and fellow author Hannah Bae for what will be an unforgettable discussion on the power of identity and belonging.

"Unruly Jewels - Neither Muslim Nor Jewish" by the Zay Initiative (online)
2022-10-11 20:00 - 21:00 (Asia/Dubai) | WA
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, joins Dr Reem El Mutwalli & Salma Ahmad Caller for a Dialogue “Unruly Jewels – Neither Muslim Nor Jewish”

About this event

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay joins Dr Reem El Mutwalli & the founder of the Imaginarium postcard project, artist and art historian Salma Ahmad Caller for a dialogue on “Unruly Jewels – Neither Muslim Nor Jewish”
Looking at some photographs, postcards and jewels, Azoulay will question the investment of the French colonial project in the de-algerisation and de-arabisation of the Jews in Muslim countries. One of the signs of their “success” in turning the indigenous into “modern type” was the withdrawal of the Jews from wearing heavy jewels and clothing with gold thread embroidery, through the production of these gold threads and jewels was a craft Jews used to practice for centuries. The disappearance of the jewels from their bodies was not a simple change in mode, but rather a disruption of a world in which craft and craft making was essential for world building and for world maintenance, and was embedded in guilds that were part of social fabrics of mutual care.
OUR GUEST SPEAKERS:
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, professor of Modern Culture and Media and Comparative Literature (Brown University), film essayist and curator of archives and exhibitions. Her books include: Potential History – Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019), Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012), The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008). Among her films: Un-documented: Unlearning Imperial Plunder (2019), Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47-48 (2012). Among her exhibitions Errata (Fundació Tàpies, 2019, HKW, Berlin, 2020), and Enough! The Natural Violence of New World Order, (F/Stop photography festival, Leipzig, 2016).
Salma Ahmad Caller was born in Iraq to an Egyptian father and a British mother and grew up in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. She now lives in the UK. An artist, art historian and writer, Salma considers herself a disruptive body, a hybrid of cultures and faiths. Her work explores her mixed- race identity, cross-cultural experiences, text/image relationships and forms of embodiment, materiality and memory, drawing on personal intimate family histories and vulnerability as a way to destabilise larger narratives. Uncanny juxtapositions and hybrid forms are used to investigate how the private and political collide and intertwine, using techniques of collage, assemblage, drawing, watercolour, photography, projection, installation/sound and more recently film. Salma also writes art theory, poetry and creative non-fiction. Her theoretical background in research on the meanings of ornament in non-Western cultures through frameworks of anthropology of art and cognitive science/physiology, are used to decolonise and break down boundaries, categories, typologies and terminology that characterise hegemonic colonial and patriarchal formations. With a Masters in art history and art theory, and a background in medicine and pharmacology, and several years teaching cross-cultural ways of seeing via non-Western artefacts at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, she now works as an independent artist and teacher.

Arab American and Muslim Representation
2022-10-12 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | WA
We invite you to ParentChild+’s virtual series Windows, Mirrors & Doors, where children’s book authors, educators, and advocates will lead us in a compelling discussion on Arab American and Muslim representation in children’s literature. The discussion will shine a light on the impact representation has on the well-being and social-emotional development of Arab American and Muslim children. It will highlight the importance of all children and families learning about Arab Americans and the many continents, countries, cultures, and religions they represent; Muslim families and the many countries and cultures they represent; the importance of Arab and Muslim children seeing themselves in the books they encounter; the ways in which we can equip parents and caregivers to access these books and stories and share them with the children in their lives, and how we can all advocate for improvements in Arab American and Muslim representation.
