Arab like me: Rachel Dolezal and my anxious Jewish mask
Am I the Jewish Rachel Dolezal?
I was sitting in my East Jerusalem apartment in a Moroccan djellaba, Abdel Halim Hafez warbling from the stereo, sipping mint tea and reading a New Yorker article about this bizarre white woman who decided to become black one day. And at first I was shocked and bemused—what, the lady gets a fake tan and a perm and all of a sudden she’s Toni Morrison? But then something in her story started to tickle my problematic Jewish/Arab identity bone, and I started to wonder, am I the Jewish Dolezal?
My birthday
August 12, 2010
I open Facebook to find a birthday greeting. I grasped the opportunity to return the greeting, making up for those three years in which I couldn't send him birthday wishes. Those were the three years he spent in prison for writing on the Internet. I used to contribute to his site. It was called Akhawia.
Imad's barbershop: salons in Lebanon
Barbershops in Lebanon are a complete mystery, a complicated one, but in a good way. There’s a surplus in salons; seriously on every street you pass through you’ll find a small barbershop that tends to the needs of the neighborhood. Every time I go to get my beard trimmed or my hair cut, I always end up spending the most amusing evening a person can spend. From the gossip, to the weird sex jokes, to the religious satire; everything and anything can be expected at a barbershop, except a decent haircut… The wait is also dreadful.
