In this powerful debut novel, narrator Liana Bialik is fourteen years old when her American father’s suicide forces her family to leave their New York suburb and return to her mother’s native Jerusalem, where the beauty and turmoil are a startling backdrop to her sexual and emotional discovery. With her young lover, she escapes the stifling ties of her family and her mother’s home to live in the Palestinian world beyond Jerusalem’s border.

This program was produced by the WGBH Forum Network for September 22, 2005.

For more information, visit:
leoraskolkinsmith.com
forum.wgbh.org/wgbh

Chaired by British novelist Maggie Gee, with editor of Transit Beirut, Malu Halasa, and editor of Qissas, Jo Glanville. Essentially a celebration of women writers from the Middle East, including readings from Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli and Lebanese Palestinian novelist Zeina B Ghandour.

This podcast was produced by the British Museum’s Middle East Now season on September 15, 2006.

For more information, visit:
www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/middleeastnow/

by Taha Muhammad Ali

And so I come to the place itself,
but the place is not
its dust and stones and open space.
For where are the red-tailed birds
and the almonds’ green?
Where are the bleating lambs
and pomegranates of evening –
the smell of bread
and the grouse?
Where are the windows,
and where is the ease of Amira’s braid?
Where are the quails
and white-footed fettered horses whinnying,
their right leg alone set free?
Where are the wedding
parties of swallows –
the rites and feasts of the olives?
The joy of the branching spikes of wheat?
And where is the crocus’s eyelash?
Where are the fields we played
our games of hide-and-seek in?
And where is Qasim?
Where are the hyssop and thyme?
Where is the kite descending on chicks
from the heaven’s heights,
as the old woman shouts at it:
“You took our speckled hen,
you whore!
I hope you can’t digest it!
You there, in the distance:
I hope you can’t digest it!”

This program was produced for the Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

For more information, visit:
www.pbs.org/newshour

Poets in the Arab world have historically been important cultural figures, and this tradition continues among Palestinians. In the second of his reports on Middle East poetry, Jeffrey Brown discusses poetry’s role in Arab society with three leading Palestinian poets.

This program was produced for the Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

For more information, visit:
www.pbs.org/newshour/

This podcast was produced by the British Museum’s Middle East Now season.

Charles Glass gives his personal reflections on Edward Said providing us with an intimate insight into this well known, politically committed Palestinian American intellectual.

For more information, visit:
www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/middleeastnow/
www.charlesglass.net/
www.edwardsaid.org/

This podcast was produced by the British Museum’s Middle East Now season.

Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism continues to provoke arguments about how the Orient is imagined. Join the debate with Robert Irwin, Maya Jasanoff, Gabriel Piterberg, Michael Wood and Paul Myerscough (chair).

For more information, visit:
www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/middleeastnow/
www.edwardsaid.org