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God's Garbage People

As the sun comes up, the men go out from Garbage City and into the streets of ­Cairo. Some walk alone, carrying empty plastic sacks over their shoulders. Some drive trucks whose bare beds will soon be piled high with waste. Others are already returning with the trash they collected overnight. They . . . . Continue Reading »

Baptism of Blood

It is a scrupulously made short film, shot with several ­cameras in 2015. Arabic letters dance atop a black background, as if afloat on a whirling current of water, finally coming together and forming a droplet of closely intertwined characters. In Arabic calligraphy—one of Islam’s most . . . . Continue Reading »

Endangered Faiths

We were on Saturday, and you are on Sunday. Now your Sunday has come.” So goes an oft-quoted warning from the Jews of Iraq about the fate of the country’s minorities. “Saturday,” of course, refers to the Jewish Sabbath, but also to the period in the mid-twentieth century when Iraq’s . . . . Continue Reading »

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