Ya Lubnan

It’s an entirely novel experience to first read about Lebanon and study its history and then to come here and truly glean only the tiniest bit of it. I feel as though I’m a nervous dilettante, skirting around the edges of something formidable in its sheer complexity. My dorm(ish) apartment thing (hereinafter “Sam’s building”) is [...]

Heads-Up

To anyone who’s interested in the kerfuffle over the Obama cartoon that ran front cover of The New Yorker a few days ago:
http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/2769/

This city smells of weed

It really does.
Last Tuesday, my train hit a truck and de-railed. I was on my way back to Montreal from Toronto. This is the stuff movies are made of. It was supposed to be a 5-and-a-half hour train ride, but about half way there was a truck stalled on the tracks. Apparently the truck driver [...]

Keffiyeh: political symbol, chic scarf

In a story titled “US chain drops ‘terror scarf’ ad” that ran on today’s BBC website, Dunkin’ Donuts pulled offline an advertisement that showed celebrity chef Rachael Ray wearing a scarf similar to the traditional Arab keffiyeh. Apparently, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin called the keffiyeh “a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and [...]