Borges rests from a long walk. Cimetière de Rois, Geneva.
Nabil Salih
@nabilsalih.bsky.social
A writer and photographer from Baghdad: @lrb.co.uk, @nybooks.com, @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social, @bostonreview.bsky.social and elsewhere. PhD candidate @gvagrad.bsky.social.
Flying from Baghdad to Geneva for my PhD. Every time one of us has to leave, Americans should hang their heads in shame. I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done to my country.
‘If every accusation is a confession, then the US State Department report released on 20 July, which describes Cuba as “the capital of 21st-century communism”, must rank as one of the most deranged self-denunciations on record.’ NEW: Tony Wood on Cuba. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Tony Wood · Maximum Pressure: Cuba on the Brink
If every accusation is a confession, then the US State Department report released on 20 July, which describes Cuba as...
lrb.co.uk
"Alongside him were Xi and Putin, whom he had lately been helping with the invasion at the other end of Eurasia. The context of the state his grandfather built still stretches far beyond the vistas open to most of its victims." On Kim Il-sung in the @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Ed Pulford · Beyond the 38th Parallel: The Cult of Kim
lrb.co.uk
I watched ‘Rose of Nevada’ last night, and will probably remember it for years ahead. Read about it in the @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Gaby Wood · At the Movies: ‘Rose of Nevada’
Time is embedded in the way Mark Jenkin works – not just the occasional resurrection but the hand-cranked cameras and...
lrb.co.uk
"Europeans can no longer define themselves only in relation to a volatile United States: expelled from their solipsistic self-understanding, they have to reckon with their much-postponed fate as a little promontory on the continent of Asia." In @harpers.bsky.social harpers.org/archive/2026...
The European Question, by Pankaj Mishra
harpers.org
Iraq, a bankrupt country listed for sale in spare parts. almadapaper.net/446629/
600 ألف عقار بينها ألف قصر لصدام.. هل يبيع العراق أصوله لتأمين الرواتب؟!
بغداد/ تميم الحسن يبدو أن بيع أصول الدولة مخرج للأزمة المالية، مع تقديرات تتحدث عن نحو 600 ألف عقار حكومي، بينها قرابة ألف قصر من إرث النظام السابق.وترى أوساط سياسية أن تحويل جزء من هذه الأصول إلى سيو...
almadapaper.net
Both Syria and Jordan have reportedly warned Baghdad of retaliation in the event of future militia attacks on their territories. Tumult, and a likely response to the Saudi-US strikes, may resume after the Arba'in pilgrimage in the coming few days.
Some needed words from @cihantugal.bsky.social on Argentina and pedestrian World Cup commentary. www.redthreads.media/p/the-world-...
The World Cup revealed the hypocrisy of our "politically correct" culture
World Cup discourse reproduced a colonial binary of rational Europe versus emotional non-West. Rejecting teams as political proxies, Cihan Tuğal urges dismantling the hierarchy in actual struggles.
redthreads.media
"the crowd runs after the man cradling the dead girl, who, suspended in a collective fantasy of her survival, cannot yet be grieved." Anahid Nersessian on @joriegraham.bsky.social in the new @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
Refusing to Look Away | Anahid Nersessian
In Killing Spree, the poet Jorie Graham pursues an essentially ethical impulse to find a true language for the evil in the world.
nybooks.com
‘Baghdad, ghostlike’ In the Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World. intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...
At least 20 members of Iraq's al-Hashd al-Shaabi forces were killed and 32 others wounded in US-Saudi airstrikes across Iraq. The 'Islamic Resistance in Iraq' have already warned the Saudis against such a move, and calls for retaliation intensify. ina.iq/ar/security/...
الحشد الشعبي يعلن استشهاد 20 منتسباً وإصابة 32 اخرين في الهجمات الامريكية- السعودية » وكالة الانباء العراقية (واع)
بغداد – واع أعلنت هيئة الحشد الشعبي، اليوم الأربعاء، استشهاد 20 منتسباً وإصابة 32 آخرين في الهجمات الأمريكية - السعودية. وقالت الهيئة، في بيان تلقته وكالة الأنباء العراقية (واع): إن "الحصيلة غير النها...
ina.iq
"The house felt voided, like an unwanted entry effaced from a history book." Nabil Salih reports from Baghdad: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/baghdad-round-city-destruction-saddam-hussein-iran-war/
Only a Place Like This | Los Angeles Review of Books
Reporting from a car in Baghdad.
lareviewofbooks.org
‘Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘖𝘥𝘺𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘺 into iambic pentameter. In one interview, he cited my version of it: “Tell me about a complicated man.” But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.’ New, by Emily Wilson www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man
As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...
lrb.co.uk
"It was a simple series of administrative functions: an entry on a spreadsheet, a line on a No Fly list. This data did not represent a life, but it could permanently alter one." Excellent story in @nybooks.com on Yemen and sanctions. www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...
Life on the List | Caitlin L. Chandler
Late one night in May 2016, Naif al-Qaysi was riding shotgun in an old Landcruiser as it barreled down an empty highway through the desert connecting
nybooks.com
"Viewed in person, the photographs are disorienting and hypnotic. Aspects of the landscape come in and out of focus, as though sunlight were filtering through branches or breezes were ruffling the leaves." @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...
Secondhand Memory | Jean Dykstra
In 1954, with the ending of French colonial rule in Southeast Asia, the Geneva Accords established Laos as an independent state, led by the Royal Lao
nybooks.com
“The angel did not fly, to put it bluntly, because Israeli bombers did.” @jewishcurrents.bsky.social jewishcurrents.org/the-absent-a...
The Absent Angel
A reflection on the Jewish Museum’s Paul Klee exhibit
jewishcurrents.org
“For this delirious decolonial imagination, a statue of an African slave is a fitting avatar for a repressive, militaristic state.” @newleftreview.bsky.social newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
Jeremy F. Walton, National Bricolage — Sidecar
The Turkish ‘saga’.
newleftreview.org
‘Something like thirty thousand Londoners were killed by aerial war; Berlin lost about fifty thousand. And yet when I lived there, I never came across a symbol honouring Berliners for having endured and survived the years of bombardment.’ Neal Ascherson on Berlin’s war www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Neal Ascherson · Dancing on a Volcano: Wartime Berliners
As a British wartime child living near secret things and sites, I can remember easily respecting the instruction: ‘...
lrb.co.uk