Author: Tala Ladki
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Maybe You Aren’t A Curse After All
The door creaks open, and Haleem appears – his plaid shirt flung open, belt barely done, sweat pooling over the wrinkles of his forehead; sweat that he could easily wipe away with the edge of his sleeve but chooses to ignore instead, sweat that Thuraya hates to see although they’ve been married for decades, and…
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Background Noise
The sound of war planes and foreign drones has become the background noise to her life. Sometimes, she doesn’t need to turn on the TV in the living room nor the small, wooden radio she has in her kitchen when she’s doing chores; the hum of that white, six-legged alien in the sky is enough.…
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But What If I Don’t Want To Be a Content Creator?
When I first joined social media, it didn’t look like what it does today. To create a Facebook account, I had to lie and say I was born in 1980-something. I was still in school, and we used to write inside jokes and birthday greetings on each other’s ‘walls.’ We used to update our ‘status’…
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45 Minutes
‘I can’t find Stanley anywhere. I’ve looked in all his usual hiding places.’ Her voice breaks. She’s not speaking in a haste, as one would expect her to in such a situation; there’s a subtle melancholy in her voice, almost as if she’s already anticipating the worst possible scenario. Before she noticed that Stanley was…
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Book Review: Orhan’s Inheritance
Originally published in 2015, Aline Ohanesian’s debut novel, ‘Orhan’s Inheritance,’ is a beautiful and emotional historical fiction about the Armenian Genocide. While not recognized by many, the Armenian Genocide, facilitated by the Ottomon Empire in an attempt to expel Armenians from the Ottomon Empire after World War One, resulted in the killing of approximately 1…
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Relax Your Mind:180 Seconds of Restless Thoughts
“Inhale, lift your arms up. Exhale, drop your hands to the floor. Inhale, right leg back. Drop the knee. Hold.” When I hear her say the movements, they sound easy enough. But there’s a constant humming in my ear, the echo of a voice in my head. “Hold? You can’t hold any longer. Your legs…
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Book Review: Mornings in Jenin
There are no words that can do this book justice, especially not at a time when the people of Gaza are being brutally bombed, starved and deprived of their most basic of rights; not when there’s a colonial entity conducting raids and random acts of violence in the West Bank, nor when there’s increased settler…
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Book Review: Cockroach
When I first started reading Rawi Hage’s Cockroach, I was not immediately hooked. Unfamiliar with his writing style, I had picked up the book because I recognized the name. A follow-up to his acclaimed De Niro’s Game, Cockroach explores mental illness, immigration and an immigrant’s struggle for survival. The pacing of the book was not…
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Book Review: The Book of Disappearance
What would happen if all the Palestinians vanished, all at once, from everywhere? In today’s political context, a lot can be inferred. But in Ibtisam Azem’s ‘The Book of Disappearance,’ this premise becomes a reality. Right from the start, Azem’s compelling writing and distinctive narrative hook the reader – a liberal Zionist journalist can no…
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Book Review: Evil Eye
Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if you didn’t have to live up to society – and more often, to your family’s – expectations? Maybe you would’ve chosen a different career path, maybe you would’ve ended up with a different partner. Maybe, just maybe, you would’ve done what really makes you…