Ending a relationship can bring a heavy emotional backpack. Often, it is not so much about the ending itself, but about how and why the relationship ended. Through text? Threats? A dramatic turn of events? Or a sudden 25 second call? Even in the ente...

Having dinner at Abou El Sid, one of Cairo’s most popular local dining spots for expats, offering authentic Egyptian cuisine in Zamalek, I look around. There are expats all around me. It instantly hit me: Why do so many foreigners choose to leave t...

From brittle beauties that can withstand the trial of fire, to thick ornate vases: there is nothing, it seems, that cannot be made within a glassblower’s workshop. At the heart of it all is the oven: a fiery, glorious pit where most of the magic ha...

The vastness of the Sinai desert is juxtaposed with the small and hidden spaces that Bedouin women hold. Yet, when one enters these spaces, one realizes that their inner world stretches across the desert, and represents a deeper, multi-faceted and co...

There’s a nook in every home: it’s sparsely lit, with colorful boxes stacked together in an odd recreation of jenga. Board games and shoeboxes, loose dice and folded Monopoly money: it’s the corner in every home, where adults and children wande...

Netflix announced on Tuesday the upcoming release of its first ever Arabic original film As7ab Wala A3az (“Perfect Strangers”) featuring a star-studded Pan-Arab cast. The film, which will be released on the global streaming giant on 20 J...

Café Riche is a cozy temple for the initiated: strangers gather in clusters, exchange book briefs under an undated photograph of Um Kalthoum, and sip sugared, home-brewed tea. There’s an air of knowing, maybe even intrigue; from revolutionaries to...

When the first installment of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy was released on December 19, 2001, I was eight years old. At the time, I was far too busy with Harry Potter to care. In fact, even for years after that, my only memorie...

Activist Alaa Abdel Fattah has been sentenced to five years in prison, after an Egyptian court found him guilty of “spreading false news undermining national security, and using social media to commit a publishing offense.” Alongside Abdel Fattah...

The longest river in the world is grand in more than just kilometers covered: from elaborate fauna, to temple views, to cities stacked along its banks, the Nile has carved history’s stone and cemented itself as a key feature of Egyptian heritage fo...