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August 2020

On August 8, 2020, pellet shotguns were used on protestors at close distance and critical body zones. The Health Ministry, following the arrival of injured protesters to the hospital, attempted to put a stop to financial coverage of treatments that is usually granted to injuries caused by protest suppression. This was only reversed after the ministry faced pressure by the Lebanese Order of Physicians and hospital administrations. The following describes the inhumane oppression practiced by the internal security forces along with the armed infiltrators in civilian wear. The inhumanity and extent of injury the medical community witnessed is beyond words. This is

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Photo Essay
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Photograph by the author One of the biggest conundrums of the Beirut explosion is probably the burden of knowing how to live in its aftermath. What words are there to describe what has happened? What meaning is there to give? What do we do next? As we were scrambling to make sense of living an economic and financial collapse, as we were trying to figure out what it means to live through a pandemic, on August 4, all the webs of meaning we had spun suddenly melted into air.  Was it fireworks? Was it an Israeli air missile? Was it 2,750 tonnes

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Non-Fiction
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—for the refugees, lost in the crossing 1. this is the transcript of after saying, Arise the boat                             not bodies   not                                           not the first such find  cannot                                    scribe   SHARE their journey floating at sea we do not know and cry against it communi not      fall within   in                        capacity   bodies wearing journey and swaying 

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Poetry
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"David Adjaye's Trash" by Dala Nasser (Details) Translated from Chinese by Jeffrey Thomas Leong My petition denied already half a year with no further news. Who knew that today, I would be deported back           to Tang Mountain? At mid-ship, I’ll suffer waves, and pearl-like tears will fall. On a clear night, three times I’ll find the bitterness hard to bear.   清   船   誰   批 夜   中   知   消 三   捱   今   半 思   浪   日   載 苦   珠   撥   無 難   淚   回   消 堪   落   唐   息  。   ；   ？  

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Poetry, Translations
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"Anzali Port" by Milad Karamooz 1. Wind Today Jenin flooded, pond turned sea, dissolved horizon, and children made a boat of foam and twine, let wind catch sail      and chart toward      a place that would accept a child of no passport  2. Earth Children of the Jordan Valley crowned me in poppies, braceleted me in catkins and anemone blooms, made me double necklaces of daisies. How the desert blossoms. How children in grief open the way nature lifts petals to light, again and again and again never ceasing to amaze bees and earth  3. Fire Settlers set fire to the olive trees again, their seasonal protest, their terror among the peace bows. Again

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Poetry
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"Cirque du Liban" by Ieva Saudargaité (for Kazi H. Shehabi)       Every alighting is an ode to the past though the field of poppies on the poet’s book didn’t rinse morning’s wet out of her eyes. It was the time she was living in that did; the doe tossed open in the backyard; a coyote had disrobed her delicate ribs,   the elm beside the culvert swale deciphered the scene, like a detective’s gloved hand that offered no respite.  The earth had retraced its voice away from rain so she stopped gazing at the ground and crammed                her drought into the sky. Her father had died the summer before— On snapchat, Hajj pilgrims frisked her

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Poetry
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"Augmented Geometries" by Chloé Hojeily for Jalal Dhiyab Thijeel When it is night enough to uncoil Nas from your pocket radio, you slip him into the hush of a classroom— its cluster of small seats flooded with rainwater the color of an oiled moon. From the window, two men you do not see, lift the edges of their dishdashas like brides afraid of dirtying their dress, wait  for the flicker of classroom lights, for the dark that will drink the rocking shouts.  Your fast and quiet blood, thinned with water, pools under the dust of the streetlamp, the static hum; they step over and leave you to be found. 

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Poetry
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"Moonstruck Blocks" by Blocksfinj by Yeşim Özsoy, translated from Turkish by Buğra Giritlioğlu (with the help of Daniel Scher) i’m swimming in a sea charged with silence. unaware of the sediments in my body, imagining i’ll reach some place, in the certitude of a sea’s vast body which cannot be boxed up and shrunk, in a sea, forever bereft of color, with my small dream boxes, never concealed, i miss the boundlessness of a dream. i succumbed and shrank as tiny ants writhing before a wild wind, in a sea’s colorless, silent comfort with a longing for nothing but love and in return for pagefuls of tears i sold my boxes. with the shame

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Poetry, Translations
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"All Good Things" by Basir Mahmood dates from Baghdad's airport fatly nested in paper sleeves all that city's sweetness in our stomachs far away     not there chew another before the first is swallowed and look to the sea! look away from the sea!     sunlight                on paper face sunlight                on telephone wire sunlight                a puddle    this ocean to nowhere [where once i saw a turtle and never again] sunlight ceiling of orthodox blue of pressed powder of spilled ink how? the tiny window with its tiny colors and child's hand i

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Poetry
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