تجربة في صُنعة المترجِم: من الترجمة الى التعريب

An Experience in the Translator's Craft: From Translation to Arabization

Translation is a struggle to make a foreign text authentically Arabic, not just a transfer of words, by disassembling and reassembling the original so it reads as if written in Arabic, which is the essence of "ta'rib."

Edward Said in Translation – The personal and the academic

A lecture on translating Said and the friendship: "Your language is convoluted—I plan to deconstruct it and reconstruct in Arabic." Twenty years barred from the US, and emails about Tahiyya Karioka, Cyd Charisse, and Oslo as "the peace of the weak."

Ahmad Faris Al-Shidyaq: In quest of another modernity

Cambridge University Press

Al-Shidyaq, bearer of "the possible modernity": Work, not Education, as the motor of renaissance; the repression of female instinct as the basis of male domination—and peasant revolts, not the European "spark," as his context.

قصة حوار لم يتم

The Story of a Dialogue That Never Was

Bidayat

He chose his "inveterate friend" as interviewer, then reclaimed the answers before they were copied. Only the questions remain from a dialogue that never happened.

النفط في المِخيال العربي تقاسيم على مقام السوائل

Oil in the Arab Imaginary: Variations on the Mode of Liquids

Bidayat

Oil is the devil's urine, said Judge al-Hajari — then drank deeply of it. Variations on the mode of liquids: water, tears, semen, blood, and oil.

إدوارد سعيد في «الأسلوب المتأخر» الوقاحة بما هي منهج فكري

Edward Said on "Late Style": Impudence as Intellectual Method

Bidayat

Lateness is not maturity but "intransigence and unresolved contradiction" — Said concludes with the method of impudence, and with Genet declares imperialism the exportation of identities.

Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq: An Arab Traveler in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Beyond

Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, the rebellious Nahda thinker, bridged the gap between East and West, advocating for freedom, equality, and women's liberation, facing censorship and marginalization.

تجربة في صُنعة المترجِم: منالماغوط إلى لينين الذي يعرفالعربية!

An Experience in the Translator's Craft: From al-Maghut to Lenin Who Knows Arabic!

Al-Quds Al-Arabi

From al-Maghout to Lenin who “knows Arabic”: translation is an obsession whose danger lies in small details.

بيني وبينك الياسمين – الى عاصم الجندي

Between You and Me, the Jasmine - To Assem al-Jundi

A dedication to Asim al-Jundi, the friend reborn after a bullet from the 'Arab silencer,' who held fast to his grand dreams, and between them, jasmine remains a symbol of their enduring bond.

عبد الرحمن منيف يؤسِّس لأدب الصداقة – والباهي محمد يحلم بالطُوفان

Abdel Rahman Munif Founds a Literature of Friendship - And al-Bahi Muhammad Dreams of the Deluge

As-Safir

The friend alone is chosen — not the comrade, not the brother. Al-Bahi dreamed of a flood: a new Noah filling the earth with justice. Where are you, great Flood?

ترجمة النظرية: تجربة شخصية

Translating Theory: A Personal Experience

Translation is temptation and struggle between two languages; its only success is when the text sounds as though it were born in Arabic.

Ahmad Faris Shidyaq: An Arab Traveller in 19th Century Europe

Shidyaq: a deacon who converted, the first Arab socialist—and 121 years on, his Muslim name still embarrasses his Maronite village.

في أدب الصداقة: المهم هو النور

On the Literature of Friendship: What Matters Is the Light

A new book is a loaf of bread, a manuscript aged wine — Marwan waits for light in Berlin. Spring 2011: Bouazizi fulfilled Hikmet's testament: "If we don't all burn, how will darkness become light?"

On Etel Adnan

A tribute to Etel Adnan: "she transforms noise into velvet," and woman is what man lost since Adam—his paradise lost. "Change the world or go home!"

Genealogy: Science or Practical Illusion?

Genealogy is "practical illusion" per Ibn Khaldun: its utility lies not in knowledge but in cementing solidarity and "social honor"—and families accept from their own history only what pleases them.

عبد الرحمن منيف ينادي الطوفان*

Abdel Rahman Munif Calls for the Deluge

In "Land of Darkness," a project of alternative national modernity. From al-Bahi's testament: "The flood comes and everything becomes possible, and impossible is deleted from the dictionary."

تعريب ادوارد سعيد

Arabizing Edward Said

A promise to Said: "I'll make you speak Arabic" — Arabization as musical rearrangement: not the same piece, but the feelings remain.

في صداقة عبد الرحمن منيف والباهي محمد

On the Friendship of Abdel Rahman Munif and al-Bahi Muhammad

Mut'ab al-Hazzal, ghost hovering over oil fields — has a real-life double: the paramount sheikh of Anizah, arrested by the US army in Iraq. Life invents its own novelistic narrative.