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Evening with Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the company of Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens in this delightful conversation that has been so thoughtfully published by Emory University.

Novelist Sir Salman Rushdie, Emory professor Dr. Deepika Bahri, filmmaker Deepa Mehta and writer Christopher Hitchens discuss love, sex, writing, stories and friendship. The conversation was inspired by Rushdie's assertion in his 1999 essay on the anniversary of the fatwa that "love feels more and more like the only subject."

Beirut Terraces by Herzog and de Meuron

Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron have designed this apartment tower with overhanging floor plates and terraces for Beirut, Lebanon.

The design of Beirut Terraces was quite literally influenced by the layers of the city’s rich and tumultuous history. The most immediate historical event, which those from Beirut will remember for generations to come, is that of the assassination of the Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, which occurred when his car detonated in front of the St.Georges Hotel, its ruins are still visible as a daily reminder. Adjacent to the site there is a vast landfill of war-debris and trash from the several bombings since the 1970’s, but in the future this will change. Despite the scarred history, there is a clear vision to rehabilitate the area, the current masterplan already well under way aims to rebuild and bring life back to this part of Beirut. The site is located in a portion of the masterplan dedicated to building office and residential high rise buildings and is closely related to a new yachting marina.

Bidoun

In the marketplace of ideas, there are no figures so sad, yet so hopeful, as mid-list authors pushing not-so-recently published books.
— Gary Dauphin, "Have Pamphlet, Will Travel"

BAZAAR: a theme so nice, we used it twice.

Last issue, Bidoun delved into the business of the art world, a somewhat rarified realm, with its auctions and parties and oh-so-critical discourse. This time we wanted to get our hands dirtier. Mucky, even. So one thing we did was seek out the details — good, bad, and gory — of how work works. What the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is doing for beauty salons in America. How the protests in Thailand have affected red-dye manufacturers in Karachi. Why the Iraq War has been a bonanza for health clubs in occupied Baghdad.

The whole BAZAAR business originated on a trip to Dubai, the Las Vegas of the Middle East. Or rather, a trip to the Las Vegas of the Las Vegas of the Middle East. At the Indian mall in the down-market Karama district, the prime real estate belongs to Las Vegas Fashion LLC, a clothing store whose windows are lined with bedoo-rag'd mannequins in b-boy poses. Fittingly, Adham Alshorafa, the man behind Las Vegas, is the subject of one of the fifteen profiles, interviews, and as-told-to accounts that comprise our portfolio, How's Business — along with a hash-dealing ex-cop in Cairo, a scrap metal recycler in Bangalore, a defense contractor in Kandahar, and many more stories from the annals of globalization.

The globe itself is the canvas for Simon Anholt, the reluctant magician of nation branding. In "Your Brand Is My Brand," Babak Radboy considers the feedback loop that powers the multimillion dollar business of national identity. Bonus: a ragtag team of amateur nation branders examine brands from across the Bidounosphere, asking the age-old question, "Is that an atom hovering over the I in Israel?"

There are more and more reporters who have no experience covering war, much less participating in it… I can't blame the reporters for being naive. I blame the editors for sending them over in the first place… Are you going to send someone with a BA in literature to interview the mechanic at a nuclear power plant, when they don't know a piece of wood from a piece of coal? It's the same thing with conflict reporting.
— Lt. Col. Robert K. Brown, publisher of Soldier of Fortune

In the Magazine Bazaar, we discuss the business and pleasure of being a niche magazine, with a quartet of trade publications servicing mercenaries, utility contractors, haunted house owners, and disgruntled artists.

Now people write to ask me for permission to write about Africa. Be frank, they say, be candid… It's almost a sexual thing. They come crawling out of the unlikeliest places, looking to be whipped. I am bad, Master Binya, beat me. Oh!... They seem quite disappointed when I don't. Once in a while I do, and it feels both good and bad, like too much wasabi.
—Binyavanga Wainaina, "How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge"

Plus: Binyavanga Wainaina on becoming spam. Fatima Al Qadiri on ill-gotten goods. Indie-rock, Iranian style with Hypernova. Gary Dauphin on the prehistory of infotainment. Kaelen Wilson-Goldie on the enigmatic art of Mohamed Soueid. The wit and wisdom of the 1982 Kuwait stock market crash. And so on.

Miral

Here's something we can all probably get excited about. Julian Schnabel's upcoming film chronicling Hind Husseini's efforts to establish an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 Partition of Palestine which subsequently led to the 1948 Civil War. I'm tickled pink after seeing the trailer and looks like Dame Vanessa Redgraves is in it as well, if you haven't seen Ken Russell's "The Devils," I'd strongly recommend it, her performance is breathtaking.

Elsewhere in Hollyweird or, more appropriately, Great Britain, Christopher Morris the multiple BAFTA winning comedic genius behind Brasseye and some of the most caustic politically incendiary comedy in the last fifteen years has just come out with his latest directorial masterpiece "Four Lions," a film that follows a group of young Muslim men living in Sheffield who become radicalized and decide to become suicide bombers. Morris claims to have spent 3 years researching the project by speaking to terrorism experts, imams, and normal muslims. The film premiered at Sundance earlier this year to all types of laudation and foofaraw. Here's the trailer for it.

Hassan Shamaizadeh - Bishtar Bishtar

we end up spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on building new prisons and treating these people with expensive prescriptions and mind-altering drugs, when we could be giving it all to Hassan Shamaizadeh. tssk tssk.

Kill. Push. Art.

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The Glorious Gongs of Haimuwele

My quest to get in touch with the essence of contemporary middle eastern art and culture has led me to this interesting recording by British-based musicians, Harrapian Night Recordings.

From The Boston Phoenix:

The trappings of exotic field recordings are all over this mysterious production: pictures of Balinese shadow puppets, references to the suspicious-sounding Kadamba Forest and one "Dr. Syed Kamran Ali," and a folk-friendly label known for its association with Sun City Girls musicians (who expanded awareness of the old, weird world with their Sublime Frequencie releases).

Don't be fooled by the half-hearted imposture, though: this is to ethnographic recordings what Captain Beefheart's early albums were to the old blues — at once loving homage and blatant forgery. Some of the selections are decently executed pastiche (Arab-esque: "Bare Cairo," "Headless Mule"; Africanish: "Memoria Makhnavischina"), but there are less-derivative instrumentals as well ("Bully Kulta").

The sounds range from an interesting cross of gamelan and pre-Velvets John Cale ("Lila Dederba") to straight-up art-space-squat improv noise (opener "Mal de Ojo" and closer "Redeyes, Noose and Goad"). If there is a tribal ritual that goes with this music, it probably involves chanting Arthur-magazine record reviews out loud and passing around Alice B. Toklas brownies while watching Ira Cohen's Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda.