Two scenes and 1400 words later, I now remember how exhausting writing fiction can be. The act of getting into the heads of characters that don't actually exist—really getting into their heads—is no easy feat.
So much so that I felt the urge to take a baking break. I hardly ever want to bake.
Cheesecake. Let's see how it turns out.
Having finished the entirely visual PROJECT ROSEWATER, and in need of a serious gear-shift to engage with the literary aspect of PROJECT HOURGLASS, I pulled a couple books off the shelf in an attempt to help lubricate the writerly side of my brain: ثرثرة فوق النيل (“Adrift on the Nile”) by Naguib Mahfouz and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, altering between both every other chapter.
I'm typically a one book at a time kinda guy, so doing this with two books—each in a completely different language at that—is doing something strange to my brain chemistry.
Reading Taha Hussein's “Adeeb” from 1935, I came across a line describing banter as essential to authors as food, water, air, and smoke. Smoke here meaning tobacco. It might just be the first time I've read something that placed tobacco within the same hierarchy of needs as food and water.
The word “Adeeb” is an interesting one. It comes from the root “adab”, meaning literature, and is used to describe someone whose vocation is literature. But it implies more than the word “writer” (that would be “katib”), which by definition is focused on the doing of writing. It also implies more than “author” (that would be “mo'allif”). It's a far more broad term that evokes a sense of all-encompassing immersion in literature that doesn't quite have an English-language equivalent.
Scooped up a big pile of books from Cairo Book Fair (which was just gloriously insane) some months ago and finally getting around to making my way through them. Partly because I have been away from Arabic-language Egyptian literature for a long time now and realized how much I miss it (and boy is it different from most of what is churned out by the anglophone world), but partly also because PROJECT HOURGLASS will be produced in both English and Arabic and a good greasing of my Arabic-language functions is sorely in order.
“Wow! This is incredible! Unfortunately, I don't think we're quite the right fit for...”
Whichbook: Rather than browse books by genre or author, browse books by mood.
How a Houston company got its art on the walls of stoners across America: “Founded in 1969, Houston Blacklight & Poster Company was once one of the biggest distributors of the bright, colorful posters that adorned dorm rooms, basements and garage hangouts and became synonymous, along with lava lamps and bongs, with hippies and the counterculture movement.” — This poster here, by George Goode, is one of my favorite samples included in the article:
Returnee Blues #1, 2026 – Mixed Media on paper, 50 cm x 65 cm | 19.6” x 25.6”
Thought I'd finally found a housekeeper to pop in once a week to assist with cleanup. But that was three Fridays ago, and every time she doesn't show up even though the date and time were of her very own choosing. Similar situation with the plumber who first promised to show up two weeks ago. I've set three different appointments with the mirror place, every time they say they'll call me the day of to confirm and never do. Carpenter too been dragging me on for four weeks now.
Not sure why the need to hound someone to do work for you before they do it even after they promise doing it is such a widespread phenomenon in Cairo. I remember only needing to contact a housekeeper back in Houston just once to agree on the day, time, and fees, and she stuck to the same schedule like clockwork for three years before I had to move (Tidyqueen, if anyone in Houston is reading this and looking).
It's such a tedious energy-sucking thing in Cairo, because on any given day I'm expecting someone to show up, I find it extremely difficult to lock in and really get into the zone of whatever project I have on my table; the anticipation of impending distraction lingering in the back of mind all day.
And some of the stuff that needs tending too isn't superfluous. We've got pipes blocked with weeks full of piss and shit at this point.
Now I know why all my homies have moved into compounds; a virtually non-existent development less than 10 years ago. They tell me whenever anything needs fixin', all they have to do is call a number and help is on the way in less than 24 hours. That's enough of a perk to explain the seemingly unquenchable compound craze that has taken over the country in recent years, but I still can't stand that shit. Nothing spells a seething distaste for “the plebs” quite like a gated “community”.
“[Lithium ion batteries are] the story of oil in the 21st century.” — Vital conversation between Nicolas Niarcohos and Novara Media's Aaron Bastani.
Also, an illuminating conversation on China between Jostein Hauge and Michael Walker.
Humbled to see that THE SOLAR GRID has been getting a fair degree of scholarly interest in recent years. These two popped up on my radar:
Contingent Futures and the Time of Crisis: Ganzeer's Transmedial Narrative Art — by Dominic Davies for Literary Geographies, 2022
Climate Change and the Future of the City: Arabic science fiction as climate fiction in Egypt and Iraq — by Teresa Pepe for Fragile Ecologies: Environmental Urgency in the Arts and Literatures of the Middle East, 2023
INSURGENT THOUGHT: Downloadable library of digital books on philosophy, “anarchist shit”, mysticism, and more. Instant download for me despite my allergy to extensive screen-reading. Via Warren Ellis' latest ORBITAL OPERATIONS.
Also via Orbital Operations: THE NIGHTLY RADIO.
Also, also: L'IL FACTORY BOOKS!
PAPER BULLETS: 110 Years of Political Stickers from Around the World by Catherine Tedford, dropping December 2026 from PM Press.
The Bird by Ahmed Naji.
