“I left Egypt alone. A writer with no affiliation to any political organization, wandered astray from my religious and national groups. However, once I arrived in America, this lost all value and meaning, for no sooner had I presented myself at the terminal gates did I not only receive the official government stamp, but left the airport branded with a whorish array of labels that I never got to have a say in choosing nor could make sense of.
“Soon, however, the minutiae of daily life in exile compels one, especially in the field of writing and cultural work, to gradually adapt to those labels invisibly branded on one’s backside. I recall that it was during my first few months in the country that someone asked me a question in which they referred to me as a brown writer —a term I was unfamiliar with at the time — and it was only after I asked for further explanation during which the same person stammered and fumbled to present me with an adequate answer that I finally understood it to be a term directed at writers who did not belong to the white or black race.”
From TAMING THE IMMIGRANT by Ahmed Naji.
“I have found that obedience and conformity in the United States are not strictly enforced or heavily guarded by armed soldiers or prisons, instead they present as a whisper, a sound vibration that crashes into your consciousness where they transform into ants that proceed to slowly and gradually eat away at your insides until they ultimately deform you after which they proceed to build you back up and mold you into what the system determines what you should become.”
#radar
Random thought: The whole simulation theory thing that seems to be increasingly trendy these days actually isn't at all at odds with any of the traditional religious beliefs of old, the ones that imagined god as an anthropomorphized king on a throne in the clouds. Because simulation theory by definition implies the entire universe being created by someone somewhere. The anthropomorphized king in this case being a computer programmer. The throne: an ergonomic chair. Which, if you think about it, just so happens to be this decade's flavor of king.
#radar #journal
Fantastic documentary on Enki Bilal from Standart.
Finally got around to reading Ahmed Khaled Tawfik's 2008 novel UTOPIA (in its original Arabic), which is just brilliant and in 2026 eerily close to reality.
Started watching SILO which I am enjoying enough, though I can't stand Rebecca Ferguson.
#radar
— Occult rituals in the Epstein files.
— “Just hang in there.” – Suzanne Vega for The Creative Independent.
— “An indie horror with internet origins has beaten the legacy franchise “Star Wars” at the box office this weekend.” – NBC news on the unexpected success of BACKROOMS and OBSESSION.
Migraine day today; No productivity for me.
#radar
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:
#radar #TSG
One of the highlights of the Manshur event I participated in a few days ago was the discovery of Zeina Maasari's stellar research project: Decolonizing the Page, which includes a superbly curated archive of gorgeously illustrated and/or designed Arabic books from the 1950s to 1980s, many of which I had never seen or even heard of before.
#radar
