FILM
Bahr Al-Dhikra: Sea of Memory
Dir. Hana Makhmalbaf · 94 min
ISSUE VI — SPRING 2026
The Memory of Water
On belonging, displacement, and the art of return
1 essays — 1 prose — 1 interviews
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EDITOR'S NOTE
VINour Al-Hassan
We gathered eight writers, three filmmakers, four poets, and two interlocutors and asked each of them a single question: what does the water hold? What arrived
was not what we expected. It never is. The work in this issue refuses nostalgia. It insists on presence.
Read full note →LEAD ESSAY
ESSAY
The Grammar of Colour: A Walk Through the Living Cities of the Arab World
LAYLA NASSAR
To walk through an Arab city is to be educated by the senses before the mind has a chance to form an opinion. Colour comes first — then smell, then sound, layered and without hierarchy.
12 min read
Read Essay →IN THIS ISSUE
INTERVIEW
"The Archive is Always Political": A Conversation with Kamel Daoud
To walk through an Arab city is to be educated by the senses before the mind has a chance to form an opinion. Colour comes first — then smell, then sound, layered and without hierarchy.
Here is where the water forgets its own name — calling itself sea, then river, then wound. I have stood on three shores
POEM
Yasmine Oum
FICTION
Bahr Al-Dhikra: Sea of Memory
Layla Nassar
INTERVIEW
"The Archive is Always Political": A Conversation with Kamel Daoud
Layla Nassar
—— FEATURED FILM
▶
Bahr Al-Dhikra
94 min
DIR. HANA MAKHMALBAF
Three generations of a Beirut family attempt to reconstruct a photograph destroyed in the 2020 explosion. An archival project becomes a meditation on what images cannot hold.
PART OF ISSUE VI
The Memory of Water
OTHER ISSUES