The World in a Speck of Dust

by On Barak In the autobiographical novel The Cairo House, the Egyptian-American author Samia Serageldin recalls her desire for the world outside Egypt, “a world in which you did not constantly lose the battle against dust and baksheesh.” In another work, Out of Egypt, André Aciman also expresses disgust with post-1952 Egypt, where “there are too many vagrants, too much [...]

Electricity

by Cyrus Schayegh   December 17, 1957, Tehran. Hassan Mir-Husseini is livid. Brought before the judge for having illegally tapped into Tehran’s electricity network, he does not mince words. Did not he apply for a network subscription long time ago? Did not the state monitored company disappoint? Was not it, hence, his right to take matters into his own hands? Unimpressed, the [...]