The Fire These Times

This is a conversation with writer Saleem Haddad, author of the novel Guapa and the director of the short film Marco, now available for free online. We spoke about both Guapa and Marco as well as his contribution to the science fiction anthology Palestine+100. We also spoke about his connection to Fernando Pessoa’s the Book of Disquiet while living in Pessoa’s city, Lisbon. We spoke about identity and its relationship to languages, the circumstances around his move to Lisbon  from London, his struggle with his own Queer Arab identity and our complicated relationship to what we call ‘home’. Saleem also asked me about my passion for James Baldwin which I was happy to answer. Quick disclaimer: our conversation on Marco contains spoilers so I’d  urge you all to first watch it on YouTube. It’s around 20 minutes long  and I promise you that you’ll enjoy it. Another disclaimer is that the  Pessoa essay that Saleem wrote contains mention of suicide so please  take your mindset into consideration when reading it, which you  definitely also should! You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. Marco on Youtube (21:58) Saleem Haddad’s interview on BBC Arabic Saleem’s essay on Fernando Pessoa The 2020 ‘The Amazing James Baldwin‘ course James Baldwin’s interview in Amsterdam My review of Palestine+100 which includes Saleem’s short story

This is a conversation with Zecharias Zelalem. He's an Ethiopian journalist with Addis Standard as well as a freelance journalist focusing on the Horn of Africa region. More recently, Zelalem has also been investigating widespread abuses of Ethiopian migrant domestic workers in the Middle East, and in particular Lebanon. This is why I wanted to have this conversation with Zecharias. The conversation around the abusive Kafala system in Lebanon rarely includes the stories of the people who leave their homes to go work in a stranger's house in another country. This episode is the third on the Kafala system in Lebanon focusing on Ethiopian migrant domestic workers, who constitute the majority of those working in Lebanon. Migrant Domestic Workers are, alongside the rest of the labor force, the primary force keeping Lebanon running. And yet, despite their central role, they are regularly ignored alongside the widespread abuses affecting them. In a previous episode, I spoke with Banchi Yimer, founder of Egna Legna who define themselves as “community-based feminist activists working on migrant domestic workers’ issues and general women’s issues in Lebanon and Ethiopia.” You can find it here. And in an earlier episode I spoke with Sami, a Beirut-based Ethiopian activist with, Mesewat, a solidarity network that supports migrant workers in Lebanon and the Middle East, and Ali, an activist with the Anti-Racism Movement. It was recorded at one of the Migrant Community Centers in Beirut. You can find it here. You can find these episodes on your podcast app or on the website - they are at number 2 and 5. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options.

This is a conversation with Nadim El Kak. He’s a researcher at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies with a background in sociology and political science. I wanted to have Nadim on after reading his Twitter thread on the second wave of the Lebanon protests, which you can find here. Is Lebanon undergoing a second wave of protests? And how do they differ from the October 2019 ones? You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options.

Molly Crabapple and I have been chatting about this topic for a long time so this was a really fun episode to do. Although it was (roughly) my MA thesis in 2016, Molly has a much more personal connection to the Jewish Labor Bund and Bundism as her great-grandfather, Sam Rothbort, was a Bundist. She wrote a moving piece about this for the New York Review of Books which you can read here. She's now writing a book about the Bund. So who are these Bundists? How does Molly view the legacy of Bundism? What can we learn from the concept of 'Doikayt' (here-ness) that they believed in? This is what this conversation is about. I also tried to - and, hopefully, succesfully - to convey why I, as someone of Lebanese and Palestinian origins with no direct ties to Judaism or the Yiddish language, was so interested in this movement.  You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options.

This is a conversation with Dr Fadi Bardawil, Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University and the author of the book "Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation". I wanted to have this conversation with Dr Bardawil because his study of the 1960s 'Arab New Left', and especially the 'Lebanese New Left' of that period, evoked curious comparisons to what protesters in Lebanon are having to face today as well. The experience of the 1960s Lebanese New Left offers insights into how intellectuals struggled with the questions of theory and practice and of how to transform societies despite all their contradictions. As you'll hear in the conversation, Dr Bardawil, who is of the civil war generation, is very much in conversation with the generation that came before his. At the same time, and for different reasons, I, as someone from the postwar generation, am in conversation with the war generation. As such we managed, hopefully succesfully, to have three generations of Lebanese briefly conversing with one another. I hope you'll enjoy this conversation as much as I did. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options. Here's the abstract of his book: "The Arab Revolutions that began in 2011 reignited interest in the question of theory and practice, imbuing it with a burning political urgency. In Revolution and Disenchantment Fadi A. Bardawil redescribes for our present how an earlier generation of revolutionaries, the 1960s Arab New Left, addressed this question. Bardawil excavates the long-lost archive of the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon and its main theorist, Waddah Charara, who articulated answers in their political practice to fundamental issues confronting revolutionaries worldwide: intellectuals as vectors of revolutionary theory; political organizations as mediators of theory and praxis; and nonemancipatory attachments as impediments to revolutionary practice. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods and moving beyond familiar reception narratives of Marxist thought in the postcolony, Bardawil engages in "fieldwork in theory" that analyzes how theory seduces intellectuals, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes political practice. Throughout, Bardawil underscores the resonances and tensions between Arab intellectual traditions and Western critical theory and postcolonial theory, deftly placing intellectuals from those traditions into a much-needed conversation."

I spoke with Berlin-based British writer, poet, broadcaster and musician Musa Okwonga, who also co-hosts the popular football podcast Stadio. Musa frequently writes for The Bylines Times and for The Guardian, among others. Musa was a guest of my previous podcast, Hummus For Thought, and I wanted to have him on here to hear his reflections of these past several weeks now under social distancing. We spoke about his experience growing up black in the UK, his move to Germany and how both countries have dealth with the Covid-19 pandemic. We also spoke about the treatment of refugees trying to reach Fortress Europe's borders, how the world failed Syria and about the importance of acknowledging how widespread the dehumanisation of racialised groups of people has become. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 1$ a month on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options.

This is a conversation with Julia Choucair Vizoso, an independent scholar trained as a political scientist as well as an editor and translator at The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization which describes itself as such: "dedicated to reporting on socioeconomic and environmental crises afflicting Lebanon since the onset of neoliberal governance in the 90s, and providing political commentary on events unfolding since October 17." She is also is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Arab Reform Initiative, collaborating on the Programme on Sustainable and Inclusive Environmental Policy in the MENA Region. I wanted to talk to Julia because she's well-placed to explain how the Lebanese oligarchy operates and how or if the October 17th revolution has threatened it. You can read part one and part two of her essay on The Public Source. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. You can also support it on Patreon @firethesetimes or BuyMeACoffee.com @joeyayoub. This episode supports Egna Legna. You can support them here and listen to my interview with their founder Banchi Yimer here.

This is a conversation with Kareem Shaheen, former Beirut- and Istanbul-based The Guardian correspondent for Turkey and the Middle East, current analyst on the region as well as a writer for satirical Arabic news publication Al-Hudood. He is currently based in Montreal, Canada. We spoke about the importance of journalism given the lack of justice and accountability in Syria, the Middle East and beyond that should, in more ideal settings, come out of the kind of investigative and critical journalism that he does. We also spoke about his visit to Khan Sheykoun two days after the Assad regime's 2017 chemical attack on the town as well as his reflections on this 'nightmare decare' for the Arab and Muslim worlds. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. You can also support it on Patreon @firethesetimes or BuyMeACoffee.com @joeyayoub. Image by The Syrian People Know Their Way, modified by myself. Music by Tarabeat. Logo design by Carl Farra.

This is a conversation with Lebanese journalist Timour Azhari of Al  Jazeera (previously The Daily Star) about the legacy of the October 17  uprising six months since it began. We spoke about the current state of  Lebanese politics, the government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis, the  country’s most vulnerable groups and what protesters might be expected  to face once the pandemic is over. You can read Azhari’s work on Al Jazeera here as well as his archives at The Daily Star here. He is also very active on Twitter with regular updates on Lebanese affairs. Associated blog post: https://thefirethisti.me/2020/04/13/08-lebanons-october-uprising-six-months-later/ You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. You can also support it on Patreon @firethesetimes or BuyMeACoffee.com @joeyayoub. This episode is dedicated to the work of Syrian Eyes. Please check out their fundraising to help prevent a large-scale escalation of the Covid-19 outbreak in refugee settlements in Lebanon.

This is a conversation with Sabrîna Azad. She's a writer who published a moving piece for Mangal Media entitled 'From Halabja to Ghouta' in which she looked at how deniers of Assad's war crimes in Syria were evoking painful memories for survivors of Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaigns against Kurds. She spoke about the legacy of the Halabja massacre, part of the Anfal genocide of the late 80s, as well as the 1991 uprisings against Saddam and why they offer better insight into the world's reaction to Syria since 2011 than the more frequently mentioned 2003 invasion of Iraq does. You can follow the podcast on Twitter @FireTheseTimes and Instagram @thefirethesetimes. You can also support it on Patreon @firethesetimes or BuyMeACoffee.com @joeyayoub. Associated blog Post available on TheFireTheseTi.Me https://thefirethisti.me/2020/04/11/07-genocide-denialism-from-halabja-to-ghouta/