Category: Non-Resident / PAO (Persons of Arab Origin / Descent)

SOMALI DANISH Mariam Noor PhD Post-Doctoral Researcher Invents a Ring for Leaking Heart Valves

A small ring around the main artery may cure patients with leaking heart valves. Researchers have documented its effect on animals and they hope they will make it possible to use the technology on humans.

A leaking heart valve – or in technical terms, aortic insufficiency – is a condition in which the valve between the left ventricle of the heart and the main artery cannot close completely. The disease can have varying levels of severity and can be caused by congenital malformations or calcification, among other things. 

Mariam Noor has developed a small ring that seems to be able to cure leaking heart valves. This can change the way we do cardiovascular surgery. Photo: Lars Kruse, AU Foto.

When the aortic valve leaks, some of the blood returns to the heart, which means the heart has to work harder. In the worst cases, this can lead to heart failure, and this is why it’s important to treat the condition. Doctors usually treat the condition by repairing the diseased heart valve or replacing it with an artificial valve.

Both involve a risk of complications, and therefore engineers from Aarhus University have been working for several years to develop new surgical technology for heart patients.

“A prosthetic heart valve is an effective form of treatment, but it’s also a relatively complicated surgical procedure that brings with it a number of risks and complications in the long term. Now we have found a solution that can make it easier to treat patiens,” says Mariam Noor, a PhD student at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Aarhus University and the Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery at Aarhus University Hospital.

Ring prevents blood from returning to the heart

Mariam Noor has spent the last three years designing and developing a ring that can give patients with aortic insufficiency good treatment results, and she has invented something that may have impact on the world of surgery.

“Instead of replacing the defective valve, my treatment concept is to enclose it in the main artery so it prevents blood from returning to the heart. I’ve developed a new type of ring that tightens around the aortic root to prevent this,” she says.

In fact, for several years now, cardiologists have been using a type of ring to stabilise the function of the heart valves, but this has not been without its disadvantages. 

The traditional ring is round and relatively rigid, and this limits its operation. Furthermore, placing the ring in the body is a challenge because surgeons have to cut the aorta and remove the coronary arteries. 

The new ring developed by Mariam Noor is made of an elastic material that can mould itself to the body’s tissue. It also has an opening, which makes it easy to place it correctly.

“The surgical procedure is significantly less invasive, and with the help of diagnostic imaging and 3D printing, we can adjust the ring’s rigidity and strength to the individual patient’s anatomy. This gives us some fantastic options, and the technology has been promising during animal trials,” says Mariam Noor. 

Lots of physics in the main artery

Mariam Noor has especially focused on the material properties and design of the ring in order to better retain the dynamics in the cardiovascular system.

“I look at surgical issues through the lens of an engineer, because there’s a lot of physics and mathematics in our cardiovascular system. My approach has been to understand how the aorta works and then transfer this knowledge to design a ring that can recreate normal anatomical conditions in patients,” she says. 

The ring consists of a silicone core surrounded by suture-like material. In order to document the effect, in collaboration with her colleagues, Mariam Noor has, carried out her experiments in a heart simulator, whereby it is possible to control the pump function, temperature and flow. 

“We can simulate the action of the heart in a very precise environment that closely resembles the human body. This means we can closely study what happens with the ring in the frequency area of every, single heartbeat. It’s been interesting, and we have obtained an incredibly detailed knowledge base to continue working with,” she says. 

The researchers have subsequently carried out a costly study to see how the ring expands in the body when the heart pumps, and Mariam Noor was positively surprised.

“We looked at the geometric pattern of the main artery in a pig with a ring and in a pig without it, and we could see that we can actually preserve the natural dynamics. These results look really promising,” she says.

She emphasises that there are a few years’ of clinical approval procedures ahead before the heart ring can benefit patients. (source: Aarhus University)

source/contents: wardheernews.com (headline edited)

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Mariam Noor has developed a small ring that seems to be able to cure leaking heart valves. This can change the way we do cardiovascular surgery. Photo: Lars Kruse, AU Foto.

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DANISH / SOMALIAN

EGYPTIAN AMERICAN: Columbia University names Egypt-born Minouche Shafik as its next President

New York-based Columbia university announced on Wednesday that Egyptian-born figure Minouche Shafik would become its first-woman president next summer.

“Nemat {Minouche} Shafik, a leading economist whose career has focused on public policy and academia, will become the next president of Columbia University on July 1, 2023.” Columbia University said adding that her election by the board of trustees as the University’s 20th president concluded a wide-ranging and intensive search launched after the University’s Current President Lee C. Bollinger announced that he would step down at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year.

Shafik will become the 20th president of the famous American educational institution.

Minouche Shafik was appointed director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in September 2017.

She also served as the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England prior to her appointment as LSE Director in 2017.

She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in Queen Elizabeth’s Birthday Honours list in 2015, and in July 2020 was created a baroness, becoming a crossbench peer in the UK’s House of Lords. 

Shafik’s successful portfolio includes leading roles such as Vice President of the World Bank, where she became the youngest VP in the history of the bank, and Permanent Secretary of the UK Department for International Development and Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Born in Alexandriam her childhood in Egypt was brief though, as she left the country for the US when she was four. She later returned to the country briefly as a teenager, according to interviews.

She holds a BSc in economics and politics from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and an MSc in economics at LSE before completing a PhD in economics at St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford.

Her doctorate thesis was on the role of the private sector and the public sector in Egypt.

source/content: english.ahram.org.eg (headline edited)

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AMERICAN / EGYPT

PALESTINIAN CHILEAN Singer Elyanna to Perform at Coachella Festival in US

Palestinian Chilean singer Elyanna is set to perform for the first time at Coachella, the popular music festival that is held annually at Indio, California.

The 10-day event will run from April 14 to 23.

Elyanna, who is famous for her songs “Ghareeb Alay,” “Ala Bali” and “Ana Lahale” with Canadian Lebanese singer Massari, will be the first Arab artist to perform on the Coachella stage.

“I am honored and grateful for all the love and support I have received in the past couple days,” she wrote to her 575,000 followers on Instagram. “Last year I attended Coachella, and this year I will be the first Arabic singing artist to perform there. Your wildest dreams will come true, so keep on dreaming! See you in the desert.

“I’m so proud and excited to bring my culture and music to Coachella,” she said in another post.

Elyanna’s celebrity fans, including Massari, Dutch Palestinian supermodel Bella Hadid, US Iraqi beauty mogul Huda Kattan, Egyptian rapper Felukah, Palestinian singer Noel Kharman and Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini, all took to Instagram to congratulate the star.

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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PALESTINIAN / CHILEAN

SUDAN: Nima Elbagir, Journalist and Award-Winning International Television Correspondent

CNN has promoted senior international correspondent Nima Elbagir to the role of chief international investigative correspondent.

A London-based Sudanese journalist, Elbagir has broken countless stories for CNN from war and crisis zones, reporting on human rights abuses in places like Ethiopia’s Tigray region, Libya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Yemen. In 2017, her undercover reporting exposed migrants being sold at slave auctions in Libya and prompted responses from the government and the United Nations.

Elbagir has scooped up numerous awards in her career, including the Royal Television Society’s Television Journalist of the Year Award in 2020, a duPoint Award, a Polk Award in 2017, the International Center for Journalists 2018 Excellence in International Reporting Award, the 2018 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, a 2019 Gracie Award, and the LA Press Club’s 2019 Daniel Pearl Award.

Elbagir joined CNN in Feb. 2011 as a full-time reporter based at network’s Johannesburg bureau, before later moving to Nairobi, Kenya. Prior to joining CNN as a freelancer in 2010, Elbagir worked in various capacities for the UK’s Channel 4 for a number of years from 2005: she freelanced from Kabul, Afghanistan for Channel 4 News; reported for the Unreported World documentary strand; and both reported and presented for Channel 4 News and More4 News.

source/content: adweek.com/TVNewser/CNN-Revolving Door (headline edited)

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pix: cnn.com

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SUDAN

IRAQI-BRITISH: Inside Architect Zaha Hadid’s Final Masterpiece Built for Sustainability

Sharjah HQ of waste management operator Beeah aims to lay foundations for a greener future.

A striking Sharjah building in the shape of a sand dune is primed to be a beacon of sustainability and serve as a fitting legacy for renowned architect Zaha Hadid.

The headquarters of waste management operator Beeah was the last project designed by Zaha Hadid before her death in 2016.

Her team constructed a modern masterpiece across 9,000 square metres, using sustainable materials to create a building with 40 per cent of its power provided by the sun.

Illuminated, sweeping staircases take visitors up to an art gallery on the first floor, with screens showing a time-lapse video to explain the building’s five year construction.

Now open to full capacity of 500 workers, the building is breaking new ground in how to provide a sustainable working environment.

Green vision

“We aim to operate as sustainably as possible, and used recycled materials in the construction of the building,” said Nada Taryam, managing director of Beeah HQ, which manages waste management across the country.

“Native plants have been used in the landscaping and reduced the amount of water consumption.

“A power pack stores excess energy from the photovoltaic panels, so we have a holistic strategy to achieve sustainability.

“Every project has its own specific requirements when energy comes into play, but the basis on which we have built this design can be learnt from.

“All of these sustainability measures can be taken and applied to other projects.”

The building’s high thermal mass allows heat to be absorbed during the day and dissipated at night to encourage cooling, while its curved structure allows the flow of natural sunlight to reduce the energy required for lighting.

An artificial intelligence system enables the building near the Alsajaa industrial area to learn to become more efficient as more people use it.

Its developers say it conforms to the highest standards of energy efficiency in the world.

Windows are positioned to reduce solar glare, while special glass cuts radiant thermal energy to keep the building cooler during summer.

While the glass limits the entry of infrared and ultraviolet light, solar panels supported by Tesla-made battery packs capture the power of the sun and store it to run the building’s air conditioning system.

The building’s components and management systems are integrated to maintain and improve its efficiencies.

Conference rooms are equipped with technology to automatically transcribe meeting minutes and email them to participants.

The building is the third in the UAE to be designed by Zaha Hadid architects, following the Sheikh Zayed Bridge, opened in Abu Dhabi in 2010, and The Opus hotel and apartments complex opened in Business Bay, Dubai, in 2018.

“As it learns from its occupancy, this building could potentially become one of the most sustainable buildings in the UAE,” said Ms Taryam.

“Certain decisions were taken, such as using glass reinforced panels on the ceiling which refract the sunlight so contribute to its efficiency and temperature control.

Defying convention

“There is a misconception about what these kind of buildings should look like, and we have defied that.

“There isn’t a rule book to say green buildings should be lined with solar panels. We have proved we can integrate architecture as well as sustainability to create something iconic.

“Zaha Hadid has something that distinguishes her from any other architect of her time. Every project of hers has its own context, but her ideas are adapted for each specific project.”

source/content: thenationalnews.com (headline edited)

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The headquarters of Sharjah waste management operator Beeah was the last project designed by Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid before her death in 2016. All photos: Andrew Scott / The National

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IRAQI / BRITISH/ SHARJAH, UAE

IRAQ-BRITISH: If Memory Serves: Lamees Ibrahim’s Quest to Dish up the Iraq of her Past

In our continuing series on inspiring life stories across continents, we learn what made her leave a career in medical science for a ‘cuisine lab called the kitchen’.

When Lamees Ibrahim left Baghdad in the 1970s, certain parts of the city, not least the riverside strip of fish restaurants along Abu Nawas, became a fixed ideal in her memory.

After an interval of three decades, a return to the flat bank of the Tigris in 2004 was an unexpected low point in a thoroughly disturbing homecoming.

The street once the “pomegranate of Baghdad” was no longer filled with diners being entertained by poets and musicians, engulfed in the aroma of arguably Iraq’s national dish, masgouf.

Instead, Dr Ibrahim stood shaken as she took in a rubble-strewn wasteland populated by a handful of struggling fish sellers.

Yet one sense was still powerfully triggered by the fresh carp grilling over the charred wood.

“It was not in very good shape,” she tells The National. “There were only bits of its old self left, but the smell was still amazing. There are certain scents that you smell and you think, ‘Wow, this is Baghdad.’ It is very, very specific. If you enjoy samak masgouf once, you will never forget it.”

Dr Ibrahim had made a long, hazardous journey from her home in London, where she moved decades earlier: marrying, earning a PhD in Pathology, raising four children.

Her husband was with her as she set out from Jordan in a car just after Fajr prayers that day, to “feel” her land, see her extended family, and show her eldest child, Maysa, her ancestral roots.

But the Baghdad conjured up by the smell of the barbecued fish was gone; the deserted, bombed-out streets were not at all familiar to her. They did, however, bring back one particularly strong recollection from childhood.

Sometimes in the summer months, the young Lamees would gather with her three siblings around their father to be regaled by stories about Iraq.

“I remember one day when he said: ‘Look, we built this country, the Iraqis, and we have to keep doing that. If every one of us contributed their own brick then the wall would go up and up, and we should keep on building.’ I never forgot that,” Dr Ibrahim said, “and I felt that we had to add our little brick to the wall. We had to make Iraq keep going.”

She returned to London on a mission to help rebuild Iraq in some way for the younger generations that would never have a chance to experience what it had been in the golden years.

The need to describe the country’s rich history and accomplishments was urgent, but whatever she put down on paper seemed inextricably tied to cooking. So it was that she came to realise it would be through food that she could preserve connections to things past.

“I wanted to write something, I needed to write, I had to write,” she says. “So I started. Eventually, it became a cookbook with a bit of history and anecdotes about culture, about civilisation.

“My background has nothing to do with cooking. It’s not cuisines of any kind, but I have a passion for Iraq. It’s my motherland, my country.”

When the 21-year-old Lamees had come to London in the early 1970s, it was to pursue a postgraduate medical degree at King’s College and then head back to her beloved Baghdad. Soon after arriving, she married and her life, she says, became busy but limited as she immersed herself in studying and research projects.

“You go to college, you study, you attend lectures, you come home, you open the books, read, read, read, have some dinner, and go back to college,” she says.

“I didn’t know that I was homesick until one day during Ramadan I saw an elderly woman going into King’s College Hospital with her black abaya and veil. I said to her ‘marhaba hajji’ and she was shocked. She hugged me, and I went home, crying all the way.

“I cried because I had a goal. I wanted to get a degree, and the sooner I got it, the sooner I could go back home. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”

She was haunted by her homeland, by such memories as the heady perfume of jasmine and the days in her youth when the children would pick the flowers and turn them into long necklaces.

But the months turned into years, and years into decades. At first, returning to Baghdad was difficult as the academic successes mounted and her family grew. It became impossible when Saddam Hussein came to power, with Dr Ibrahim fearing that she would be detained were she to attempt a visit, and never see her three daughters and son again.

Her father died and then, on news of the death of her mother, Dr Ibrahim made the fateful trip when she found a country that was “not what I was expecting, of course. It was demolished, devastated.”

The resulting homage, The Iraqi Cookbook, was published in 2009, a labour of love with the name of each dish painstakingly recorded in Arabic. Samak masgouf, of course, features, and Dr Ibrahim advises in the foreword that all visitors to Iraq should try it in one of the cafes and restaurants on the bank of the Tigris.

“I came back to London with one idea in mind, which is something that as a girl I grew up to learn,” she says. “I must do something for my country. I need to tell my children what my country is like, our history, our culture, our ability to do what we did in the old days.”

She is speaking by Zoom from her home in Richmond-Upon-Thames, her voice at times faltering and cracking with emotion as she talks about dedicating herself to bringing Iraq to the diaspora.

“Iraq to me is very important, very important,” Dr Ibrahim says. “It is in my blood. It’s in my genes. It’s my history.”

The book sold out in the UK and the US, and was reprinted by popular demand. Bit by bit, the time-consuming process of writing and re-writing, working with publishers and photographers, the press interviews had taken Dr Ibrahim away from her career in pathology.

“And I never went back,” she says. “I’m still very interested. I read a lot about Covid. I follow the research, but I’m not going back to that lab. I have a cuisine lab called the kitchen.”

With the emergence of the pandemic, Dr Ibrahim revisited experiments that she had begun as a teenager when she would try to make her mother’s recipes without meat. Sometimes it was successful, she acknowledges, sometimes not.

As a child, though, she had never been as fond of lamb as her siblings were. The family cat adored her, loitering under the table at lunchtimes for the morsels of the daily stew that Lamees would sneak down to her.

During lockdown, her own children became “guinea pigs” for her avant-garde creations as Dr Ibrahim collected together an array of vegan offerings that would appeal to a young audience interested in preserving the planet.

“Dishes don’t need to have meat to have the taste and flavour, for it to smell like an Iraqi dish,” she says. “Iraqi cooking can be vegan, as well as meat and fish-centric.

“If you can preserve the taste of the flavour of the dish, go for it. Many Iraqi dishes are, in fact, vegan but we ate them before ever knowing the word ‘vegan’.”

When one of Dr Ibrahim’s friends called to see how she was faring with the tight coronavirus restrictions in the capital, she told him she had been busily cooking all the recipes to be photographed for The Iraqi Vegan Cookbook. Curious, he wanted to know whether she was including any kubba, knowing that Dr Ibrahim had devoted an entire chapter to its many meaty variants in her first book.

On learning that the new book would contain Kubbet Jeriesh, Kubbet Halab and another recipe that Dr Ibrahim made from lentils, he answered: “Only three?”

His grandmother, he said, had never enjoyed meat in her kubba so the family reinvented the dish to suit her preferences, stuffing the shells with pine nuts, onion, spices and parsley.

“If all these years ago we had vegan Iraqis, we have plenty today,” Dr Ibrahim says, smiling.

The Iraqi Vegan Cookbook had been due out on December 31, but the release has been delayed not least because of the queues of hauliers that built up in Calais and Dover as a result of Brexit and the French shutdown of the border when the new strain of the coronavirus emerged in the UK.

Rescheduled for release at the end of January, Dr Ibrahim hopes that sharing more of the oldest cuisine in the world will counter some of the negative perceptions that persist about Iraq today.

“Iraq is positive,” she says. “Iraq is full of history, full of culture. This is the cradle of civilisation. I don’t like to talk about what’s going on now. I would like to talk about the positivity of all of our achievements.

“I feel nowadays, if I add that little brick, then I have added something which I would be proud of as an Iraqi living in the West. Living in Iraq, we can build from within. We are living in the West – all my children are also living in the West, but we add our bricks from our side, from outside the country.”

Dr Ibrahim is modest about her contribution to the wall that her father told her about all those years ago, hesitating to use the word achievement. If her writing can be described as such, she says, she wants to make clear that it was never about her. It was always for Iraq.

source/content: thenationalnews.com (headline edited)

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Dr Lamees Ibrahim has dedicated herself to bringing the country of her birth to the diaspora: ‘Iraq is very important to me. It is in my blood. It is in my genes. It is my history,’ she says. Courtesy of The Mosaic Rooms
The homage to Dr Ibrahim’s homeland, ‘The Iraqi Cookbook’, was published in 2009, a labour of love with the name of each dish painstakingly recorded in Arabic. Courtesy Lamees Ibrahim 

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BRITISH / IRAQI

ARAB FILMS 2022: Year in Review: The Best Arab Films of 2022

William Mullally picks the best movies by Arab filmmakers over the past year.

‘Perfect Strangers’

Director: Wissam Smayra

Starring: Mona Zaki, Nadine Labaki, Georges Khabbaz

The original Italian version of “Perfect Strangers” had already been remade across the world before its Arabic-language iteration was released on Netflix. But nowhere else has it caused the stir that it did in the Middle East. The conceit is simple: Seven friends at a dinner party decide to play a game, placing their phones in the center of the table to make their calls and messages known to all. As the night goes on, their secrets are revealed, upending everything they thought they knew about each other. Not only was this the best version of the film so far, with pitch-perfect casting and memorable performances, it was also the bravest: each of its stars pushed themselves in ways they had never been able to in regional film previously, shattering taboos, capturing the world’s attention and changing Arab cinema forever.

‘Kira & El Gin’

Director: Marwan Hamed

Starring: Karim Abdel Aziz, Hend Sabri, Razane Jammal

The highest grossing film in the history of Egyptian cinema, “Kira & El Gin” is Marwan Hamed at his best. This is a crowd-pleasing historical epic that not only captures the spirit of Egypt past and present, but sets a course for a new future for the country’s film industry. Following two men fighting the British occupation in Egypt during the 1919 revolution, Hamed’s film rarely sags despite its nearly three-hour run time and sprawling cast, structured more as a suspense thriller than a social studies lecture. As Hamed jumps from genre to genre across his films, proving equally adept at each, one wonders how he will top this, should he try. But it would be foolish to bet against him as he continues to notch up career high after career high.

‘Boy From Heaven’

Director: Tarik Saleh

Starring: Fares Fares, Tawfeek Barhom, Mohammad Bakri

Egyptian-Swedish filmmaker Tarik Saleh has a bone to pick. Growing up in Europe, he was always labeled as ‘other’ — an idea reinforced in the books in his school library describing Arabs as “stupid” and “uncivilized.” Now firmly entrenched as a filmmaker, Saleh refuses to make films tailored to the Western gaze, turning his camera deep into the inner workings of Egyptian society and forcing international viewers to accept that they are seeing things through eyes that are not their own. In “Boy from Heaven,” Saleh goes deep into a corruption scandal at the influential Al-Azhar Mosque, following a hero whose strong Muslim faith is unrattled as he uncovers the evils hiding from plain sight, with scenes and images you won’t soon forget.

‘The Alleys’

Director: Bassel Ghandour

Starring: Maisa Abd Elhadi, Nadia Omran, Munther Rayahna

In 2014’s “Theeb,” Jordanian writer Bassel Ghandour crafted perhaps the greatest example of the Bedouin Western in cinema history. With “The Alleys,” Ghandour steps into the director’s chair for the first time and turns the streets of Amman into the setting for a modern noir, in which the darkness hiding in the city’s back streets slowly boils to the surface. The film’s sprawling nature is both benefit and detriment, but it’s a stirring snapshot nonetheless, elevated by star-making performances from Maisa Abd Elhadi and Nadia Omran.

‘You Resemble Me’

Director: Dina Amer

Starring: Dina Amer, Mouna Soualem, Lorenza Grimaudo

Filmmaker Dina Amer is most familiar to global audiences for her fearless journalism in 2013’s “The Square” and various Vice News stories she produced as their foreign correspondent from the front lines of regional conflicts. “You Resemble Me” cements her as a filmmaker to watch, as her harrowing experimental recounting of the life of Hasna Ait Boulahcen, the woman miscredited as Europe’s first suicide bomber, is a deeply affecting dissection of the roots of terrorism and the racism that Arab women face in Europe. One of the most original films released this year.

‘The Swimmers’

Director: Sally El-Hosaini

Starring: Nathalie Issa, Manal Issa, Kinda Alloush

The story of Yusra and Sara Mardini, two sisters from Syria who risked their lives to escape conflict for a better future only for one of them to become an Olympian, is so powerful that a film capturing their story could not help but be inspirational. El-Hosaini, the Welsh-Egyptian filmmaker behind 2012’s excellent “My Brother the Devil,” made it into something more — a thought-provoking reframing of the refugee experience at a time when Syrians and many others still suffer from that stigma, as well as a chronicle of women’s empowerment as the structures that held them back crumble, all told with a light touch that never alienates the huge global viewership the Netflix film has enjoyed.

‘Mediterranean Fever’

Director: Maha Haj

Starring: Amer Hlehel, Ashraf Farha, Anat Hadid

Palestinian cinema is often, understandably, a no-holds-barred dissection of the plight of its people. But that is by no means its only manifestation, as Maha Haj, a previous collaborator with renowned satirist Elia Suleiman, proves with her latest feature, “Mediterranean Fever,” the follow up to her acclaimed 2016 feature “Personal Affairs.” Haj focuses here on smaller human problems, following an aspiring writer who suffers from depression and befriends a small-time crook living next door. At times comedic, the film drifts into dark territory while always keeping its audience guessing. After winning best screenplay at Cannes in 2022, Haj has confirmed herself as one of the region’s most singular voices.

‘The Blue Caftan’

Director: Maryam Touzani

Starring: Saleh Bakri, Lubna Azabal, Ayoub Missioui

There is no more versatile actor working in Arab cinema today than Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri, who, with Touzani’s “The Blue Caftan,” has capped off a tremendous run of eight films in the last two years, including Farah Nabulsi’s Oscar-nominated “The Present” and Mohammed Diab’s “Amira.” This is perhaps his best performance yet. He plays Halim, a struggling master tailor in Morocco whose life is turned upside down when he and his wife take in a young apprentice. Stealing the strikingly-filmed show, however, is his co-star Lubna Azabal as his wife Mina, who is quietly enduring her own private battle with breast cancer as she and her husband struggle to communicate.  With this and 2019’s “Adam,” Touzani is already one of Morocco’s great chroniclers.   

‘Raven Song’

Director: Mohamed Al-Salman

Starring: Asem Alawad, Ibrahim Alkhairallah, Abdullah Aljafal

The singular contemporary Gulf filmmaker Mohamed Al-Salman is not making films so that the world may understand Saudi Arabia — he’s making them so that Saudi Arabia may understand itself. “Raven Song,” his debut feature after years of acclaimed shorts, is a stylish jump back to 2002 in the Kingdom, a formative time for both the filmmaker and his country, in which the fight between traditionalism and modernity was so heated that it manifested prominently even in the world of poetry. At times dream-like, “Raven Song” is a film that defies definition, with interpretations likely to roll in for years to come.

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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ARABIC FILMS

BRITISH / LEBANESE: Central Bank of Ireland, Governor Gabriel Makhlouf confronts crisis with the perspective of a well-travelled man

With a Lebanese name and a Cairo birthplace in the background, Gabriel Makhlouf is steering Ireland’s financial recovery.

As governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Gabriel Makhlouf is much preoccupied by the issue of resilience in a small, open economy challenged by a year of pandemic.

Mr Makhlouf’s own peripatetic life has shown him how precious an asset the quality of adaptability is at a time of change, be it in a person or for a national economic system.

Upheaval and the Makhloufs on the move could be a theme stretching back to when his father’s side of the family travelled across the Mediterranean from their Lebanese homeland to Cyprus.

When the island was part of the Empire, the family became British subjects and Makhlouf Snr ended up working at the embassy in Cairo after the Second World War.

It was in that palatial building near the Nile that he fell for a Greek-Armenian woman whose forebears had fled the historical turmoil of Izmir in 1922. Her family moved to Athens where she has come full circle to live today.

Mr Makhlouf was talking to The National at a time when Ireland’s strict national Level 5 lockdown is both defining his job and providing a perspective on the decades of movement and upheaval that have brought him to where he is now.

At a conference last week, the governor spoke of how the outlook had deteriorated in 2021 with the renewed lockdown. The short-term need to bolster the economy coincided with structural changes from technological innovation and climate policies. Ireland suffered a 7.1 per cent slump in domestic demand last year but is expected to see a 2.9 per cent increase in 2021.

Unemployment is predicted to reach 9.3 per cent this year and for an economy with a high level of property-focused debt, ensuring that households are supported is a priority. Mr Makhlouf points out that growth is not the same as having the capacity to recover quickly.

“We cannot anticipate every type of shock but we can build resilience,” he said in his keynote address. “Resilience is what has prevented the financial system repeating its previous failure. Resilience is what has protected households, businesses and communities against the worst of the damage from the shock of the pandemic.

“Economic resilience is what helps communities to manage the disruption caused by change and to manage the economic transitions we are living in right now.”

In providing leadership during financial strife, it is perhaps a boon to have some sense of dislocation. He describes his mother’s family as refugees. His parents met in a milieu that was the product of worlds with roots as far back as the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians. And yet the people of Mr Makhlouf’s parents’ generation made their choices and moved to build new lives.

“My mother, who was born in Athens, had spent most of her life outside of Greece, but when my dad retired she came back,” he recalls. “My dad moved on and lived all over the world and settled in Greece at the end, before he passed away.”

Mr Makhlouf was born in Egypt but left at the age of three when his father joined the United Nations and moved to the Congo. Makhlouf pere’s time as an international diplomat exposed the young Gabriel to many cultures.

“My first language was French, because my parents’ mutual tongue was French,” he says. “So I learned English when I was about seven when we went to Bangladesh, and when we got to the Pacific we lived in Samoa.

“I went to school in Samoa. My parents then decided they ought to send me to boarding school if I was going to get a proper education and not one that changed every few years.”

Travelling during the school holidays from the school in England was a regular odyssey in itself. “The trip to get to Samoa and back to England involved stopping in Los Angeles, Honolulu and Pago Pago, an American territory pronounced ‘Pango Pango’,” he recalls.

“But then they moved to the Philippines, they moved to Fiji, they were in Ethiopia and they were in Thailand. So, you know, my brother and I got used to this life.”

It is a puzzle, then, to establish the appeal to the young Mr Makhlouf of embarking on a career as a Whitehall civil servant. He explains it as following his father’s footsteps in to the bureaucracy. Certainly, the career path was more about determination and making opportunities than wanderlust.

“I don’t think I joined the civil service for stability, to be honest, but maybe somewhere deep inside me there might have been that,” he says. “I joined the civil service really for interest. I joined as a tax inspector at the beginning. And it was an interesting career option – it involved law, it involved accountancy and it gave early opportunity to manage.”

Fate intervened to resume the family’s roving tradition when Mr Makhlouf was headhunted in 2010 to run New Zealand’s finance ministry, the Treasury. There, he was responsible for developing a measure of well-being as a replacement for the traditional gross domestic product yardstick.

In one memorable allusion in a speech he compared the role of an economist to that of an artisan, challenged with weaving together different strands of evidence into a structured framework.

Before upping sticks to the southern hemisphere, Mr Makhlouf at one point worked directly with then-UK chancellor Gordon Brown, who became prime minister at the time of the global financial crisis in 2008.

Asked about his former boss and a recent warning that the world now faces another lost decade or perhaps even worse than after that crash, Mr Makhlouf acknowledges how bad it was last time around but disagreed on the dangers now.

“I think that there is one massive difference between the crisis in 2008 and today’s crisis,” he says. “Which is that the crisis in 2008 was a crisis of the financial system, the financial system basically collapsed.

“Today, the financial system is still standing, and it’s the financial system that’s playing a very important role in supporting businesses and households through the pandemic and hopefully into a recovery and out the other end.”

World leaders are proving to be different kinds of players, having recognised that this is an economic crisis caused by a health crisis. “Governments throughout the world have chosen to close down economies for the sake of people’s health. In some respects that is been planned. In comparison to what happened in 2008 where actually events completely overwhelmed us.”

So Mr Brown’s fears are too pessimistic? “A lot of the changes and challenges that are ahead of us, I think if we manage them, then I think they can be managed well,” he says.

Mr Makhlouf takes heart from the rapid adjustment of businesses to home-working and new patterns of demand. “Economies across the world and certainly in the industrialised world have adapted to the restrictions,” he says. “More businesses are set up for that and more consumers were ready and knew how to proceed.”

The scale of “technological adaptation” since he accepted the Irish job in 2019 is something he could well have guessed was just around the corner.

The governor has not been immune to the extraordinary pressures imposed by lockdowns. Even at the outset of the pandemic, the family’s far-flung ways isolated him in Athens just as the 2,000-strong staff of the central bank in Dublin were forced to work from home.

With his mother ill in hospital, Mr Makhlouf was on hand to help her recover. “Effectively, I carried on working like everyone else via laptops and iPads. It’s quite an extraordinary thing that we all seem to have got used to.”

History means that a British citizen running the Irish central bank will always be a talking point. The moment that the UK left the EU put Mr Makhlouf in an invidious spot.

First, there is migration of businesses and banking activity from the City of London to Dublin so that firms remain within the EU umbrella. Is this an opportunity?

“Overall, I think the impact of Brexit is negative. It’s negative for Ireland and for the UK and for the EU,” he says. “We’re most exposed as a country in the agricultural sector, in particular. The fact that there was, at the end of the day, a deal albeit a very slim deal was better than there being no deal.

“On financial services, we have seen post-referendum a move of business from London to Dublin,” he agrees. “I’m not sure I would necessarily call it an opportunity at all. I think from my perspective as a regulator this increases the need for us to manage and ensure the financial system works properly.”

With his son, brother and wife’s relatives living in London, the governor observes that the pandemic has played a greater role than Brexit in cutting off families and friends. But things are different.

“I feel sorry for someone like my son — his opportunities to work in 27 other countries have now been limited. So his generation has lost out,” he says. “Ireland and Irish people have got many connections in the UK, we recognise Brexit has happened but those connections haven’t disappeared, they haven’t been lost.”

As two movie-perfect countries on the periphery of continents with roughly similar populations, one wonders what the biggest change is for Mr Makhlouf in switching from New Zealand to Ireland.

There is the remoteness of the former compared with the latter’s position within the wealthy European market. But the answer, he feels, is the perspective on China. In New Zealand, much time was spent thinking about and visiting that part of east Asia. He himself went at least nine times.

“The role that Asia has been playing and will play in the 21st century usually dominated a lot of thinking. And what’s interesting coming back to Europe, and perhaps now it’s not surprising at one level, but it was noticeable how little of our time was spent thinking about Asia.”

For the well-travelled, there is the unchanging truth that proximity is often the most powerful force in geography.

source/content: thenationalnews.com (headline edited) (feb 18th, 2021)

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The lockdown both defines Gabriel Makhlouf’s job as Governor of the Irish central bank and provides a perspective on the decades of movement and upheaval that have brought him where he is today. Courtesy Central Bank of Ireland

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BRITISH / LEBANESE

Arab World the Winner in Memorable World Cup

As the FIFA World Cup reaches its climactic end, one cannot help but reflect on what an extraordinary political event it has been. Those who argue that sport and politics should be decoupled will have found it hard watching politics as an ever-present from the day Qatar was awarded the event back in 2010 and at every single match since the tournament began on Nov. 20.


But perhaps one of the most fascinating and hopefully impactful thrills at the World Cup has been the rare opportunity to remind the world that, for all its troubles, fissures and rivalries, the peoples of the Arab world do have much in common and that football has highlighted that reality every day in Qatar.

Some might question these signs of togetherness among fellow Arabs. Yet there were copious examples where it shone. Three achievements stood out.


Firstly, for Morocco to beat Spain and then Portugal in the knockout rounds was exceptional, especially following their defeat of Belgium, the second-ranked side in the world, in the group stage. There was more than an element of delight in seeing a former colony defeating, in Spain, its one-time colonial master. Morocco will get the chance to overcome its other colonial power, France, in the semifinals on Wednesday. In fact, star player Achraf Hakimi was born in the poor suburbs of Madrid. Morocco were the only team in the quarterfinals not from Europe or South America. Few in the region were not cheering them on. A sense of collective pride emerged as a result of the North African country’s success in becoming the first Arab and African state to reach the semifinals.

One might have thought that, given the dire state of relations between Morocco and Algeria, that Algerians would have shied away from joining in the festivities. Evidence suggests otherwise. Algerians were out supporting Morocco as enthusiastically as anyone else in the region. A friend was in Paris and told me: “After one of the Morocco victories, there were lots of Algerian supporters and flags joining their Moroccan brothers and sisters in celebration.” The Algerian captain and superstar Riyad Mahrez was quick to praise the Atlas Lions’ achievements.


Secondly, Tunisia beating reigning world champions France in the group stage was also an unforgettable moment. This was the first time they had beaten European opposition in the World Cup. This was every bit as big a win as in 1982, when Algeria beat the mighty West Germany in their first ever World Cup game.

Third, the Saudi victory over Argentina was another huge milestone. In many ways, this ignited the World Cup for the Arab world.


A sense of pride has also broken out that many of the finest players in the world come from this region. Hakim Ziyech for Morocco is one. Mahrez and Mohammed Salah were not in Doha but are still at the top of the sport. Kylian Mbappe, a star of this tournament, has an Algerian mother.


The key players in the Arab teams largely play in Europe. This shows football at its best in terms of breaking down barriers. Fourteen out of the 26-man Morocco squad were born outside of the country, showing how the team relies on the Moroccan diaspora. This includes Ziyech, who opted not to play for the Netherlands. That points to one challenge that countries like Morocco face, as they lack the footballing infrastructure to develop and nurture enough talent at home.

This World Cup has also often been about one country that is not there. At every single game featuring an Arab side, and plenty others beside, the Palestinian flag was there. It is a political symbol and a defiant message that the Arabs will not forget or ignore what is happening to the Palestinians in the diaspora and under occupation. As an even more brutally right-wing coalition is about to take power in Israel, this message should be carefully noted in the US and European capitals. Palestine still matters.


Israeli hasbaristas were also caught out. Having belittled and mocked those who claimed otherwise, they discovered that, despite the normalization deals, Arabs are not willing to gloss over Israel’s crimes and oppression. Time and time again, Israeli journalists, while trying to pretend everything was all lovely and wonderful with their newfound Arab friends, found that “free Palestine” was pushed back in their faces. Many locals snubbed their requests for interviews.

” A World Cup in the Arab world has brought some cheer to a region that has been hit hard by wars and other crises. “

Chris Doyle

Palestinian armbands and keffiyehs were being worn at nearly every match by huge numbers of fans. The sheer arrogance of believing that a state could oppress millions of people and that all would be peace and happiness was exposed as the nonsense it is. The Moroccan players had no hesitation in raising the Palestinian flag after their wins over Spain and Portugal.


Many Arabs also expressed admiration for the courage of the Iranian team after the players refused to sing their national anthem ahead of their opening match against England. This points to the widespread sympathy many Arabs feel toward Iranians, notably currently the women, who are struggling for their freedoms.

The Western media has been quick to point out all that was wrong with this World Cup. It is about time it also highlighted what has gone right. For all the criticisms of Qatar in the run-up to the cup over issues such as workers’ rights, one of the key elements of its bid has been fulfilled. Football in the region has been the winner. The atmosphere has been considerably warmer than many expected, with largely good-natured relations among fans of all countries. It seems that rival fans have not needed to be segregated, showing the festival-like atmosphere. Fan violence does not seem to have featured. The largest numbers of fans, of course, came from the Arab world, with Saudi Arabia providing the largest number from a single country.

Many outside the region were dismissive of the claims that football mattered in the Middle East. One leading commentator contemptuously told me, while on the BBC, that Qatar did not have a footballing heritage. Yet the region should never have been ignored. A World Cup in the Arab world has brought some cheer to a region that has been hit hard by wars and other crises, and whose peoples have not had much to celebrate in recent years.

Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, in London. Twitter: @Doylech

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News’ point of view

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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Palestinians watch the World Cup quarterfinal between Morocco and Portugal in Gaza City, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2022. (AP Photo)

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ARAB WORLD

SUDANESE AMERICAN: Alsarah, Singer, Songwriter, and Ethnomusicologist

A singer, songwriter, and ethnomusicologist, Alsarah is a self-proclaimed practitioner of East African music, inspired by songs and cultures of Africa and the Middle East. Throughout her career, she performed as a band member of Sounds of Tarab, in addition to producing songs and albums under her stage name, and her band with her sister, Alsarah and the Nubatones. Furthermore, she was also featured in the documentary “Beats of the Antonov” in 2014.

Alsarah was born Khartoum, Sudan in 1982. As a child, her parents worked as activists at a time when many encouraged citizens to vote in the 1986 elections. Following the coup d’etat in 1989, however, her family fled the country to Yemen before the nation’s civil war forced them to relocate to Boston, the United States in 1994.

At this point in life, Alsarah turned to music for solace. In fact, music has been a big part of her childhood, with the very first music that spoke to her being played during her family’s activism in Sudan. Growing up, she studied ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University before relocating to Brooklyn, in New York, where became lead singer of the Zanzibari band Sounds of Tarab.

In 2010, Alsarah and her sister would start a band entitled “Alsarah and the Nubatones” along with band members Haig Manoukian, Kodjovi Mawuena, and Rami El-Aasser. The band released their debut EP, “Soukura,” followed by full-length album “Silt” in 2014, “Manara” in 2016, and “Manara Remixed” in 2017. In addition, Alsarah has also produced songs as a solo artist with albums such as “Aljawal,” “The Crow,” and “Min Ana.”

In general, many of Alsarah’s songs were influenced by artists from Sudan, Zanzibar, and Ethiopia. Her songs are available on Spotify and Deezer.

source/content: abouther.com (headline edited)

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AMERICAN – SUDANESE