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April 2020

"New Country" by Melissa Chimera Death has nothing to do with going away Rumi     This rainy Honolulu morning after a stormflooded our stream nearby and rainhammered the trees into the mud,the wind taking it all, or so it seems,I think of you, my friend, what you saidof night birds and turbulence, finally,of home: I want to run across the Green Line((The Green line refers to the geographical dividing line between east and west Beirut during the fifteen civil war.))until only the air they breathe divides them.And then of Gilbert, how you lovedthose floating islands of poems,the current that flows

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Poetry
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"Exit of Shirin and Farhad " by Babek Kazemi by Golan Haji, translated from the Arabic by Golan Haji & Stephen Watts  White olive flowers, poking from scorched trunks,  I smell them in the moonlight.  It’s mid-May. I hear the tender slap of your hand against its lower branches,  that glimmer in the orchard night, their silver leaves rippledby the breeze across their sheen of dust,  An owl flutters up–your son nurtured it like a tiny grouse in a guest-room,  it lives camouflaged like you, the door of its cage open, its eyes yellow  as narcissus eyes,  it will fly off tomorrow, in the dead of day, to

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Poetry, Translations
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Photographs from Beirut's abandoned cinema during the first week of the October 17 protests. On the second night of the October 17 protests, hundreds of protesters were violently tear gassed outside the Grand Serail. We got stuck in a stampede as it rained fire, and by the time we got out, we were scattered across Downtown. Somehow, my friend group managed to regroup at the Egg and climb into the dark and quiet cocoon. We sat on the ledge of the balcony, breathless and tearful, watching our city burn below us. It felt as though we’d been waiting for this for

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Photo Essay
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I have only lived in Lebanon for a little more than two months and have spent the vast majority of that time in Beirut. Yet, when I saw Yara, whose eponymous protagonist has spent her whole life in the same isolated village in the mountains, I was struck by a feeling of familiarity. Abbas Fahdel, the writer and director, makes many explicit cultural and historical references in the film, but what touched me more deeply was something of a spiritual truth conveyed intuitively through its visual language, that gave voice to what I see (and this may be an outsider’s

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Film Review
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Conversing with Lujain Jo: On documenting Lebanon’s revolution, filming jellyfish, and Bedouins On a January afternoon, I found Lujain Jo seated outside her balcony, underneath a sprawling rubber tree. She was smoking a cigarette and looked as enchanting as always, in oversized black sunglasses and a Palestinian-patterned thobe cinched at the waist with a clunky, silver Bedouin belt.  Photo By Lujain Jo I’ve known her for over two years now, having met through our work at Megaphone News, where she is a videographer. Lujain is an Iraqi filmmaker, content producer, and activist based in Beirut. Over the past ten years, she has

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Interview
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"Sea Change" by Heather Miller Disenchantment lingeredgentle, unobtrusivemeringue on taste budsephemeral, yet more sublimethan wars of unknown battalionsset up to call on death.   When invited, it dwellsin residues of ashen hopescigarette smoke in a boxliquid, smooth, like silvercarving rivers of forgetfulnessin its wake, undivided. It orbits uncharted territorieslike electrons, a nucleusparticles whirring, never collidetimeless, yet eternally gravitatinglike water, sea in motion,a green and blue that never stops. It spreads on cold tileslike maps of the multiversemillennia pile, stretch endlesslya time-lapse pastiche of mute chaos,no raging thoughts or feelings,merely a bitter aftertaste.

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Poetry
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by Samira Negrouche, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Hacker Man part animal part flower part metal part human The Approximate Man, Tristan Tzara  *Above our heads                          a vertical shadow                                                                           vibratesa shadow that flaps above our headsa clandestine whistlingon the arid plain                            above our overloaded                                                                            heads and while there’s that whistling   that whistling                                                     unanticipatedas our buzzing skullsa cement roof accommodates our moods                        on the makeshift platform                                 the constellation set

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Poetry, Translations
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ربيع علم الدين ترجمته من الانكليزيةُ علا عبدالله بعد سنين عدّة من القطيعة، تلقيت ظرفًا من بيروت من أخي مازن. لم يكن يحوي غير صورة بالأبيض والأسود. فتحت الظّرف أمام صناديق البريد في ردهة المبنى المظلمة وحاولت أن أفهم السّبب من وراء إرسال مازن لصورته مع زوجته بدون  رسالة أو حتى كلمة واحدة، فقط صورة حفل زفاف مبتذلة: الزوج خارجان من الكنيسة؛ مازن كشاب ممتلئ بات يتبع خطى أبيه ببدلة وربطة عنق سوداوان؛ البهجة في وجهه على شكل إبتسامة وحبوب الأرز ملتصقة بشعره الممشّط بإتقان. كان وقوعه في الحبّ واضحاً من نظرته لعروسته؛ بينما هي بتصفيفة شعرها المنمّقة، التي تتخلّلها

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ترجمة, نثر
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About Us
Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal was founded in the English Department of the American University of Beirut in 2012 with the intention of creating a space for both emerging and established writers who have a connection to Lebanon.
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