MER Article An Expensive Toy Flanked by the Cairo citadel and the Nile on its eastern and western sides, respectively, Sayyida Zaynab, a neglected neighborhood, is but a stone’s throw away from the city center. Inhabited by poor families, its old buildings are rapidly deteriorating, while new owners haphazardly add extra rooms and extensions Fayza Hassan • 3 min read
MER Article Urban Planning and Growth in Cairo Descriptions of Cairo are dominated typically by the stark imagery of an extremely concentrated population mass near asphyxiation. From this perspective, one need look no further than its inhabited rooftops, its streets choked with traffic and pollution and its crowded cemeteries, where the living r Eric Denis • 12 min read
MER Article Facts and Figures on Cairo Despite the attention focused on the problems of cities around the world -- most recently at the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul -- surprisingly little comparable data on urban centers are available, as was found by the World Resources Institute in preparing their 1996-1997 World Resources report. Population figures, for example, Sally Ethelston • 2 min read
MER Article Cairo's Poor The proliferation of more than 100 squatter communities with some 6 million inhabitants signifies only one, but perhaps the starkest, component of the growing socioeconomic disparity [1] in Cairo since Sadat’s infitah (“opening up” or economic liberalization) in 1974 and the more recent implementation of the IMF’s structural Asef Bayat • 12 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Spring 1997) The last four months in Algeria have left more than 650 civilians dead and significantly more wounded. During the month of Ramadan alone (January 10-February 7, 1997) the latest wave of car bombings and massacres killed more than 350. As many as 60,000 have died in the civil war triggered when the a The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 1996) Aswad, Barbara and Barbara Bilge, eds. Family and Gender Among American Muslims: Issues Facing Middle Eastern Immigrants and Their Descendants (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). Ayubi, Nazih. Overstating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996 (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict After Oslo Naseer Aruri, The Obstruction of Peace: The US, Israel and the Palestinians (Common Courage, 1995). Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Verso, 1995). “Palestine: Diplomacies of Defeat,” special issue of Race & Class 37/2 (October-December 1995). Edward Said, Pe Joel Beinin • 8 min read
MER Article Al Miskin International/Tainted Love What is up in Egypt? In Cairo, Mustafa Bakri, was deposed as editor-in-chief of al-Ahrar following the failure of the mutiny he led in the halls of the Liberal Party to depose of its leader, Mustafa Kamal Murad. Bakri stormed the party headquarters with 600 armed followers and had himself voted pres Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Bread Riots in Jordan On August 13, the Jordanian government lifted its subsidies on wheat. When bread prices immediately doubled, residents of the southern town of Karak demonstrated against the move, calling for a reversal of the policy and the resignation of the prime minister. The protests deteriorated into riots tha Lamis Andoni, Jillian Schwedler • 10 min read
MER Article The Destruction of Iraqi Kurdistan Less than five years ago, the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein established a “safe haven” in Iraqi Kurdistan following Iraq’s brutal suppression of an uprising against the regime during March-April 1991. The mood among the majority of Iraqi Kurds was highly optimistic: A certain measure of se Joost Hiltermann • 13 min read
MER Article On the Right to Dream, Love and Be Free Michel Khleifi, born in Nazareth in 1950, studied theater and cinema at INSAS in Belgium, where he currently resides. In 1980, Khleifi directed his first film, Fertile Memory (al-Dhakira al-Khasiba). Khleifi received international acclaim following Wedding in Galilee (‘Urs fi al-Jalil, 1987), which Livia Alexander • 8 min read
