Hidden Cities
Urban Passages, Personal Returns
I have been thinking of calling this Blog Hidden Cities. But perhaps it is not cities that are hidden — it is the selves we once were that are hidden within their streets and alleyways. Other possible names come to mind: Cities Within, After the Return, Drifting Again, or simply Passages. I don’t know. The name should hold for now and it may change later.
The Passage Between Memory and Rubble
This essay marks a return — not only to Cairo’s Qala’a district, but to a version of the city I once carried within me. What begins as a research visit for My Cairo becomes something more unsettled: a confrontation with demolition, displacement, and the uneasy distance between memory and redevelopment. Walking between Sultan Hassan, Mohamed Ali Street, and a vanishing bridge, I found myself searching not only for what the city has become, but for what remains beneath the rubble.
Writing Arab Modernism(s) in a Time of Reckoning
This essay reflects on the long and uncertain journey behind Arab Modernism(s): City, History, and Culture — a book that began as a conversation in London and evolved into a deeply personal reckoning with cities, memory, and responsibility. What started as a scholarly inquiry into the Arab world’s encounter with modernism gradually became something more intimate: an exploration of how urban transformation reshapes not only streets and skylines, but also the way we see ourselves.