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A Stranger in Africa
As I stood in the humid, dank cell, I found myself hesitating a bit, peering down into the cavernous doorways of the male slave dungeon of Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle. It was April 2001, more than a...
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When It Comes to Stopping Genocide, There’s a Will But Not a Way
What does genocide mean? What are its causes? And what kind of actions can be taken—in the U.S. and elsewhere—to stem this horrifying, ongoing global problem? Kal Raustiala, director of the UCLA Burkle...
View ArticleInvite Tunisia to Join the European Union
Tunisia, welcome to Europe—if you still want to join us. Four years ago, in Germany’s newspaper for intellectuals, Die Zeit, the prominent author Gero von Randow called for Tunisia to be granted...
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Recovering the Stolen Histories of American Slaves
For the past eight years I’ve been living with 72 people. These 28 men, 25 women, 12 girls, and seven boys are long dead—they were Africans sold into captivity and shipped to America in the mid-1700s....
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Are International Soccer Moguls Preying on the Dreams of the World’s Poor?
Over a decade ago, I was running on a treadmill at a hotel gym in downtown Cairo, where I was working as a journalist for The Associated Press. The place was small and gloomy, but given Cairo’s...
View ArticleThe Bedouin People Who Blur the Boundaries of Egyptian Identity
In November 1940, a group of Bedouins from Egypt’s Western Desert region sent an unusual petition to the Egyptian government. The petition arrived at a time of great turmoil in the country. Just five...
View ArticleA Letter From Nigeria, Where Coping With COVID Entails Twitterstorms,...
We wake up on a March morning that feels shaken, the air suddenly colder, drained of one energy and infused with another. The numbers from Lagos have increased again. “We have to go now, this is...
View ArticleWhen Asia and Africa Envisioned a New World Order
“No race holds the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of strength / and there is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory,” wrote the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire in Notebook of a Return to the...
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Don’t Close the Curtains on Kenya’s Acrobats
Acrobatic troops across Kenya’s coast continue to perform at star-studded venues while struggling to support themselves financially. (Photograph by Sabine Skiba) The majority of acrobats working on...
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My Father, the Madrasah, and Me
On a phone call the other day with a new friend, Zay, we ended up on the topic of religion. “Did you attend madrasah?” I asked her, referring to the Arabic schools that offer primary and secondary...
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