These are the lands of testament and prophecy, of sacrifice and sacrament, of seers and sages, of vision and vicissitude, of warriors and holy men. The spiritual and the temporal have melded here since time immemorial. We still see the remnants of ancient empires and the echoes of their faiths. We can chart their decline and fall in the fortunes of their monuments and their mausoleums, in the “tumbled towers and fallen stones, broken statues, empty tombs” where “ghosts of commoners and kings walk the walls and catacombs of the castles and the shrines”. Histories carved in stone,  mysteries locked in stone, as “canyons and castles pass ageless and ageing and captive in time”.  Forward to East – An Arab Anthology.  © Paul Hemphill  

Jerusalem   القدس

• Amazing Grace – there’s magic in the air
• Messianic Carpet Rides
• Rocky road to Heaven’s Gate
• Once in Royal David’s Citadel
• The grand old New Imperial Hotel
• Nova Via Dolorosa
• King Herod’s edifice complex
• Five things about about Masada
• There rides a Peace Train
• Riding shotgun in Jerusalem
• O  Jerusalem – a song

Israel and Palestine  إسرائيل وفلسطين

• The Mizrahi Factor
• O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie…
• A Fortess But Not Yet a Home
• Dear Zealots – letters from a divided land
• Rocky road to Heaven’s Gate
• Ahed Tamimi – A Family Affair
• Riding shotgun in Jerusalem
• The View from a Balcony in Jerusalem
• Is an Israeli-Palestinian confederation possible?
• The hand that signed the paper
• Seeing through the eyes of the other
• Castles made of sand
• Throwing Abbas under the bus
• Children of Abraham
• Bob Dylan’s 115th dream – a Jerusalem reverie 
• The Deal of the Century is designed to fail
• Clouded Vision – no peace, no plan, no Palestine, no point
• Righteous Among the Nations
• Visualizing the Palestinian Return – the art of Ismail Shammout
• تصور عودة الفلسطينيين – فن إسماعيل شموط
• Facing the music – no dance parties in Palestine 
• Tel al Sabi – Tarkeeth’s ANZAC Story
• Al Tariq al Salabiyin – the Crusaders’ Trail 
• Exit West – a hejira of hope 
• “You want it darker?” … Gaza and the devil that never went away …
• Total war in an urban landscape – Israel’s military quandary
• The flight into Egypt … a modern riff on an old tale 
• How the jihadi tail wags the leftist dog 
• Lebensraum Redux – Hamas’ promise of the hereafter
• We did not weep when we were leaving – the poet of Nazareth 

Ottomans and Others العثمانيين وقصص أخرى

• A brief history of the rise and fall of the west
• Islam’s house of many mansions
• East – an anthology
• Ottoman Redux – an alternative history
• Sailing to Byzantium
• The Watchers of the Water
• Cha-cha-cha-changes
• People watching in Sultanahmet
• Pity the Nation
• Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion
• Children of the revolution
• The devil drives
• One, two, three, what are we fighting for?
• The Man with the Plan
• Rojava and the Kurdish conundrum
• The ghosts of Gandamak
• Paradise Lost – Kashmir’s bitter legacy
• Messing with the Mullahs – America’s phoney war? 
• Nowhere Man – the lonesome death of Mohamed Morsi
• Sawt al Hurriya – Egypt’s slow-burning fuse
• Sawt al Hurriya – remembering the Arab Spring
• Ruins and Bones
• The tears of Zenobia – will Palmyra rise again? 
• Tangled! – a cynics guide to alliances in the Middle East
• Tangled 2 – Libya’s bloody circus rolls on 
• O Beirut – songs for a wounded city 
• Ghayath al Madhoun – the agony of an exiled poet 
• Muzaffar al Nawab, poet of revolutions and sorrow
• Song of the Road – my hitchhiking days
• Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow – judgement in Kabul 
• Educate a girl and you educate a community – exclude her and you impoverish it 
• David Kilcullen’s 2021 wrap up – a weak US emboldens its rivals \
• Menzies’ excellent Suez Adventure 
• “Because of …” Iran’s voice of freedom
• The calculus of carnage – the mathematics of Muslim on Muslim mortality 

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