The Parisian

In October 1919, the unrest in Egypt was still simmering. Britain had denied her request for independence at the Peace Conference, and when the leaders of the resistance were exiled to Malta the women of Cairo marched in protest. But the general strike had at last been called off and trade was returning to healthy levels between Egypt and the Levan

surfeited

solemnity

abaya

Sedd-el-Bahr

At the Ottomans’ overthrow, the streets of Jerusalem had flooded with revellers, and the citizens danced and whistled and cut down the telegraph wires to take home as trophies. But in Nablus the reaction was quite different. There the crowds gathered outside the municipal hospital, that symbol of Nablus’s modernity, not to support but to protest th

zeppelin

Haj Taher’s grandfather began his business carting crates of Nabulsi soap on mules down through Gaza and into Cairo, returning after weeks with huge rope-bound bundles of fresh Egyptian cotton, which he sold in the Nablus khan, using the profits to buy more soap, travel to Cairo, and repeat the circuit. When Haj Taher’s father inherited the busines

Once the war ended, the meetings in Faruq’s apartment became less frequent, and when the friends did assemble the tone of conversation was sober and apprehensive. Yusef Mansour was fixated on news of the famine in Beirut. Omar became inarticulate in his anger against the Triple Entente. Midhat drew closest to the other Nabulsi in the group, Hani Mu