Author Archives: Arab America

Scarlet: Salma Hayek, 48, was glamorous in a floor-length red gown in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday when she received an award for her humanitarian work As well as her impressive on-screen achievements, she’s known for her selfless dedication to helping others. Salma Hayek, 48, was glamorous in a floor-length red gown in Washington, D.C. on … Continued

Undergrads leaving home to attend Arab region universities in other countries have specific needs. These range from religious accommodation to maintaining cultural values to ensuring safety concerns. Add the challenge of adapting to an adult daily life, and the total is a big transition.

Students – and parents – can have peace of mind that dorms at Arab region universities are typically designed to meet those needs, beginning with separate dorms for men and women. Talal Nizameddin, dean of student affairs at American University of Beirut, says their student housing provides a mix of the best of Eastern and Western traditions and values.

“At the same time, we understand regional traditions where the family is important and concern for safety is paramount,” says Nizameddin, whose school requires parents sign a curfew waiver policy to ensure freshmen abide school curfews.

Rebecca Munns, spokeswoman for University of Wollongong in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, says that the school’s student housing is located near mosques and there are also prayer facilities on campus.

A new school and a new country are big changes. But there are some things students can do to thrive at life in the dorms.

[Find out how to minimize culture shock at an Arab region university.]

1. Embrace change: Jordanian citizen Yazan Fanous has been living in the dorms at American University of Beirut for four years. At first, he says, it was challenging to understand the Lebanese accent, culture, politics and different lifestyles. That is, until dorm residents and the student housing office took him under their wings.

“Lebanese dorm residents came from different regions in Lebanon, and they did not only describe what goes on in their respective homes and villages, but most of them insisted I visit their homes on the weekends to see all the things they described,” says Fanous, now a resident assistant, whose job is to provide general support for residents. “They basically considered me one of their own, and I could not be more honored.”

2. Learn responsibility: Lebanese American University student Sandra Abdellatef says her move from Syria was “a major change in my lifestyle and habits.” It took her a semester to adapt, affecting her grades and her ability to socialize. Three years on, she says the experience has helped build her personality and make her more responsible.

“It equips you with the right tools to handle and fix any situation,” says Abdellataf. “While at home, as Arabs, we tend to run to our parents to fix our problems.”

Arab region dorms are typically furnished and include equipped kitchens, access to laundry facilities and cleaning services. At her dorm, Abdellataf says there’s no specialized kitchen with healthy meals. Students have to cook their own meals “or rely on fast food.”

University of Wollongong student Ahmad Sleeq says dorm life forces students to become an adult in all aspects and requires them to manage their time, money and relationships, as well as their studies, “which is the main purpose you are here in the first place.”

Source: www.usnews.com

Entering Abu Dhabi Folklore Theatre, hidden away behind Al Wahda Mall in Abu Dhabi, I have to avoid being accidentally whipped by skipping ropes being twirled about by seven dancers. They are among 80 people involved with the locally produced adaptation of the hit broadway show Legally Blonde, and the dancers are having an impromptu practice session (Act Two’s opening number, Whipped into Shape) in the lobby.

The choice of musical, based on the hit movie comedy starring Reese Witherspoon, was one that Abu Dhabi Choral Group’s board members unanimously approved. It focuses on Los Angeles sorority girl Elle Woods (played by the group’s chairwoman, Lebanese-American Alana Barraj), who appears to have it all, but then her life is turned upside down when her boyfriend dumps her.

Determined to get him back, Elle uses her charm to get into Harvard Law School and prove she’s not just a pretty face.

“The show is so brilliant because it makes fun of itself,” says 28-year-old Barraj. “You’re not only laughing at the characters, you’re laughing with them.”

Elle tries to prove that girls can have hard-nosed careers and rock a perfect pedicure, and Barraj says she isn’t that different to Elle. “I consider her to be a representation of the best version of ourselves: she’s smart, confident, and sometimes loses her way. But she picks herself right back up again. When I’m having a particularly difficult moment, I try to channel her.”

Source: www.thenational.ae

Salma Hayek opted for a classy and classical look during her stay in Lebanon to promote “The Prophet,” a film she co-produced based on a book written more than 100 years ago by renowned Lebanese-American poet and philosopher Gibran Khalil Gibran. Hayek attended the screening of her film in Beirut Souks Cinema City Monday wearing a custom-made couture gown by prominent Lebanese designer Elie Saab. She wore the same outfit, a modified A-Line powder blue dress, to the gala dinner held at Villa Rose in Clemenceau to the benefit of the Children’s Cancer Center in Lebanon. She wore Pomellato jewelry.

Earlier Monday, the actress of Lebanese descent attended a meeting with the media wearing a tea-length, off-white with royal blue floral prints dress from the Alexander McQueen collection. Over the weekend, Hayek visited the Khalil Gebran museum in north Lebanon’s picturesque town of Bsharri in a floral Yves Saint Laurent top she paired with a pleated skirt.

Hayek is known for her flirty, feminine style, appearing often on the red carpet in figure-hugging gowns that accentuate her voluptuous curves.

In a 2014 editorial published by NewBeauty magazine, the 48-year-old Hayek discussed her secrets to maintaining her beauty, while accepting the inevitability of aging.

Unlike many of her Hollywood peers, Hayek isn’t into cosmetic procedures such as plastic surgery or even the most basic treatments. She tells NewBeauty, “I have never gotten something done just because it was a trend or the next ‘biggest wonder.’ I tend to stay away from aggressive things. I’ve never even had a peel or microdermabrasion.”

In July 2013’s InStyle, cover girl Hayek admitted that her primary inspiration for putting together a good outfit is her husband, French businessman Francois-Henri Pinault. “I’m not really a fashionista. I have an eye; I can pull it together, but a lot of the effort I make is for my husband because I want him to be attracted to me,” she said.

Source: www.dailystar.com.lb

Dr. Zaher Sahloul has crossed the Syrian border nearly a dozen times to help treat victims shot, bombed, gassed and suffering from malnutrition in a war-ravaged country where the dictatorial government attacks its people and Islamic State terrorists murder innocent civilians.

He raises money to support doctors and nurses in Syria, heads an organization that raises funds to buy medical supplies for their clinics and hospitals as well as those in refugee camps and somehow still maintains his medical practice as a critical care practitioner in Oak Lawn.

As president of the Syrian-American Medical Society, Sahloul has been quoted in newspapers from Great Britain to India to Japan and has appeared on television news shows throughout the world.

Source: www.chicagotribune.com

Jordanian comedian Tima Shomali has been called many things since starting her controversial career in comedy, but that’s never put a downer on her efforts to fight for what she really believes in.

Tima became the first female comedian in Jordan to start up her own YouTube web series, which has since become the most popular show in Jordan with a strong 25 million viewers. The show, titled FemaleShow, broaches taboo topics like sex, dating and sexual harassment.

But Tima’s work isn’t only directed at her Arab viewers. The witty artist aims to change the rest of the world’s preconceived stereotypes about Arab women.

“We laugh,” she said. “We cry. We are humans.”

This month, the young comedian made Arabian Business’s “100 Most Powerful Arabs Under 40” and has even been nicknamed “The Tina Fey of the Arab World,” The New York Times reported.

Iraqi-American author and activist Zainab Salbi interviewed Shomali at the Women in the World Summit on Friday afternoon. Watch the funny, inspiring interview below. 

Source: www.albawaba.com

The following is an excerpt from the book Headscarves and Hymens (XXX) by the Egyptian-American feminist Mona Eltahawy. She will be at the Ottawa Writers Festival on April 25 at 2 p.m. at Christ Church Cathedral.

In “Distant View of a Minaret,” the late and much- neglected Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat begins her short story with a woman so unmoved during sex with her husband that, as he focuses solely on his pleasure, she notices a spiderweb she must sweep off the ceiling and has time to ruminate on her husband’s repeated refusal to prolong intercourse until she climaxes, “as though purposely to deprive her.”

Just before her husband reaches orgasm, the call to prayer interrupts their intercourse, and he rolls over. After washing up, she loses herself in prayer, and looks out onto the street from her balcony. She interrupts her reverie to dutifully prepare coffee for her husband to drink after his nap. Taking it to their bedroom to pour it in front of him, as he prefers, she notices that he is dead. She instructs their son to go get a doctor. “She returned to the living room and poured out the coffee for herself. She was surprised at how calm she was.

In a crisp three and a half pages of fiction, Rifaat lays out a trifecta of sex, death, and religion that forms the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. Here is a writer who, when she was alive, was held up by academics as an “authentic” Egyptian woman, untainted by a foreign language — she spoke only Arabic — and influence from abroad. It is said that Rifaat never traveled outside Egypt, although she did perform a pilgrimage to Mecca and attended a literary conference in the United Kingdom. She was forced by her family to marry a man of their choice, with whom she traveled across Egypt.

Source: ottawacitizen.com

Salma Hayek is using her celebrity for good.
The Mexican-born actress visited Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, on Saturday to meet with troubled Syrian refugees.
During her brief visit, the 48-year-old was spotted giving a baby a polio vaccination at the UNICEF protection center as well as meeting several children in the war-torn region.
The star’s trip to Lebanon was brought on by her new animated film “The Prophet,” which she co-produced. The film, based on the poems of Khalil Gibran, is about a little girl who finds her voice through a close friend imprisoned for his ideas.
“Millions of children have been robbed of their childhood, their country and have lost their loved ones,” Hayek said in a press release about her trip (via Us Weekly). “As a result of the conflict in Syria, they are missing out on their education and are having to work to provide for their families.”
Hayek also acknowledged her Lebanese roots at the premiere of the film in Beirut.
“For me this is a love letter to my heritage,” she told Reuters on Monday. “Between all the connections of our ancestors and the memories of the ones that are no longer with us, I hope they are proud of this film because I did it also for them.”

Source: pagesix.com

When I have children of my own some day, I always vowed that I would make Kahlil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’ a bible for them to live by.

Featuring a series of prose and poems about love, marriage, children, freedom, good and evil, I am sure that I am not the only one who has been inspired by the book written by the Lebanese-American author in 1923.

The book has since been translated into at least 40 different languages and has had over 100 million copies printed.

As a fan of the man, it’s a thrill to know that Gibran’s legacy lives on and will be screened into an animated feature film, directed by Disney’s veteran, Roger Allers, who also directed “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King”.

Source: malaysiandigest.com

by Jen Graves The Stranger.com Artists are always playing the angles. Meanwhile, as viewers, we often make the mistake of talking about their subject matter when what we should be talking about is the way they face it: head-on, from the side, from within, through storms of dust… We’re quick to assign artistic virtue or … Continued

Greetings from King’s Academy in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan! King’s Academy was the only educational institution to participate in the ADC convention back in 2013 and while we were not able to participate in last year’s event, we might be participating in this year’s convention. In June 2013, right before the 2013 convention, Arab … Continued

Alexandria VA – Despite cold, un-Springlike cloudy weather, the Alexandria Artisans Festival opened officially with a flourish today in front of City Hall in Old Town Alexandria. By Elisabeth Myers Moroccan World News With plenty of hot Moroccan mint tea in the offing, and marked by an impressive delegation of government officials and dignitaries, the … Continued