Arts & Culture
Constructive criticism and purposeful art serving the nation and the citizen
International Translation Day: From the 1835 Alsun School to Egypt's National Center for Translation
On 30 September the world marks International Translation Day, and behind the translated book you carry home from the fair lies a two-century Egyptian story: an Azhar sheikh back from Paris founded Egypt's first modern school for translators in 1835, and committees and projects rose and stalled, until the National Center for Translation was founded in 2006. This is the whole story, and what it means for you.
September 30, 2026 · 7 min read
27 September 1822: The Day the Ancient Egyptians Found Their Voice Again — The Rosetta Stone and Its Key
In a hall in Paris, a 31-year-old read out a letter that gave Egypt's ancient walls back the power of speech after a long silence. From Rashid in 1799 to London in 1802 to the Academy in 1822, then on to Ahmed Kamal Pasha and the dictionary that was never printed in his lifetime, and finally to today's question: will the Stone come home? The story of a key that was lost and found again.
September 26, 2026 · 8 min read
Hassan Fathy: The "Architect of the Poor" Who Built an Architecture from Egyptian Mud That Astonished the World
In an age when air conditioning devours the household budget, the life of Hassan Fathy revives an old question: why did we abandon an architecture that cooled our homes without electricity? The story of the "Architect of the Poor," who built an entire village out of Egyptian mud, wrote a book the world translated, and anticipated the green-building wave by decades.
September 4, 2026 · 8 min read
Taha Hussein: The Blind Boy Who Became Dean of Arabic Literature and Made Education a Right "Like Water and Air"
A blind child from a village in Upper Egypt became the "Dean of Arabic Literature" — and when he took over the Ministry of Education, he turned his own maxim, "education is like water and air," into the 1950 decree that made secondary schooling free. It is a journey that tells every reader: knowledge is a right of citizenship, not the privilege of a class. So how did a man who never saw the light bring it about?
August 28, 2026 · 7 min read
Hollywood on the Nile: The Golden Age of Egyptian Cinema
For three decades Cairo's studios made Egypt the film capital of the Arab world. From Studio Misr in 1935 to Faten Hamama, Omar Sharif and 'Cairo Station', this is how the golden age was built — and why its black-and-white classics still play everywhere.
August 18, 2026 · 6 min read
Islamic and Coptic Cairo: One Open-Air Museum From Bab al-Futuh to the Hanging Church
Few cities can walk a visitor through a thousand years of architecture in one stroll. Historic Cairo, on the World Heritage List since 1979, does exactly that: from al-Muizz street and its mosques to the churches of Old Cairo and the Ben Ezra Synagogue — plus the restoration story that brought the stone back to life.
August 18, 2026 · 7 min read
Umm Kulthum: The Voice That Still Holds the Arab World Together
From a small Delta village to the title 'Star of the East', Umm Kulthum created a phenomenon never repeated: an entire nation that stopped to listen. This is the story of a voice that became a national institution — and still fills cafés and airwaves half a century on.
August 18, 2026 · 7 min read
Naguib Mahfouz: The Storyteller Who Put Cairo's Alleys on the World's Literary Map
From the lanes of Gamaliya to the Nobel podium, Naguib Mahfouz turned Cairo into a complete fictional universe. This is the story of a quiet civil servant who wrote in disciplined silence for decades — and became the first Arab writer to win literature's highest prize.
August 18, 2026 · 7 min read