Word: beys
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...actors, is a brilliant depiction of the troubles plaguing contemporary Egypt. The saga of the inhabitants of a downtown Cairo apartment building, it examines the historical, social and political vicissitudes that Al Aswany believes have left the country in a state of physical and moral ruin. One character, Zaki Bey, is the scion of an aristocratic clan, an Egyptian Romeo who uses his Yacoubian Building office for lecherous assignations, oblivious to the crumbling edifice around him. At the lower end of the social order are characters who reside in shacks on the building's rooftop; Taha is the earnest...
...author resists any analysis of his writing, but he does not dispute that both of his novels end with a spark of hope. Yacoubian concludes with the hopefulness of Busayna's marriage - albeit to the dubious Zaki Bey. And Chicago ends with a similarly unexpected union. Perhaps this is Al Aswany's way of suggesting that Egypt, too, broken down as it may be, will continue its quest for renewal...
What do hotshot designers Hella Jongerius, Jurgen Bey and Job Smeets have in common? They all graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven. The Dutch college and graduate program is a breeding ground for the high-concept work that's dominating industrial design. Students study in departments with esoteric names like Man and Living and Man and Identity. But for a little real-world experience, pupils can collaborate on projects with companies such as Nike and Swarovski...
...Naguib Mahfouz, who died last week at 94, was a true hero in this Islamophobic age, the sort of brilliant, embattled writer and public intellectual who has almost ceased to exist. Prolific and serene, Naguib-bey stood his ground, which was Egypt. He did not leave, even to collect his Nobel Prize. He wrote about growing up in Cairo, about movie stars, madmen, beggars, pashas, gods and religion. His bravest book is Children of the Alley, with its parable of Islam--banned in most Arab countries. Condemned to death in a fatwa issued by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, he continued...
...invent self-reinvention. Born in 1905, Lev Nussimbaum fled the political violence of his native Azerbaijan for the swanky salons of proto-fascist Europe. There he became a swinging socialite and best-selling author using a totally made-up identity, that of a romantic Muslim prince named Essad Bey, a creature of curvy daggers and Moorish sighs. Commingling East and West, art and politics, and featuring countless cameos by the great and powerful, Nussimbaum's unlikely life (lives?) reads like a secret history of the 20th century...