author - oman observer

Noura (Hind Sabry) is a laundress working in a hospital in Tunisia. She’s in her mid-forties, is a mother of three and her husband Jamal (Lotfi Abdelli) is a petty thief serving his time in a local...

Dalia my best friend from school days, is known for her love of extravagance.So, when we were sitting one day counting how long we’ve been friends and realising that we’ve already reached 30...

Nada (nothing in Spanish) is one of the most important Spanish literary works of the 20th century. Written by Carmen Laforet (1921-2004) and published in 1945, it describes life in post-civil war...

Growing up as a woman in the Arab world, means that you’ll always hear people repeating the Quranic verse from Surah Yusif (the 12th chapter of Prophet Joseph): “For your guile is great!”.There...

On the first day of January and as the world was waking up to a new year with a plus digit number, I was in the wadi picking up empty plates of the dogs’ last night meal.As I was climbing up, I saw...

Mom always said: “Not only that you look like your dad, but you also inherited all his unfortunate traits.” With that she meant two things: my disorganisation and insomnia. I’d sleep for a few...

One of the most interesting world history books I’ve read so far is by Spanish author Juan Eslava Galán called History of the World Narrated for Sceptics. The book is divided into 125 short...

For the past few months, my brother has been insisting that I should watch Korean mini-series Squid Game on Netflix.Having sleepless nights after watching Korean horror movie: The Tale of Two Sisters...

My friend Isabel invited me to visit Al Mawalih dog shelter where she volunteers. As we entered, I was welcomed by Batool the shelter’s manager having a tug-of-war moment with two puppies who were...

Fathers and Sons is a novel by Russian author Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) that was published in Moscow in 1862. The novel is set in 19th century Russia, where two friends Arkady Kirsanov and Yevgeny...

When Qatar announced hosting the World Cup, I nagged my brother about attending as we missed many World Cups before for excuses that included long distance and Islamophobia. I even signed up with the...

When the World Cup Started, Sham the helper appointed himself as our sports’ analysist and gained the nickname Sham Shobair (Shobair is a famous Egyptian goalkeeper from the 90s who later became a...

With a heavy heart, I’d been following the wake of stray dogs shooting that happened in many areas here. Emotions were high on social media, between anguished locals and concerned Europeans...

Years back, while exchanging e-mails with my dear American friend Deanna and while discussing yoga classes she asked if I’d ever tried something called hot yoga. Never hearing of it before I asked...

A few months after the Spanish Civil war broke in 1936, George Orwell travelled on the pretense of covering it but, his true intention was joining the fight against fascism. He enlisted in an...

After leaving Mani’s still feeling hungry (what’s with the new Barbie portions of pancakes and French toast for breakfast? My unsatisfaction is best described by grandma’s words ‘the fox who...

If you’re not familiar with classic Indo-Pakistani writers, I’d like to invite you to watch Nandita Das’s film Manto (2018). Born in 1912, Saadat Hassan Manto was an author and a playwright who...

In July 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — an American couple of Jewish ancestry — were arrested by the FBI for espionage and passing top-secret information to the USSR that helped them build...

Mansoor was curious about the new visitor and tried to make contact from the second day by jumping on the artist’s lap. The artist was freaked out by the act and apologised by saying that he still...

The minute the artist set his foot in Kitzania, he was pretty nervous. Never being around cats meant that he had the typical misconceptions of all non-cat owners: cats are sly and good for nothing but...