My stories, articles, and essays are highly eclectic in form and focus. For The New Yorker, I wrote about a traditional diamond trader called in to assess a stone too large for today’s digital scanners. In the early months of quarantine, I reported on how the pandemic was viewed by a traditional curandero in the Amazonian Andes. As a scholar, I’ve written about Islamic traditions of dream interpretation, the medieval Arabic trickster tales known as al-maqamāt, and polyglot cross-pollinations in the world of pre-modern visionary literature. I’ve written stories that seem like essays and vice versa. Here’s a selection:

The Ungraspabale Value of the World’s Largest Diamond — The New Yorker.

How Does the City Meet the River? — on the destruction of the old Cairo houseboats — Mada Masr.

Portrait of a Scaphander — on the first underwater photographic portriait — Public Domain Review.

Behold the Nebulous Smear: Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi’s Illustrated Book of Fixed Stars — on a fifteenth-century field guide to the night sky — Public Domain Review.

Notes from the Bathysphere — on researching the deep sea while trapped in the high jungle — The Paris Review Daily.

Revaluing Combat: Brad Fox’s Bookshelf — on my reading while writing To Remain Nameless — Bookshop.

Safety Book #42 — on Elias Khoury’s Children of the Ghetto — Rescue Press.

Trapped with the Guardians of the Mountain — the COVID lockdown from the perspective of a traditional curandero in the Amazonian Andes — Turtle Point Press.

A Siphonophore Manifesto — imagining the physiology of a deep sea creature as a model of communal living — Broken Nature.

On Writing To Remain Nameless — form, process, cycles of violence, intimacy — Rescue Press.

First, Swallow the World: Muslim Dreams of Completion — the Maqamat, Ibn Arabi, and Faris al-Shidyaq — on Islamic traditions of dream interpretation, trickster tales, visionary and post-colonial literature — World Art.

On Understanding Nothing Deeply: Creative Responses to Political Misery in Hungary — Medium.

Praise the Pupusa — on the foodstand in front of the Iglesia La Luz del Mundo in Queens — Culinary Backstreets

Polyglot Glutton — on a Balkan charcuterie specialist in Astoria — Culinary Backstreets

There Is No Real Life — an interview with Aleksandar Hemon — Guernica.

A Scheme on a Bluff: the View from Todt Hill Houses — on a Staten Island housing project — Urban Omnibus.

The Prophets Wore Linen — on Turkish visionary poet Lale Müldür — The Stimuleye.