‘He, of course, had nothing to be frightened of; if he died as a mujahid he was going to a paradise heaven.’
Osama was his real name, although all other names have been changed. Osama was slightly built, almost concave, and he wore checked shirts and pressed trousers, always clean and neat; he looked anonymously ordinary. His eyes were large and roamed the public places in which we met—hotel cafes, mainl…
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘Our globalised world of easyJet and Google Translate does not seem to have fostered any greater understanding’
‘I don’t know how to think about this. How to stretch compassion for one person into a million.’ Wendell Steavenson on Europe’s migrant-refugee crisis.
‘Thayr held out. He would not betray his country, he would not betray his leader.’
‘Ask anyone in Ayodhya, and they will say the city’s Hindu–Muslim harmony can withstand any test.’
Snigdha Poonam on the construction of a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque in Utter Pradesh.
‘The people I met once I reached Bamiyan were not victims.’ Janine di Giovanni introduces Monika Bulaj’s photographs.
