Category: Public writing

Born in Babylon

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Poetry anthology with Sophus Helle (eds.), Born in Babylon: Middle Eastern Poetry on Diaspora and Antiquity. Wesleyan University Press, forthcoming.

Born in Babylon is a multilingual poetry anthology that gathers personal and political reflections on exile, migration, loss, and transformation by ancient and modern poets from the Middle East. The poems in the volume set up a dialogue between the deep past and the troubled present, criss-crossing the rich archive of exilic stories from the ancient Near East with the voices of modern poets from the region, all of whom grapple with the same forms of upheaval, grief, culture shock, and nostalgia. The volume consists of English translations of original poems in Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Turkish, and Kurdish, as well as translations from ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, Demotic Greek, and Biblical Hebrew. By staging such an unlikely and experimental dialogue across millennia, Born in Babylon pushes against purist notions of “roots” or “origins,” highlighting instead how movement, translation, and cultural hybridity are the oldest forms of human identity, belonging, and connection.

The anthology consciously brings together migrant experiences and languages that are often separated by colonial legacies, national borders, sectarian divides, and, to put it simply, thousands of years. We hope such an ambitious text can offer a new vision for the rich, multi-ethnic, postcolonial, and polyphonic future(s) of the West and East alike.

Aside from serving as co-editor of the volume, I wrote the Introductory essay and produced the Arabic translations for the poems of Amal al-Jubouri, Fadhil al-Azzawi, Liwaa Yazji, Ghareeb Iskander, and Widad Nabi. I also assisted in the Hebrew and Kurdish translations of works by Abdulkadir Musa and Mati Shemoelof.

Cynical Uses of Suffering

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“Cynical Uses of Suffering: Gaza, Antisemitism, & the New Digital Right,” TRAFO: Blog for Transregional Research, April 16, 2026. Link. Republished on boundary 2 online, April 28, 2026. Link.

Excerpt: As with Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine,” the misinformation grift took advantage of real shock or trauma generated by the world-wide pandemic, harnessing the legitimate pain and paranoia widely shared among Western publics to turn a quick buck. But Covid-19 is an old story now: the first harvest of a now-routine Internet strategy. This strategy is spearheaded by a political movement I am calling the New Digital Right: it relies on social media influencers, platform affordances, and online virality to scramble political alliances and mobilize collective emotions of fear and outrage towards dark and destructive ends. The latest rupture online surrounds the topic of Israel in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Gaza after October 7th, 2023—an invasion that human rights organizations around the world, from the United Nations to B’Tselem, have declared a genocide. The case I make in this piece is as follows: the far-right is taking advantage of global attention to the genocide in Gaza, alongside Israel’s plummeting popularity among Western publics, to radicalize and recruit new followers. The U.S.-American far-right in particular is seizing upon the media vacuum created by government censorship of anti-war and anti-Zionist voices to launder and normalize their own virulently fascist and antisemitic politics.

A Cultural History of Anti-Masturbation

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“No Fap: A Cultural History of Anti-Masturbation,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 1, 2023. Link.

If you’ve been on the Internet, you’ve undoubtedly heard of “No Nut November”—an annual challenge that dares young men to abstain from ejaculating for a full thirty days. The challenge has become a viral meme, but its origins can be traced to the online NoFap community, whose male adherents tout its pseudoscientific benefits, as a tool not only to quit porn addiction but also to regain autonomy and masculine power. Though it stylizes itself as a self-help group for men, it has gained a negative reputation in recent years for its connection to right-wing and white supremacist groups that condemn the emasculating, pathological effects of masturbation, ranging in severity from Jordan Peterson to the Proud Boys. However weird this men’s forum may seem, anti-masturbation rhetoric has a surprisingly deep history.

This article was featured on POLITICO Playbook’s Weekend Reads (guest-curated by New York Magazine journalist, Olivia Nuzzi) as well as Lit Hub Daily.

Flat Earth vs. Hollow Earth

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“Global Conspiracy Without a Globe? On Earth Shapes, Vaccines, and Conspiratorial Thinking in the West,” Culturico, February 28, 2022. Link.

This essay explores shifts in modern conspiracy theories that reflect growing mistrust of science—mistrust that has recently manifested in anti-vax sentiments and protests against coronavirus lockdowns. I analyze as my case-studies fringe theories about the shape of the Earth, particularly the shift from Hollow Earth in the last century to Flat Earth. The change in these esoteric theories ultimately reveals a mistrust of government institutions, an emphasis on first-hand experimentation, and a disenchantment with science– all of which I argue are now part of the mainstream zeitgeist.