From the Archives at the Mosaic Rooms

In 'Like a Straw Bird it Follows Me ', Ghassan Zaqtan’s tenth poetry collection, translator Fady Joudah brings to English-language readers new works by one of the most important and original Palestinian poets of our time. Ghassan Zaqtan was born in 1954 near Bethlehem and lives in Ramallah. He has worked with the Palestinian resistance movement and was editor of Bayader , the literary magazine of...

These living histories and testimonies from first-generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are shared by contributors the book Voices of the Nakba . This conversation took place as part of the Stateless Heritage exhibition by DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti at the Mosaic Rooms in London, 23 November 2021. Voices of the Nakba: A Living History of Palestine is released by Pluto Press. Host...

Part of a four-part series about nuclear colonialism with David Burns, Samia Henni, Alisher Khassenaliyev and Maïa Tellit Hawad, each researching – and resisting – the ongoing damage of nuclear sites and “testing” across the Sahara, Kazakhstan and Maralinga (South Australia). They share about the ongoing physical, environmental and psychological damage of nuclear “testing”, toxicity, and extractio...

Part of a four-part series about nuclear colonialism with David Burns, Samia Henni, Alisher Khassenaliyev and Maïa Tellit Hawad, each researching – and resisting – the ongoing damage of nuclear sites and “testing” across the Sahara, Kazakhstan and Maralinga (South Australia). They share about the ongoing physical, environmental and psychological damage of nuclear “testing”, toxicity, and extractio...

Part of a four-part series about nuclear colonialism with David Burns, Samia Henni, Alisher Khassenaliyev and Maïa Tellit Hawad, each researching – and resisting – the ongoing damage of nuclear sites and “testing” across the Sahara, Kazakhstan and Maralinga (South Australia). They share about the ongoing physical, environmental and psychological damage of nuclear “testing”, toxicity, and extractio...

Part of a four-part series about nuclear colonialism with David Burns, Samia Henni, Alisher Khassenaliyev and Maïa Tellit Hawad, each researching – and resisting – the ongoing damage of nuclear sites and “testing” across the Sahara, Kazakhstan and Maralinga (South Australia). They share about the ongoing physical, environmental and psychological damage of nuclear “testing”, toxicity, and extractio...

Part of a four-part series about nuclear colonialism with David Burns, Samia Henni, Alisher Khassenaliyev and Maïa Tellit Hawad, each researching – and resisting – the ongoing damage of nuclear sites and “testing” across the Sahara, Kazakhstan and Maralinga (South Australia). They share about the ongoing physical, environmental and psychological damage of nuclear “testing”, toxicity, and extractio...

The painter and printmaker Mohammad Omar Khalil speaks with writer Maya Jaggi about why he works only in black and white, making work as an embodied process, and surviving as a working artist in New York. In 2020 the Mosaic Rooms hosted ‘Homeland Under My Nails’, an exhibition of Khalil’s prints from 1964 to now. It explores the experimentation and international sensibility of the artist, who trai...

Abdellatif Laâbi and translator André Naffis-Sahely read from Laâbi’s novel The Bottom of the Jar in its first English translation, and Laâbi reads a list of advice, wisdoms and aspirations for new writers. The Bottom of the Jar recreates Laâbi’s childhood city of Fez, Morocco, through Nanoussa, his semi-fictional kindred spirit. It holds the energy of the final days of the French occupation, and...

Human rights lawyer Raji Sourani delivers a powerful Edward W. Said London Lecture, where he confronts the reality of the ongoing Gaza genocide and Israel's assault on international law and Palestinians. Sourani fled Gaza in late 2023 when his home was bombed, and now lives with his family in Cairo. Sourani is a member of the South African delegation on the genocide case against Israel before the...

A Friend’s Kitchen emerges in the aftermath of Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi’s arrival to London in 2012, after a forced exile from Sudan, when he was separated from his wife and children for nearly five years. During late, uncertain nights awake in a strange city, he would write brief, mystical, often stream-of-consciousness texts to post on Facebook, his primary means of communication with loved ones in Kh...

In 2020, the Mosaic Rooms hosted a conversation between Karma Nabulsi and Rashid Khalidi around Khalidi’s publication ‘The 100 Years’ War on Palestine’. Khalidi shares 50+ years of research on British imperialism in Palestine and Ireland and the frantic response to the non-violent, grassroots boycott movement. Drawing from his book that weaves together the voices of journalists, poets, and resista...