Author: mzabteam

Beyond Esoteric Muses

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“At moonset  I was born  Dawn leaned over the universe  And night’s breast  In rage tore its tunic.”  ~Malika al-Assimi   —  The women are for expansion. Sinuous, flexuous, their gentle force pervades through the motley Silk Road, at moonrise, at moonset, captured in the archaic record of the times and sealed in the arc of the human story. A woman’s story.  The archaic Muslim woman. Muse of orientalist writing: the literary cannon across time and distance; folk tales and oral traditions; beguiling the senses of male poets; and perplexing the ethnocentric gaze. Yet what was the lesser explored reality of the Muslim woman of the Medeival period and the Middle Ages, the woman who was infinitely more than a captivating and well-documented beauty and object of desire? Who were the woman merchants of Abbasid Baghdad; the caravan investors of Damascus; the property-owning widows of Cairo; and the brains behind marriage alliances through which salient and pivotal trade networks would proliferate and flourish? The powerful women from grasslands of Central Asia to the oscillating deserts of …

Ocean around them

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I am vast, blue timeworn colossus, rolling, the green hills of Qwahu brown scars of the Nuer I can go deeper, hold it and deeper still hold, hold. In these things lie no permission, everything- is for the taking- the giving. Heirloom scattered coral, pirouette in the deep, I find language and stories of them and me memories of this vast colossus of them and me looking into them is looking into me this surface, this surface looking hurts this surface but in them lies permission for me to be me only one way to heal this bone deep- power, centrifugal power this gentle force at the centre of careless tornadoes the softest wave kisses the shore. S.O is a British-African writer based in London.

Wombs and Bilums: Post-natal Care in Papua New Guinea 

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red rooms past, passed to room to room to me, this present present Wombs and pearls and stories like fleshy heirlooms to birth you- Soukeyna O. Women and Wombs: Tangible History The bilum bag is a frayed womb, a ropey stringy thing of not only dancing fibres, but legacies of strength and resilience, legacy intertwined like gentle whispers in its yarny midst. The bilum bag is a rite of passage, a story, an artefact and an heirloom carried by men and women alike throughout the course of their lives- a time capsule of their mother’s wisdom, their mother’s mother’s wisdom and of their ancestors and theirs and theirs. From the Tok Pisin language of Papua New Guinea and directly translated as ‘womb’, the bilum bag is not only the beginnings of life but also the woven bag crafted by expectant mothers in circles of womanhood whereby post birth, their sleeping babies are laid in, their bodies taking the familiar position they once held in the womb. The sack, traditionally woven from foraged natural fibres, is …

Occupied Alphabet

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I.I use google translate to convey English phrases in Arabic sometimesA client tells me she is depressedAnd her father has been having tremors since the war startedBut usually when he is doing typically stressful things like dealing with an angry customer orFixing that damn light in the bathroom that won’t stop flickering even though the bulb is for sure new I type in the word “somatic” to try and figure out how to explain the correlation between the brain and the bodyAnd my insides laugh mockinglyUsing english to explain the destruction that the they third person pronoun have caused I think we got the order wrong in grad schoolThe disease cannot also be the medicine My people do not understand healing as a clinical hourThis lexicon of pain is not a researched and deliberately punctuated abstract,it is a slangAnd its letters are clear on the back of my grandma’s hands who birthed nine babies and buried some tooand knew to sweep the floors when it got too much and knew to pet the cat when …

Surfing along Morocco’s Western Coast: In Conversation with Local Surf Maroc

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At MZAB, we were fortunate to get in touch with the team at Local Surf Maroc, a locally owned Moroccan surf school and surf camp in Tamraght, along the Western Coast of Morocco in Taghazout Bay. In the interview, we explore the founder Rachid’s story, what it was like growing up an ocean child, and the transformative nature of water. Read on as we learn what to pack for a surfing retreat, the powerful moments water can bring to the word Rachid lives by. Q1 Thank you so much for the interview! At MZAB we love adventure, modern day and adventurers and exploring cultural history, ritual and artefacts. Tell us more about yourselves (Christina and Rashid) and the inspiration behind Local Surf Maroc. Rachid (the founder) grew up with the ocean always within view. His earliest memory of being an ocean child was when his family would go to Killer Point to collect mussels to cook for dinner that same evening. With his father being a fisherman, Rachid was introduced to swimming among waves and local …

In Conversation: Artist Dalya Ismail on Impressionism, the Nostalgia of Sudanese Kinship and the Destiny of Names

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Dalya Ismail is the founder of creative studio D.I. Design and is an interior designer and artist of Sudanese origin residing in the UAE. Read below as we caught up with her on her formative years, lines of poetry she lives by and the sanguine years she spent in Sudan. Thanks for allowing us to interview you Dalya, at MZAB we love your art, and the culture you represent. Tell us more about your upbringing, what got you involved in artistic expression and turning points in your formative years that influenced your work  Thank you so much! My upbringing played a major role in my art and design journey having been exposed to many cultures and ways of being all my life. I was born in the US, spent my formative years in Sudan, then moved to Sultanate of Oman. I spent my late teen and adult life in different parts of Canada and currently reside in the UAE. Despite the heavy influence of my travels on my current artistic expression, it was those few …

Frontiers of a new artistry: Sarah Addouh on the changing creative scene in Morocco and architecture as a witness

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Join MZAB as we interview the visionary creative Sarah Addouh, a Moroccan photographer, architect and collage artist based in Casablanca. At MZAB we have been a fan of your work for quite a while. Tell us more about yourself, your heritage and what inspired you to embark on an artistic profession My name is Sarah Addouh, I am a Moroccan collage artist and architect based in Casablanca. Collage is a great way to unleash my creativity by combining old elements to create new ones. I have always been inspired by Moroccan popular culture which is by default very rich and unique due to its craftmanship, history, people and traditions. I first received a camera when I was in my 1st year at architecture school and it marked the beginning of my artistic journey. I was really excited about the idea of capturing moments of life in HD from an artistic point of view (moments with friends, family, in the streets, in the souk, in festivals). Additionally, I have always been inspired by my grandparents, as …

Arab Fashion from the Past and Present: An Under-represented Costume Tradition

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From soap making and cosmetics to costume in the Abbasid Caliphate, Nehal of the blog Lugatism explores the rich history of adornment through the Middle Ages. Read on to learn why she began an odyssey into Medieval Arabo-Islamic beauty practices and costume culture. Since I was a child, I was an avid consumer of American entertainment. If an average Jane like me wanted to find out how a certain culture dressed in a chosen epoch, they could look up a movie or a show about said culture. The popularity of Hollywood and other global entertainment industries made this effort easier.  The majority of Hollywood’s historical films or period-re-enactment dramas are notorious for their, let’s say, “white-centric” portrayal. They either tell the story of a white character in a historical setting or sometimes a story set in a historical period with a white protagonist.  The woefully problematic history of Hollywood’s negative portrayal of non-white minorities has accumulated quite a long rap sheet over the years, which has garnered the disparagement of various audiences. Alongside biased and prejudiced …