Hello, and happy Friday.
We’re officially halfway through 2025! Ordinarily I’d be tempted to say things can only get better from here, but there’s no sense in tempting fate amid a year that has already given us wars, natural disasters, and *checks notes* demonic-looking purse ornaments. Alas, I’ll be keeping my lips firmly sealed.
What I’ve worked on
The latest edition of Culture Current features my conversation with writer Aatish Taseer on his forthcoming book “A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile” and how the revocation of his overseas Indian citizenship reshaped his understanding of identity, belonging, and the illusion of purity in a nationalist age.
I’ve made a tremendous effort with Indian languages. I had this very fervent desire to belong, to achieve authenticity, and I suppose my journey as a writer has shown me that that was something of a fraudulent enterprise. My making, which was obviously related to British rule in India, to being part of a colonial class, all of those things can't be discarded. So when this (revocation) happened, it showed me the futility of chasing after this dream because I would never measure up. And suddenly, once I'd been turfed out so unceremoniously from India, I felt an odd feeling of relief because I thought, well, one doesn't have to try so hard now.
You can read the full Q&A here.
Plus:
Last week’s Culture Current with tech journalist Karen Hao on how the AI boom became a new imperial frontier
This week’s City Memo from Singapore
The latest edition of Inside Track — your essential guide to the weekend in global sports, from Centre Court to Copa América
What I’ve read
This deeply-reported investigation into the massacre of 1,500 Alawites in Syria earlier this year:
Among the dead were entire families, including women, children, the elderly and disabled people in dozens of predominantly Alawite villages and neighborhoods. In one neighborhood, 45 women were among the 253 dead. In another village, 10 of 30 killed were children. In at least one case, an entire Alawite town was emptied almost overnight, its hundreds of residents replaced by Sunnis.
The first question arriving fighters asked residents was telling, according to more than 200 witnesses and survivors: “Are you Sunni or Alawite?”
This long read on how Benjamin Netanyahu prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power:
But for Netanyahu, the immediate rewards have been rich. He has amassed more control over the Israeli state than at any other point in his 18-year tenure as prime minister. He has successfully prevented a state inquiry that would investigate his own culpability, saying that the fallout must wait until the Gaza war ends, even as the defense minister, army chief, domestic spymaster and several top generals all either have been fired or have resigned. As he attends court up to three times a week for his corruption trial, his government is now moving to fire the attorney general who oversees that prosecution. The war’s continuation has also shored up his coalition. It gave him time to plan and enact his attack on Iran. Above all, as even his strongest supporters note, it kept him in office. “Netanyahu pulled off a political resurrection that no one — not even his closest allies — thought possible,” said Srulik Einhorn, a political strategist who is part of Netanyahu’s inner circle. “His leadership through a prolonged war with Hamas and a bold strike on Iran has reshaped the political map. He’s now in a strong position to win elections again.”
This piece on Gaza’s generation of young amputees:
An amputation under any circumstances is a profound and life-altering disability. But for the child amputees of Gaza, the physical injury is just the start of compounding traumas: Most have also lost family, friends, homes, schools and any sense of safety and stability. Their recovery, medical experts and aid workers say, is now bound to the uncertain future of a territory ravaged by war.
What I’m thinking about
How Strava continues to pose a security risk. The fitness app — beloved by runners, cyclists and all manner of kudos-loving athletes — has a long history of exposing secret US military installations, nuclear submarine bases, and sometimes even the whereabouts of world leaders (as Sweden’s prime minister recently learned the hard way).
My advice: You needn’t quit the app; just hide your map!
Until next time,
Yasmeen