Tum aur Lahore
Your brown would look so beautiful surrounded by Lahore’s, but I’ve told myself over and over again that you and Lahore are not meant to meet, that sometimes circumstances are just so queer that even the safest softest closets cannot straighten them
But I plan still
To show you the long legs of Maall Road with the kind of stubble I know you’ll find sexy for its i-don’t-give-a-f**k flair; to slide with you into the inner crevices of the reddened walls of purana Lahore and spot that one blue kite flying amidst the orange heat; to feel the moist sponginess of the monsoon air; to tickle the erect tips of Badshahi Masjid’s minarets; to kiss with our mouths open and catch the smoke of centuries on our tongues—you see, when it comes to Lahore, even the clichés feel so good
Continue reading on Queer Zenana
Censorship, Iranian style: as ordinary as breathing
I worked as a cartoonist for the Iranian media from 1989 to 2006, the year I left Iran, and throughout that time censorship was as ordinary and routine as breathing. Even for cartoons.
If I wanted to think of and recount one experience and tell you about it, it would be like trying to recall the deepest breath I took in those years. I’m sure that like me, every Iranian cartoonist has a collection of unpublished works that were rejected by various editors-in-chief, out of fear they would lead to headaches.
Continue reading on IranWire
The self-taught tattoo artist
“I haven’t been taught by anyone, I did it by myself. I started first by doing tattoos on my own body.”
George Mikalides, a Lebanese of Armenian descent, is a self-taught tattoo artist and multi skilled person. Besides tattooing, he also paints and creates wooden sculptures.
Continue reading on Mashallah News
