Regional Voices

Regional Voices: Whispers of escalation, a lifetime lived on alert. Old Man Hassan sits on a plastic chair outside his dakkan (small shop) in Bandar Abbas, overlooking the Strait of Hormuz. He’s seen decades of tension here, felt the rumble of tankers passing, and the prickle of fear during past confrontations. Today, however, feels different. […]

Regional Voices: A fisherman’s worry, a mother’s plea for calm. Old Man Youssef casts his net each evening from the port of Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf. He’s done so for sixty years, weathering storms and shifting currents. But these days, he says, it’s not the sea he fears, but the silence. “The boats are […]

Regional Voices: Children’s art offers a glimpse of longing for freedom and peace. The air smells of paint and something else – a quiet determination. In a small home nestled on the outskirts of Hebron, Sarah Abu Madi welcomes children into Rommana, her art centre. It isn’t a gleaming facility; colourful murals painted by the […]

Regional Voices: Holding on to dignity amidst deepening hardship. The smell of woodsmoke hangs heavy in the air of Jabalya refugee camp, mingling with the salty tang of the Mediterranean. Old Man Yusef, his face etched with decades of stories, sits mending a fishing net, a faded blue tarpaulin stretched above his head offering scant […]

Regional Voices: Climate change isn’t a distant threat – it’s now. Old Man Khalil carefully adjusted the shade cloth over his tomato plants, a familiar ritual made newly desperate. It’s late September, but the sun beats down with a ferocity more typical of July in Mersin, Turkey. “My father farmed this land, and his father […]

Regional Voices: A fisherman’s quiet worry for his son’s future. Old Man Hassan sits mending nets in the port of Bandar-e Abbas, the midday sun beating down on his weathered face. He’s seen a lot of shifts in the tide over his eighty years, but this one feels different. Not the waves, but the current […]

Regional Voices: “Where can we go? Even this house is dangerous.” The slant is the first thing you notice. Heba Arafat, 47, walks with a deliberate list to the left as she moves through the living room of her Gaza City apartment. The building, struck during the recent conflict, has settled inwards, the foundations compromised. […]

Regional Voices: Families torn apart, seeking safety across the sea. The smell of salt and diesel hangs heavy in the air around the small fishing port of Bab el-Mandeb. Old man Hassan, his face etched with a lifetime of sun and worry, watches the small dabous – traditional Yemeni fishing boats – preparing for what […]

Regional Voices: A professor’s unease, a student’s uncertainty. Old Man Hassan runs a small internet cafe in Shiraz, Iran. It’s a relic of a time before smartphones, but still bustling with students needing reliable connections for research. I watched him one afternoon meticulously cleaning the keyboards, a familiar ritual. “These young ones,” he chuckled, adjusting […]

Regional Voices: “We’ve heard promises before; trust is a luxury.” The scent of jasmine hangs heavy in the Cairo air, a deceptive sweetness clinging to the dust and the worry. Old Man Hassan, a coffee seller near the hotel where Kushner and the Hamas representatives met, watches everything with eyes that have seen decades of […]