Category: TRAVEL
LOST IN ISTANBUL
Second, third and fourth weeks in Istanbul By Ida Rastini My daughter-in-law visited Istanbul for two days recently, a stop off on her flight from Singapore to Saudi Arabia, where she will […]
My first week in Istanbul
As I arrived at the Grand Bazaar, something happened that left me feeling uneasy. For the first twenty minutes as I walked through the outer Grand Bazaar, Hussain the rug seller stalked me into his gallery to view his rugs collection…
Walking in the footsteps of Irene Koppl – Step 1
Walking in the footsteps of Irene KopplStep one: Greece and the new ExodusBy Simon Tabak My grandmother arrived on one of the boats that Churchill requested cross the channel to collect the British […]
Odessa, Ukrainian Hedoism… and Russia’s failure
and Russia’s failure By Pierre Scordia In June 2017, after two years of absence, I return to Odessa, the pearl of the Black Sea. On the plane from Warsaw, a Russian woman […]
The Afghan Athletes & the Ski slope Champion
By Simon Urwin The veins in his arms are as thick as mooring rope, his inflated bulk pumped with more artificial protein than a flock of factory chickens. Somehow he has […]
Tile Giant
By Simon Urwin “Working with ceramics every day is like a form of worship for me, it helps me feel closer to Allah,” Omid announces proudly. This is not the kind […]
Afghanistan: a burqa for Barbie
The burqa has been ‘on trend’ here for hundreds of years. Like the local equivalent of a Hermès scarf or a Louboutin red heel, it first became popular as a status symbol, with the impractical billowing folds of the upturned shuttlecock clearly signalling that the wearer was a wealthier Metropolitan woman who’d never be seen dead working in the fields like her poorer Afghan sisters.
