Ahla friends,
Right now New York City IS the center of the Universe. Period
Samar
THE SHORTLIST
Handpicked events worth showing up for
FOOD
Eat Offbeat: Lebanese & Persian Ice Cream Demo
Thursday, June 18th, 6:15–9:15 PM
Atelier Jolie Cafe, East Village
Wissam Kahi (Eat Offbeat) and Chef Armita demo Lebanese booza and Persian saffron ice cream, then a four-course Lebanese-Persian dinner: mezze, wine, hibiscus mint tea, and a live set from The Brooklyn Nomads pulling from the golden age of Arab and Middle Eastern music
CINEMA
Unidentified
Fri June 19th – Thur June 25th
Angelika Film Center, Greenwich Village
Haifaa Al-Mansour's Saudi crime thriller hits Angelika for a week. A teenage girl's body, unclaimed, surfaces in the desert. Noelle Al Saffan, newly divorced, hopelessly into true crime, takes up the case. What opens as a thriller becomes a portrait of a society in transition: women pulling autonomy out of inherited expectations.
CINEMA
Cinema Tehran presents: Far From Home
Friday, June 19th, 9:30 PM
Roxy Cinema Tribeca
Cinema Tehran screens Sohrab Shahid Saless's 1975 Iranian New Wave classic at Roxy. An immigrant worker in Berlin moves through the quiet ruin of exile, loneliness, the small repetitions of a foreign life
PARTY
Omar ؏ — Omar's World
Saturday, June 20th, 4 PM
Elsewhere Rooftop, Bushwick
Omar curates a rooftop set at Elsewhere, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, the Americas, all in conversation. The rhythms that connect us, in his own words. Daytime party, the kind of crowd that came to listen.
ART-WORKSHOP
Geometric & Arabesque Pattern Workshops with Adam Williamson
Sat & Sun, June 20–21, 9:30AM–6PM
Madison Square Park Tower, Flatiron
Adam Williamson runs a two-day intensive on Islamic geometric and arabesque pattern, classical compass-and-straightedge constructions, sacred geometry, Moroccan zellij, and Silk Road ornamental systems from Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva. All materials provided. Beginners welcome
MUSIC
Inner Spaces: Amir ElSaffar + Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch
Sunday, June 21st, 7:30 PM
National Sawdust, Williamsburg
Amir ElSaffar, the Iraqi-American trumpeter and santur player living between jazz and Arabic maqam, meets composer Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch for an intimate evening at National Sawdust. Seated, quiet, the kind of room where one note can do a lot.
FOOD
Omid x Apollo Bagels
Friday, June 18-21st
Apollo Bagels Williamsburg
Most of us don’t know that Apollo Bagel is actually SWANA (Owner is Iranian/Japanese and pro-Pal) and right now he propobably makes the best bagels in town. This collab bring a new flavor (cherry cream cheese) on a toasted barbari bagel! worth a try and we have Omid to thank!
CINEMA
ArteEast Presents: My Father and Qaddafi
Wednesday, June 24th, 7 PM
BAM Rose Cinemas, Fort Greene
Jihan Kikhia's documentary on the disappearance of her father, Mansur Rashid Kikhia, Libya's former Foreign Minister and human rights lawyer, abducted in 1993 and never returned. The film follows her investigation as it widens out into Libya's political history. Discussion after, with ArteEast.
THE FREE ONE
One free event that got us excited
Orientalism: A New Exhibit At The MET
The Met's first major Orientalism exhibition opens June 12 and runs nearly 9 months. 180 objects, paintings, photographs, illustrated books, ceramics, textiles, arms, the works traditionally called Orientalist staged in conversation with the actual Middle Eastern objects they were imagining, distorting, dressing up as their own. Napoleon in Egypt on one end. Osman Hamdi Bey on the other. That second name is why I'm going. Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910) was a French-trained Ottoman painter who knew the genre from inside and bent it back, the Western frame, with an Ottoman eye behind the brush. The whole exhibition culminates in him, which tells me the curators Deniz Beyazit and Maryam Ekhtiar from Islamic Art, with Asher Miller understand the assignment.
And now the part that's harder to write.
I grew up with these images. The Delacroix harem scenes, the odalisques, the whole visual vocabulary of how the West imagined us, I encountered it long before I ever read Said. And the truth is, even after a lot of eye-opening readings, I can’t help it but still enjoy looking at them. They are part of the culture I was handed, even when that culture was telling stories about us instead of letting us tell our own. I can hold both at once: the frame is colonizing, AND I treasure the image. My culture is infinitely more than these paintings, AND these paintings are part of how I first learned to see beauty. That contradiction just lives in me now.
So I'm going. The Said-shaped part of my brain will draft arguments with the wall labels. The other part is going to stand in front of a Delacroix and feel everything I was supposed to.
TIMELY
Helpful resources
World Cup: Curated guides to the best watch parties across NYC, organized by country
Pride: A handpicked selection of events celebrating Pride Month across New York City.
NOTEWORTHY
Many thanks for everyone who joined the waitlist
Very very very soon, we'll be launching the menna app
One tab is for events: everything you're already used to discovering through menna.
The second is for meetups: a space where community members can gather around events they're attending or create their own.
Going to a poetry reading in Williamsburg? Have other SWANA people who love words join you.
In the mood for a coffee hang? Have other SWANA people join you.
You are set to run a marathon? Have other SWANA people with the same goal join you.
Want to organize a picnic, a restaurant outing, a beach day, a coffee walk, a museum visit, or something entirely different? host a meetup.
What makes this different from every other community apps is that you're not starting from zero. You're meeting people who already choose the same rooms as you. The same cultural references, the same zaghrouta, the same causes, the same city.
We'll be rolling access out slowly and intentionally, free of cost but not everyone will be admitted right away.
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Allowing us to stay editorially independent and guided only by our values and the community we serve. If our work resonates with you and you’d like to support it, you can do so through the link below.
As always, thank you for being here.
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— Menna curates cultural content and events for informational purposes only. Event details are subject to change—
