Netanyahu’s Dubaization Plan for Gaza After the Genocide w/ Yasser Elsheshtawy

For episode 167, guest host Justin Salhani is joined by Yasser Elsheshtawy to talk about the Dubaization plan that Netanyahu’s team put forward for Gaza after their genocide. You won’t be surprised to know that we think it’s a terrible plan, but what is dubaization?

du·bai·za·tion /dōō’bīzāSHən/ adjective: 1. the act of building a city which relies on spectacular, non-contextual architecture (“The dubaization of Cairo’s skyline”). Synonyms: gulfication; spectacular urbanism. Antonyms: context-oriented urban development; integrated urban fabric; informality.

Yasser Elsheshtawy is a Non-Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC, and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University (GSAPP). His scholarship focuses on informal urbanism and environment-behavior studies, with a particular focus on Middle Eastern cities. Moreover, he is an Independent Consultant and has worked on numerous projects in Saudi Arabia, collaborating with renowned architectural and planning practices.

He taught at United Arab Emirates University from 1997 till 2017 and was appointed as Curator for the UAE Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016. He was a Visiting Professor at Université Paris Sorbonne during the Fall semester of 2017. He has authored over 70 publications including Riyadh: Transforming a Desert City, Temporary Cities, and Dubai: Behind an Urban Spectacle. He also edited The Evolving Arab City which received the 2010 International Planning History Society Best Book Award, and Planning Middle Eastern Cities. Two chapters on urban development in the Arab world were published in the widely-known City Planning and Urban Design Readers.

Elsheshtawy has a PhD in Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a Master’s in Architecture from Pennsylvania State University, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cairo University.

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Transcript prepared by Shirley Yin and Antidote Zine:

You have to think about what this kind of development is actually replacing: Gaza, a city home to millions of people and comprised of various urban centers. All of those have been obliterated and demolished by the IDF. The objective, which everybody knows, is to completely erase any trace of Palestinian existence in that part of the world and redevelop it into a high-end exclusive zone for wealthy individuals.

Justin Salhani: Welcome to The Fire These Times; I’ll be guest hosting today. With me is Yasser Elsheshtawy.

Yasser Elsheshtawy: I am an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, or GSAPP, and I’m also a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC. Before that, I was a professor of architecture at the United Arab Emirates University School of Architecture, where I taught from 1997 to 2017. I’m originally from Egypt, but felt that I stayed long enough in the Gulf region to return to the United States, and I’ve been here since 2017.

JS: I first came across your work because of a concept that you’ve coined and popularized called Dubaization. Recently this term has become more prevalent and relevant, in terms of trying to break down how cities are building, and plans for the Middle East as well as beyond the Middle East. Could you share with us an explanation of Dubaization and how you came to coin this term?

YE: Back in 2004 when I was in the UAE, Dubai was beginning to really make its mark on the world. There were countless media articles talking about all these different projects that were being built, particularly the Palm Islands, which were introduced at the turn of the 21st century, and also Burj Al Arab, the Emirates Towers, and all of these different projects. They were making a strong impact on the urban discourse and any discussion related to urbanization in cities, and particularly in the Middle East.

I’m from Egypt, and I felt there was a very strong influence from this Dubai urban model on developments that were taking place in Egypt around that time. There were a couple of projects that I began to look at more closely in Cairo: Smart Village, for example, which was really inspired by Dubai Internet City. And then there were projects that were directly put in place by Emirati actors, such as the Emaar developers. One of those projects is Uptown Cairo, an exclusive gated community located on the Mokattam Mountain in Cairo and overlooking Manshiyet Nasr, one of the largest slums in Egypt and perhaps in the world, and home to millions of people.

I looked at the wider Middle East region and I felt that there were also all these urban developments that were directly inspired by Dubai. We’ve seen this in Tunis, Morocco, Syria prior to the civil war there, and Amman. Arguably, what is happening in Dubai works in Dubai; it’s a very specific context within which these projects take place. But when you look at the broader Arab region, it’s quite problematic because there is a very different social structure. There is great inequality among the population. So when you begin to introduce these Dubai-inspired projects, it can be quite problematic in terms of the overall social structure.

The term Dubaization captures that impact and influence of a particular mode of development, one that relies on real estate speculation and is based on a tabula rasa approach whereby you erase existing developments and replace them with newer structures. Of course, this is not necessarily a Dubai invention; in fact, we see this throughout the world and the broader term is neoliberal urbanization. It’s just that Dubai has become the poster child for implementing this model in the region, and this continues to this day.

JS: I’d like to talk about how Dubaization and neoliberal urbanism are imposed on different cities. I recently thought of you because Benjamin Netanyahu promoted a plan for the future of Gaza, and I saw that you had posted the same thing on your Instagram account. I’m wondering what you have to say about this—what would it mean for Gaza and Palestinian society at large to turn Gaza, as Netanyahu was saying, into a free trade zone that might have links to places like NEOM and Abu Dhabi and Dubai? What would that mean for Palestinian society as well as the future of Gaza?

YE: When I saw that article, published in the Times of Israel, an Israeli outlet, and it contained an image of skyscrapers in Gaza overlooking the Mediterranean. An Emirati political commentator said that this will be financed and developed by UAE-based developers, and there’s really no surprise there. We have seen that in other parts of the region where Emirati developers go in and implement that particular mode of development that they are using in the Gulf.

The face of it is all good, but then of course you have to think about what this kind of development is actually replacing: Gaza, a city home to millions of people and comprised of various urban centers. All of those have been obliterated and demolished by the IDF. The objective, which everybody knows, is to completely erase any trace of Palestinian existence in that part of the world and redevelop it into a high-end exclusive zone for wealthy individuals (they even could be Palestinians), investors from elsewhere, and perhaps even become a place for laundering money.

The impact, of course, is on Palestinian societies, because many aren’t going anywhere. They are in refugee camps in Rafah right now, and for the majority of them, they will have no place in an exclusive development like that. They will be relegated to slums that will be probably built outside of these exclusive centers, and that, in turn, will exacerbate inequality and lead to all sorts of problems. But the Israeli objective would have been achieved by removing the last vestiges of Palestinian resistance, and UAE developers will make a lot of money selling these units to investors. That’s really quite tragic and problematic.

There are no further details about this plan, and it may just be that: an image, a desire to have that sort of urban presence. But my sense is that this will actually move forward. In fact, when you look at other parts of Palestine, in the West Bank for example, there is a development called Rawabi, which is an exclusive high-end residential gated community in the West Bank that is surrounded by a fence and overlooked by various Israeli settlements, but is built by a Palestinian developer and financed by Qatari investors from the Gulf. It is home to Palestinians, but wealthy Palestinians who can afford to live there, and is not one that caters to the everyday needs of Palestinians in that part of the world.

These developments can be looked at as another form of urban violence: severe changes are inflicted upon societies with the aim of replacing and removing low-income citizens out of urban centers and instead having high-end urban developments.

JS: I think your point about relating this towards Gaza in particular is interesting because Gaza was the largest continuous area of land where Palestinians lived. Obviously, the Israelis have militarily pushed in and occupied part of that land in the last seven to eight months, and we’re still not sure what the day after will look like. 

Like you said, there’s still very few details about this plan other than a few images shared to the world. (Netanyahu is quite famous for sharing big, special images in public settings). Personally, having the awareness of that and then seeing this plan, terms that come to mind include: politicide, herbicide, domicide. The destruction of Palestinian political awareness, political ideology, political history, and domicide of places where Palestinians live. 

As you mentioned, a lot of these new flashy buildings and developments are not necessarily built for social cohesion. When I think about Dubai in particular and the way the city is structured, there’s a weather element in large parts of the Persian Gulf where it’s hard to be outdoors in the summer months because of the extreme heat, but cities have also been built in a way where you don’t tend to have a lot of public spaces. You don’t have spaces where people can interact across classes.

These developments can be looked at as another form of urban violence: severe changes are inflicted upon societies with the aim of replacing and removing low-income citizens out of urban centers and instead having high-end urban developments.

When I look at the way people interact with their cities, I might make an argument that Dubaization, even beyond an urban aspect, has spread well into the world at large. This might be more in the neoliberal thread that you had touched upon, but what I mean by that is, for example, in Beirut, where I spend a lot of time and have family roots from, a lot of newer buildings don’t have balconies anymore. That’s partly because people want to build their apartments to have glass windows that they can open so they can have extensions in their apartments. But it changes a social factor. There might be issues related to weather or traffic or pollution and things of that nature, but there’s also a social element. And now in the way that we interact with our homes, a lot of what we do when we come home in the evening might be watching Netflix or TV or being online. We’re digitally connected, and in some ways it’s led to an erosion of collectivity, human connection, and interacting with one another.

It felt like ten or fifteen years ago, there was a trade-off when we talked about places like Dubai. A lot of people from around the world would go to Dubai, as there was a lot of money to be made there, as it was an expanding city. But there was a trade-off. Sometimes people would say, Listen, I’m going because there’s a level of stability, and maybe they come from a place where there wasn’t that much stability, but there was also a trade-off: you know you’re going to a place where it is an autocracy. There is no political representation. There are no human rights organizations. There is no political activity in the sense of being able to engage. There are no normal pathways to naturalization.

That used to be a trade-off that people might make reluctantly, whereas it seems to me that this is becoming the norm. It came to a point where Dubai has become a place where large parts of society are eager and willing to go make that trade-off. I’ve had a number of conversations with people who would say, If I can choose between the stability of Dubai versus the instability of Beirut, and autocracy versus democracy, I’ll choose autocracy. 

That’s a baseline analysis that misses a lot of underlying important factors, but I’m wondering if you’ve seen how that concept of the trade-off of moving to a place that is more autocratic has become less of a thing that is impinging on people. People are more willing to make that deal, especially as their own countries become less democratic, less representative, or they feel less politically connected to the spaces and communities around them.

YE: I think you’re quite true in stating that. There are many thinkers and observers who have talked about this idea of public space as a place of political discourse. Jürgen Habermas talked about public space as the space of political expression. We can go back in history to the Greek Agora, at the foot of the Acropolis where there was a market and people exchanged political ideas freely, and where democracy was born. Many would argue that this is an ideal image that really doesn’t exist anymore. And when we look at places like Dubai, for example, there is indeed a trade-off.

In fact, when you ask people, young people in the Arab world in particular, What is your ideal city? Where would you like to live?, inevitably, the answer will be Dubai. The attraction points are that it is clean, safe, you make a relatively comfortable living, there are all these venues of entertainment, so really, who cares about freedom and democracy and being able to express yourself freely? But then, of course, there is a trade-off because it impacts your quality of life as a free-thinking human being.

This is one of the reasons why I left the region. I lived in the UAE for close to twenty years, relatively free. I mean, I could write and there really was no fear of any sort of repercussions, but after the Arab Spring, I felt that there was a change in attitude. There was more scrutiny directed at academics and writers and bloggers, and I know of many colleagues who have been let go from the university where I worked. I felt that if I continued on with my research, which was quite critical of what is happening in Dubai, I might be next. I felt that my ability to speak freely was seriously diminished, and I couldn’t even go out with my camera and take pictures anymore because inevitably some security or police person would stop me and ask me what I was doing.

It’s not just in the UAE—you see this trade-off in various parts of the world. Even in places like New York, there is a diminishing ability to express yourself freely, and there are all these different developments taking place that primarily aim at having profit, like Hudson Yards. But these are not necessarily the dominant mode of urban development, and it’s quite small compared to the rest of New York, and there are still possibilities for political discourse in public space. It is ultimately still a democracy, even if it is flawed. But in the Gulf region and in places where there are these autocratic regimes, public space is looked at with suspicion and all efforts are made to minimize gathering in public spaces.

However, even in a place like Dubai, there are always exceptions. That’s something that I’ve looked at: there are hidden spaces that are populated by migrants, where they come together and establish a counter-narrative to what is taking place elsewhere in the city. I think it’s these places that offer some sort of hope. They show that city residents have an ability to resist and subvert the oppressive measures that are taking place in their respective cities.

JS: That’s a very interesting point, that you see organic life coming out of these spaces. 

The way that the Gulf generally tends to work is that you get a sponsor, and you’re able to work and stay there for a certain period of time. That sponsorship system might have a hierarchy depending on what nation you’re coming from or how powerful your passport is, and usually by the time of retirement, you’re expected to leave and return to your country of origin, or at least to go somewhere else. 

Do you see any possibility in these spaces? How are these communities of migrants changing these cities? What sort of impact can that have on the future?

YE: The sponsorship system, that’s the kafala system: basically, if you get a job, you need to be sponsored by the person offering you the job. That has changed over the last few years, particularly after the pandemic, where many people left places like Dubai and felt that this is not a viable way of living—staying there until you are sixty, and then just being asked to return to wherever you came from. By that point, you would have spent your entire working life in the Gulf, and if you return to your home country, you will be a stranger there. They’ve changed that and have now instituted “golden visas,” where you get a semi-permanent residency, and it is predicated on a number of factors, such as your level of education and income.

But by and large, the vast majority of workers, low-income workers in particular, don’t have the possibility of doing that. They are still very much reliant on the three-year visa that is being offered, and every three years, you have to undergo a medical examination: they check for HIV and other illnesses, and if you are afflicted by any of that, you are deported. So there is this sense of temporariness. I’ve talked about this in my book, Temporary Cities, that this is the overall approach to urban governance in the Gulf and places like Dubai. 

But then there is a kind of resistance: these places I mentioned where people come together and gather, where a kind of “urbanity” takes place. There is a certain liveliness, and people meet their compatriots and exchange news and even political views about what is going on in their country and in the UAE. That shows that there is a certain resilience and desire to subvert this sense of temporality, and establish a sort of permanence in their living conditions. It is of course short-lived, but it nevertheless is there.

For countries in the Gulf, looking at the future and realizing that oil will not last forever, and looking at other issues such as climate change, they will need to change their approach towards these workers. It’s not simply a matter of importing workers and having them do all the menial work that locals are unwilling to do, and then getting rid of them and replacing them with other people from elsewhere. That needs to change to have any viable path forward. Otherwise, I don’t really see how these cities can survive in the long term. 

When Saudi writer Abdul Rahman Munif was asked about the title of his book, Cities of Salt, he said that cities in the Gulf are almost as if they are built from salt—whenever there is a flood, all these marvelous edifices and towers that are being built will be washed away. He didn’t mean it literally, but that at any sign of trouble or any crisis, all of these cities will not be able to continue the way they have been up until that point.

The solar panels kept getting covered in sand because they were in the middle of the desert, and in this marvelous, spectacular city of the future, the solution was: “man with brush.” They hired laborers from South Asia to manually brush sand off the solar panels every couple hours, in the extreme heat. This was the solution in a place where there’s supposed to be incredible amounts of imagination.

JS: It’s interesting that you say that, because we’re just coming off from massive floods in Dubai [in April 2024]. I don’t think difficulties with infrastructure is something new for a lot of the workers that come from South Asia and parts of East Asia, but this is something that also hit middle and upper class residents of Dubai. I’ve spoken with academics that focus on the Gulf, and a big appeal of cities like Dubai is this sense that you’re insulated from everything around the world. I think these floods broke that perception a little bit for a number of people.

A while ago I read the book Spaceship in the Desert by Gökçe Günel. It’s about the attempt to create the world’s first zero-carbon city, Masdar City, looked over by Sultan Al Jaber, who was later the president of COP28. Masdar City was supposed to be the city of the future in many ways, and I think the jury is still out on whether it was a success or not. Today they’re talking about turning it into a place for businesses to rent offices or something of that nature; it’s not become a livable place the way that it was first intended.

But there was an interesting anecdote from it because this whole city was like a spaceship in the desert—remote and not accessible by public transportation, which tends to be quite difficult in much of the Gulf already. It was this big spectacle that didn’t always run smoothly. The Gulf has plenty of sunshine typically, so one of the ideas in the city that was supposed to be zero-carbon, clean technology and renewable energy, was to put out solar panels. The issue was that the solar panels kept getting covered in sand because they were in the middle of the desert.

So they asked, in this marvelous, spectacular city of the future, How do you solve an issue where sand is covering the solar panels? And the solution was: “man with brush.” They hired laborers from South Asia, in the extreme heat and extreme conditions, to manually brush sand off the solar panels every couple hours. I find that interesting, because in a city where you’re supposed to be exploring the spectacular and the future and having all these innovative ideas, it shows two things: that you’re still going to rely on human labor, and that human labor will still be in extreme conditions. This was the solution in a place where there’s supposed to be incredible amounts of imagination.

As you mentioned, post-Arab Spring, being in conditions where it’s really difficult to even walk down the street and take pictures, makes it difficult to think, reflect, and do research. That doesn’t just affect the way a city is built; it also lends itself to political imagination and creative imagination. I’m wondering if we can take this Dubaization idea into the shrinking of political spaces. This is connected to wider trends within neoliberalism, but I’m wondering if you can speak to how have you seen political imagination evolve or shrink as we’ve seen these ideas of the spectacle grow, especially in cities like Cairo and Beirut.

YE: Regarding Spaceship in the Desert, Gökçe has done a remarkable job of documenting the development of the city of Masdar that has changed quite considerably from this idealized version of a zero-carbon, zero-energy city to something that is much more generic and a conventional real estate development at this point.

The floods that hit Dubai were quite severe and would have impacted any city, but they nevertheless showed the vulnerability of what has been built in Dubai so far, and the extent to which the city really cannot insulate itself from external influences forever. Ultimately, the ones who were actually doing the cleanup were the workers. There were many images of workers driving around with trucks absorbing all the water that has been accumulated. The ones living in villas were maybe inconvenienced for a day or two, but then, thanks to the workers, their life went back to normal. We cannot say that about the workers.

JS: What do we think are reasonable things that we can do as individuals or as communities that lead to change? We talked about living a lifestyle without public spaces, whether it’s a balcony or a public square or playgrounds where kids can play, that are not blocked off for certain classes but that lead to cross-pollination amongst classes, nationalities, neighborhoods, and many different things. I don’t think this is exclusive to Dubai; I think in more and more in cities around the world we’re seeing community break down.

Isolation and loneliness is an epidemic. A few years ago I thought about this because I had fallen into community a few different times by chance, and then when I moved or it had broken apart, I felt this loneliness. I remember Googling it and seeing pages and pages of academic articles and research on how loneliness is an epidemic. I don’t think you can disconnect how our societies and cities are built from the loneliness and isolation that we experience. 

What I’m wondering is, as we create these societies that are serving the spectacle over public good, how does that minimize our political imagination? How does that make us think that the options that we have are limited, and that our stress, anxiety, sadness, and isolation is our own fault? That it’s individual rather than collective, and we’re not aware of or have never experienced the possibility of having communities?

This notion of Dubaization is not just about fancy towers; it’s also a mode of governance and a way of ruling societies and making sure that the voices of the marginalized are not being heard.

YE: All of these things you’re talking about were intensified and became part of the general discussion about urbanism and cities that happened during and after the pandemic, when people were locked in their homes and really felt isolation and loneliness. The only way to overcome that was to begin to explore their surroundings: the small neighborhood parks, the streets, the small shops and restaurants—to simply go out and begin to encounter their fellow citizens. That was something that people didn’t feel they needed prior to the pandemic, but the pandemic brought that into view.

To overcome the loneliness epidemic that impacts people’s physical and mental health, public participation is critical: to encourage communities to come together to voice their views and express their objection or approval of developments that are taking place. That is part of the planning process in any democratic or free society. In places in the Arab world that are autocracies, the Gulf in particular, public participation is not part of the equation. In fact, people are looked at as kind of a nuisance that needs to be sidestepped so other stakeholders can be taken into account.

When you look at what’s happening in the Arab world, in places like Egypt and Tunisia, the space for freedom and to express yourself freely has shrunk considerably. Even in a place like Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, which had some promise in terms of freedom and proliferation of various NGOs and community organizations, that freedom has now been restricted and it’s returning to a more restrictive mode of governance. In other places, such as Yemen or Sudan (which is currently in a civil war), we see an obliteration of society.

Inevitably, when you look for the ones who are actually behind the curtailment of freedom, it’s the UAE. They are the ones sponsoring one faction in Sudan; they were part of the Yemen campaign; they are the ones supporting the regime in Egypt. So this notion of Dubaization is not just about fancy towers; it’s also a mode of governance and a way of ruling societies, and making sure the voices of the marginalized are not being heard. The only way to overcome that is for people to come together to resist and to make their voices heard.

JS: You’re right, it goes way beyond putting up fancy buildings. It’s also a means of soft power and sometimes hard power. Here in France, where I am currently, the UAE has made big efforts. They’re not the only state or actor that’s been trying to make political inroads, but the UAE has made big pushes in a number of fronts, not just with elected officials, but also in media. I saw an advertisement a few months ago for a French-language magazine that is entirely about the UAE, and there are reality shows on television about people from France who move to Dubai and have these glorious, luxurious lives. Similar to how youth in the Arab world see Dubai as kind of glamorous and ideal city, there is a sense of that among certain communities here as well.

I would like to end on something hopeful, about ways we can counter this erosion of rights and incremental autocracy. There’s been a lot of and organizing and collectivizing recently on college campuses. We’ve seen protests around the world. A lot of this is around the issue of Gaza and seeking a ceasefire in Palestine, but I’ve also noticed that a lot of the discourse coming out of these protest movements has stretched beyond that. Obviously, these movements are wide and diverse and contain a lot of different elements, and some of those might be problematic and some can be quite inspiring. I’m wondering how you think we can move forward, and could some of these movements that are happening now be a platform to come together to stand up to these wider forces?

YE: These protest movements have been at the forefront here in the US, and I think it exposed the hypocrisy of the US and Europe, claiming that they are championing human rights and the rule of law, and then they just stand by and watch, and aid the genocide that is happening in Gaza. This echoes similar modes of resistance that took place in the US; for example, the Black Lives Matter movement that was happening a few years ago led to some attempts at police reform. But ultimately what happens is that there is a way even for democratic regimes to absorb these movements and normalize it, and it ultimately fizzles out and not much happens. The hope is that as these movements grow and that will lead to real change, but that really hasn’t happened so far.

JS: I’ll also add, with the idea that the UAE has been behind a lot of this (though not exclusively), we can’t disconnect Emirati-Israeli normalization from this phenomenon as well.

YE: Israel and the UAE have been in close contact even before the Abraham Accords. There were close collaborations, particularly in matters of security, between Abu Dhabi and Israel. In fact, the ruler of Abu Dhabi employed the services of an Israeli security firm to install various ways of monitoring the movement of citizens and expatriates. The program was called Eagle Eye. 

That collaboration continues. It’s the UAE that is at the forefront of this, and they are attempting to bring other countries into that agreement as well, such as Saudi Arabia, but that hasn’t happened yet. It serves the UAE’s interests. That is another part of what is happening in the UAE: it is able to take advantage of these crises, and monetize them and make a profit. That has been the case for decades now, and I don’t see this changing in the near future.

JS: Is there anything that keeps you hopeful for the future as a means of resisting these forces and what seems like a collaboration of autocrats and illiberal regimes and ideologies?

YE: Yes. It’s very easy to succumb to pessimism and hopelessness, but when we look at what is happening in the region, for example in Egypt, there are subtle modes of resistance. There are community organizations in slums that are trying to create a degree of change in their overall living conditions, something that is informal and does not rely on the government, and where people simply are taking matters into their own hands. We also see that in the Gulf, for example in Bahrain—and also in the UAE, to some extent. The spaces that I documented are sort of safe havens for migrants, where they can come together away from the scrutinizing eyes of authorities.

All of that shows that people have agency and resilience, and they are able to overcome these harsh circumstances. That gives me some glimmer of hope. Even among citizens in the UAE, there are many who are now calling for a change in governance and for giving more permanent status to expatriates who are working in the Gulf: to recognize them not just as people who are executing certain tasks, but also as contributing to the well-being of the societies they live in. They are contributing to the wealth, building the towers, managing traffic, and driving metro trains and all of that. There is a change of attitude. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

JS: Before we go, we’d like to ask you for three books you recommend. I’m sorry to spring this on you as well, but last September, I had the opportunity to sit in on one of your classes, and you were showing some films that depict different elements of Arab cities. I believe it was Cairo and Beirut that you were showing at the time. So if you could suggest three books and maybe throw in a film or two as well that have inspired you.

YE: Regarding books, there’s Cities of Salt which I mentioned earlier, by Saudi writer Abdul Rahman Munif, and translated by Peter Theroux. It’s the first book of a five part series, and it depicts the changes that happen in a fictional Arab country based on Saudi Arabia, and the impact of oil on life in that part of the world. It’s a wonderful introduction if you want to learn about the Arabian Peninsula.

Another book I recommend is Season of Migration to the North by Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih. It’s about a Sudanese student who returns from the UK to Sudan, and it’s about colonialism and post-colonialism, and I think it’s really wonderful as well.

The third book would be The Death and Life of Great American Cities by American writer Jean Jacobs. This is a classic book and really points out the importance of community and street life, and the destructive impact of modernizing architecture and urban planning. I think reading this is a wake-up call.

Regarding movies, a key movie that I show in my seminar is In the Last Days of the City by director Tamer El Said, and the main actor is Khalid Abdalla. It’s about Cairo, specifically downtown Cairo, and the changes that happened there prior to the Arab Spring, and also about Beirut and Baghdad. There is a sense of nostalgia, and it talks about the destructive impact of war and urban violence, and how to make sense of all of that.

JS: I actually read Season of Migration to the North recently. It was the first time I picked it up, so that’s a timely one for me.

Yasser, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. It was great having you on.

YE: Thanks for having me. It was very enjoyable.

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