Culture Archives - CrossFireArarbia

An Egyptian House in a German Town

CrossFireArabia
May 13, 2026

An Arab house in a German town, all the trappings of a different culture, Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, and Yemeni, an Oriental setting in a traditional western German context.

The town is Bruchsal, to the west of Frankfurt, owners, the Burkards, they fell in love with a different culture, and decided to “transport it” to their house and in their lands, having lived in Cairo in the 1970s and 1980s.

Helmut Burkard and his wife Beta decided to pack their belongings and their kids in 1974 and move to Cairo. Neighbors told him “you are mad” to go to the Middle East at that precise moment. “Its dangerous.”

But he wasn’t swayed. They loved every single minute of it. Helmut teaching music at a convent, Beta, an economist by training had become a proper housewife, and the two kids growing up.

Over the years Beta spent her time collecting traditional artifacts, souvenirs, paintings and different copies of the Quran from Cairo’s old Souqs and Bazaars as she had a preordained feeling that one day she and her family would go back to their home on Mozart Way and fill it and make it a house of converging cultures.

And so today as you enter the house, you are immediately struck by the mementos, artifacts, framed pictures, the rugs, swords, scabbards hanging on the different walls of the house. The speak of a different culture, and a far away civilization embedded in a geographical separateness, novel, yet very human.

What’s fascinating about this house is that it’s totally covered with trinkets and memorabilia. The stairs, landing, living room, bedrooms all smell of a civilization that is anything but German, yet relaxing and soothing.

Pottery, pans, Arabic coffee pots, earrings worm by Bedouin women adorned the place from head to foot together with wall paintings by different Egyptian artists.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the large black piano in the living room, and the number of German books, a visitor like way would be forgiven for thinking the house belongs to a foreign family living in rural Germany.

Every wall, every corner, nook and cranny of every room—literally—filled with every aspect of an Arab life which the Burkards lived either in the long stretch in Cairo, and or the vacationing he used to take his family to in different parts of Jordan, Syria and Yemen.

Beta just kept collecting on these holidays inevitably made driving through these areas. “I wanted my family to experience these countries by roads, and not through planes,” he used to say.

The house is an Arabic treasure. On Mozart Way, you can’t say, “oh I want to write an impressionistic piece on this house” simply because of the intricate detail involved in these artifacts. The house tells a story of a past the Burkard’s lived in. If you let Beta go on, she would speak for ages on how she got this piece, and from which Souq she had to go to.

You can’t point to any particular room and say this is the pride and joy of the Burkards. They are all special. Take the living room, for instance. One is struck by its aura of combination of religiosity, culture, art, music and literature that spanned across.

There was picture frame of Al Faateha (Opening chapter of the Quran), engravings of the name of Allah (God) and Prophet Mohammad on different plates.

In a small side section named by Helmut Burkard as the “Arabic room”, there is a mixture of Arabesque and teak, a desk, a large rounded Arabesque coffee table with a copper plate and a traditional wooden shield used as a divide from one section of the house to another.

Of course both husband and wife know what all these means. Helmut speaks good Arabic with an Egyptian accent, so does Beta although she didn’t let on. But Helmut was directly in touch with the local population, that’s why he picked up the accent and the slang.

After Egypt the Burkards went back to Germany, however, Helmut returned to Jordan in 1996 as a fellow teaching in the Music National Conservatory where he remained till 2003. He first came to Cairo when he was in his early 40s, now he was in his 70s, his kids grown up, and his wife Beta attending the garden and on frequent trips to Switzerland which is just around the corner from where they lived. But he was still a “musical fighter”, humming to himself a piece by Mozart or Bach as he went down the corridor.

At the Conservatory, he established an exchange program where German pupils came to Jordan to play music followed by Jordanian pupils going to Germany to play classical music with Arab themes. He called this a “musical culture of dialogue”; the German pupils would also learn different Arabic pieces and even sing them.

Helmut, now in his early 80s, and who brought the last German music group to play in Amman in 2010, is a strong believer in a culture of dialogue between east and west as a means to bringing people closer together.

His house is a testimony to that.

This artical is reprinted from my account on Hubpages

Culture

Nakba Art

CrossFireArabia
May 13, 2026

Art of the Nakba

My painting called”Nakba of Palestine “on May 14 1948 the land of Palestine was stolen by evil wicked power after that the Palestinian disperse all over the world.

Please Share it.

Artist Said Elatab

Culture

Top Nobel Laureate Coetzee Refuses Israel Prize

CrossFireArabia
May 8, 2026

Nobel laureate JM Coetzee has declined to attend an upcoming literature festival in Israel, citing the “genocidal campaign” in Gaza, stating: “It will take many years for Israel to clear its name”.

The Nobel laureate, who was born in apartheid South Africa and lives in Australia, addressed a letter to the Jerusalem International Writers Festival artistic director, Julia Fermentto-Tzaisler, in November, as seen by the Guardian, in which he outlined his reasons for not attending the May event.

“For the past two years the state of Israel has been conducting a genocidal campaign in Gaza.. this campaign, conducted by the [Israeli army], appears to have had the enthusiastic support of the vast majority of Israel’s population.”

“For this reason it is not possible for any considerable sector of Israeli society, including its intellectual and arts community, to claim that it should not share in the blame for the atrocities in Gaza.”

Coetzee, who won the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003, visited Jerusalem in 1987 to receive the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. At the event, he called for the end of apartheid in South Africa, according to the Quds News Network.

Coetzee revealed he had once been a supporter of Israel. “The campaign of annihilation in Gaza has changed all that,” he continued. “Long-time supporters of Israel have turned away in revulsion at the actions of the Israeli military. It will take many years for Israel to clear its name, assuming that it wishes to do so, and to re-establish itself in the international community.”

A UN special committee of inquiry found that Israel’s assault on Gaza, with mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions as well as statements by senior Israeli leaders, demonstrated “direct evidence of genocidal intent”.

Amnesty International has said Israel is still committing genocide in Gaza during the so-called ceasefire which took effect in October and backed by the US by continuing to strike Gaza’s now mostly destroyed civilian infrastructure, killing hundreds and restricting the entry of much-needed aid, including to medical supplies and humanitarian relief.

More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza in October 2023.

Culture

Beirut Weeps For a Poet

CrossFireArabia
April 16, 2026

Lebanon mourns Khatoun Salma, a Lebanese national poet who was killed along with her husband in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their home in the Tallet al-Khayat neighborhood of Beirut Wednesday, 8 April.

Rasha al-Amir, publisher of Dar al-Jadeed, announced that the bodies of Khatoun and her husband were recovered from the rubble, Thursday morning.

Lebanese journalist Maha Salma also mourned her sister Khatoun on her Instagram account, writing: “My dear sister is in God’s care. May God grant me patience in the pain of her loss and the burning of my heart and soul.”

Poet and playwright Yahya Jaber wrote a tribute to Khatoun on Facebook, saying: “Yesterday, the Israeli airstrike cut down a poet with its sharp scissors, a poet of delicate Arabic.” Under the rubble, the conjunction “waw,” the plural “waw,” the feminine plural “nun,” the feminine suffix “ta,” the definite article “al-“: a massacre of language at the hands of language. Jaber attached a picture of the building where Khatoun lived to his post, saying:

“Here is the Khayat Hill building, and here on one of these balconies, we used to stay up late with Khatoun and her husband, Muhammad Karsht, in the late 198s, spinning yarns of laughter and sewing memories. We would recite poetry and remember our city, Tyre, and love Beirut, the capital.”

Lebanese poet Majida Dagher wrote on her Facebook page in mourning for Khatoun: “Under the rubble of her house in Khayat Hill, they found a poet lying among her shattered rhymes. The death of a poet in an airstrike on Beirut makes you feel that war is very, very close. The sound of bones breaking has become louder, and the smell of blood deeper.

Salma fell from the heights of poetry before she could bid farewell to ‘the last inhabitant of the moon.'” She thought Beirut was her tent, Beirut the roof of her poem, where she would hide, “embracing a woman waiting” for the dust to settle. But the dust became the tent of a new Beirut, a Beirut weeping, broken, martyred.

Salma, who studied Arabic literature at the American University of Beirut, published two collections of poetry, “I Embraced a Woman Waiting” in 2009 and “The Last Inhabitants of the Moon” in 2012, both with the Lebanese publishing house Dar Al-Jadeed. She first gained recognition in the 1970s, during her secondary school years, when she won a poetry prize. Later, at the beginning of this century, she became known in cultural circles for her relatively small but distinguished poetic output and her academic pursuits, which included studies in Sufism and Sufi mystics.

She combined profound knowledge with poetic sensitivity. She left her mark on the Lebanese cultural scene with a unique poetic voice, manifested in her literary works that carried the pain of humanity, exile, and memory. With her tragic passing, Lebanon loses a literary and human figure who wrote of the wound in a language that resembled nothing but truth.

Culture

Al Bahri: The Man Who Set Palestinian Theater

CrossFireArabia
March 14, 2026

He is a playwright and author of 12 plays, nearly 20 novels, and numerous translations. Jamil Habib Afara (al-Bahri) was known as the “Father of Theater.” He was born in 1895 in Haifa and his family name dates back to the mid-18th century, as his ancestor owned a merchant fleet that sailed the Mediterranean between Haifa, Acre, and Tripoli. This is where his family name originated.

He showed early interest in literature and writing. He and his brother, Hanna, were keen to revitalize the literary and intellectual scene in Haifa, establishing the National Library there in 1922. He first published the “Zahrat al-Jamil” (The Beautiful Flower) and later “al-Zahra” (The Flower) which was initially a weekly publication that later became a bi-weekly and continued publication for about nine months after his death in 1931. His last piece was

a journalistic investigation into the execution of the three martyrs: Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ata al-Zeer, in the city of Acre in 1930. He dedicated his time and his newspaper that day to the souls of these martyrs, leading with: “The terrible hour in Haifa and all of Palestine: Let us commemorate those who gave their lives for the homeland.” A large funeral was held for him, and poems and eulogies were recited and published in the Palestinian press, such as the “Al-Karmel” and “Falastin,” newspapers.

The Department of Culture of the Palestine Liberation Organization posthumously awarded him the Jerusalem Medal for Culture and Arts in 1990, and the Palestinian Ministry of Culture reprinted his first book, “The History of Haifa,” in 2022.