FRANKENSTEIN IN BAGHDAD
Ahmed Saadawi
Set after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Frankenstein in Baghdad captures the ordinary yet not so ordinary life in rapidly-changing Baghdad. The novel illustrates the complexity of life for a citizen in Iraq, highlights the atrocities of war and sectarianism, and questions our sense of bias and morality. Frankenstein in Baghdad is a novel relevant for everyone irrespective of their nationality.
Zahraa Al-Dawood
THE INKBLOT JOURNAL
Published by the AUS Writing Center
SPRING 2019 ISSUE
Dreams
EDITORS'
NOTE
We are happy to present the Inkblot Newsletter for the semester of Spring 2019, with the theme “Dreams”. We are thankful to all the students who answered our call for submissions and who helped us understand what dreams mean to them. We appreciate the diversity in the approach to this topic and hope that each of the selected submissions will open your eyes to the writers’ dreamworld and the role dreams play in shaping our viewpoint of the world.
As editors, we envisioned a journal that would better serve the needs of its readers and would engage their interests. The Inkblot has for long been viewed as a bridge between students, tutors, and professors, and a way of getting to know the activities of the Writing Center and its members. It began as a newsletter for the American University of Sharjah’s Writing Center and has not stopped evolving ever since. This semester proved to be a turning point in the history of the Inkblot, which now has its own website and targets a larger audience.
The Inkblot Journal’s Website is created to help you discover the activity of the Writing Center and appreciate the work done by its members. Feel free to explore the Writing Center Contest winning entries with theme “A Train Journey” for this semester and get to know the Writing Center staff through the page dedicated to the Writing Center tutors and their favorite quotes. Keep checking our website for further updates on book recommendations, writing advice and the activities of the Writing Center.
Again, we are proud and honored to introduce the very first online edition of the Inkblot for Spring 2019 and hope that what you will find here will motivate you to explore our previous issues and look forward to the future ones.
Happy reading!
SUBMISSIONS
TUTORS' FAVORITE
QUOTATIONS
“Occasionally playing bad cards helps you win bigger pots”
- Charley Swayne and Daniel Negreanu.
By Nikita Mitin
"Let them see my weakness, and let them see me overcome it"
- Brandon Sanderson
By Loay Kamel
“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all"
-Toni Morrison, Beloved
By Krishea Aswani
“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it the most?”
- Mark Twain
By Shamma Alkhoori
"If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again."
- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
By Konstantina Spyropoulou
“For in dreams we enter a world that is entirely our own. Let them swim in the deepest ocean, or glide over the highest cloud.”
- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
By Krisha Doshi
“Perhaps indeed they laugh at the chains we wrap around ourselves – our endless, insatiable need to find flaws within the demands of life. Or perhaps they do not laugh, but rage at us. Perhaps our denial of life’s celebration is our greatest insult to those whom we worship and serve.”
-Steve Erikson, Memories of Ice
By Abdulla Nasir
“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
- George Orwell, 1984
By Somar Jafar
“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?”
- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
By Tamanna Taher
“Our greatest fear should not be of failure… but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”
- Francis Chan
By Omar Nasir
“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads—at least that’s where I imagine it—there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.”
-Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
By Zahraa Al Dawood
book
recommendations
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Half of a Yellow Sun,
The author takes you back to a very dark time in Nigeria in the early 70s when a civil war baffled Nigerians with starvation, death and homelessness. The book delves into the perspectives of fictional characters who express their experiences in dealing with the hardships of the war through love, betrayal and murder. This semi-fictional storyline will captivate your senses as its Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, offers an extensively visual incite of the pre-civil war as well as post-civil war Nigeria.
This book had personally inspired me to discover and learn more about the Nigeran culture -especially its food- and was a great read.
Fatima Al Hammadi
Ibraheem Abbas: HJWN
What happens when the barrier between humans and spirits is broken? Hwjn delves into the life of a young Arab girl who happens to accidentally communicate with a spirit through a board game. The storyline indulges its reader in horror, curiosity and sympathy. I have gained a new perspective towards spirits after reading this book, since it offers a very unique incite towards a world that not many are sure of its existence.
Fatima Al Hammadi
Susan Abulhawa: Mornings in Jenin
It is a very heart-warming yet heart-wrenching story about a Palestinian family in 1948. It tells the story of a Palestinian refugee family using real-life history and events to portray the Israeli occupation. The story was very emotional because it discussed the Nakba of 1948 as well as the effect it had on Palestinian families and later generations.
Roa Daher
Meet The Team: Spring 2019
