Portal 9

Portal 9 Stories and critical writing about the city

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ISSUE #1 THE IMAGINED, AUTUMN 2012

Portal 9 at Librairie Antoine

Update: Car as Collateral in China’s Ordos

Michael Ulfstjerne

In less than a year, everything seems to have changed, though the automobile – which represents velocity, acceleration, daring, and the hubris of rapid growth – still offers some way of understanding the city.

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NARRATIVES

Before with My Father, After for My Son

Youssef Bazzi

Three generations live in the shadow of a fractured city.

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In the inaugural issue of Portal 9, the first Arabic-English journal about the city, a novelist interviews an architect practicing in Iraq since the 1950s. A researcher in South Sudan analyzes the nation’s search for unity by means of a new capital city. Fiction from Esfahan, reportage from Port-au-Prince, essays from Beirut – urbanists, critics, taxi drivers, historians, and photographers consider “The Imagined.”

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URBANOGRAPHY

Ordos: A Chinese City Constructed in the Fast Lane

Michael Ulfstjerne and Bert de Muynck

China’s new city Ordos is regularly described as a “ghost town,” but the forces behind the city go beyond images of vacant towers.

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NARRATIVES

From the Walled Town of Eight Gates to the Architecture of the City

Waddah Chararah

Before the destruction of the wall as a material, architectural, ideological, and social entity, the gateways, or portals, stood watch over the alleys, roads, and markets of the city. They watched over the city night and day, over the commercial and social relations between its interior and exterior.

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REVIEWS AND CRITIQUE

Express Delivery of Arab Revolts

Brian Whitaker

Today, as a new Arab revolt transforms the region again, no one wants to wait eight years to read about it. Far more than in the past, book publishers seem eager to keep pace with current events. The mere fact that they can contemplate doing so is a result of advances in technology that can shorten production time (once they have the text) to weeks rather than months, and on rare occasions even to a matter of days.

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REVIEWS AND CRITIQUE

Jadaliyya

Nat Muller and Omar Kholeif

The modest launch of the bilingual English-Arabic online magazineJadaliyya in September 2010, an initiative of the non-profit Arab Studies Institute (ASi) in Washington DC and Beirut, could not have anticipated its current status. The Arab uprisings, which gained momentum only a few months after Jadaliyya was established, firmly catapulted it to the forefront of critical debates and analysis of the Arab world.

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CREATIVE WRITING

Biography of My Childhood Imagination

Hazem Saghieh

Children’s bedtime stories are the best stimulus of imagination, for what children learn is permanent and solid, like a stone carving. Jean Piaget, one of the experts who support this claim, has demonstrated the significance of children’s reception of stories and their ability to recount and to exchange them with their peers, without the mediation of adults. Children recreate this imaginary universe as it creates them.

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REVIEWS AND CRITIQUE

Ariel Pink’s Before Today

Morgan Quaintance

While some music fans and journalists dismissed Pink’s early work as unlistenable, a small group of dedicated fans rallied against the mainstream for not recognizing a tortured genius at work. That is, until the 2010 release of Before Today, Pink’s first studio-recorded, major-label album.

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THE IMAGINED
Autumn 2012

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Portal 9 welcomes new writing in Arabic and English. We publish fiction, essays, reportage, criticism, conversations, academic articles, and visual essays, and we focus on the Middle East. We seek contributions from emerging writers, graduate students, and seasoned authors. Visit our submissions page for more information.

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If you would like to order the first issue of Portal 9, please submit your name, full mailing address, and phone number to order@portal9journal.org, and a member of our staff will respond to your inquiry.

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