Hope & Joy: Still Abiding

We invite our friends near and far to join us online for a special literary and musical performance. This event culminates an eventful year that also concludes with the transition of Founding Executive Director Hazami Sayed from Al-Bustan. We are honored to feature three remarkable women who have inspired the growth of the organization and two virtuoso musicians who have been instrumental in shaping our music programming.

Readings by Naomi Shihab Nye, Nadine Touma, and Nathalie Handal will be interlaced with musical interludes by Kinan Abou-afach and Hafez Kotain.  Dr. Huda Fakhreddine will moderate a conversation among the artists, probing into their views of belonging, representation, and community.

Rooted in Arab arts and language, Al-Bustan is committed to creating platforms for explorations of identity and harnessing the arts to foster cross-cultural understanding and community building. We remain hopeful in these troubled times and celebrate joy in bringing people together and in the power of human connection.

ندعو أصدقاء البستان إلى لقاءأدبي وموسيقيّ نختتم فيه نشاطنا لهذا العام ونحتفل فيه بمؤسِّسة البستان حزامي السيد ونحن ننتقل إلى فصل جديد. في هذه المناسبة، يشرفنا أن نستضيف ثلاث فنانات متميزات ساهمن في نمو البستان وموسيقيين مبدعين فاعلين في بناء برنامجنا الموسيقي. ستتخلل قراءات نايومي شهاب ناي ونادين توما وناتالي حنظل وصلات موسيقية يؤديها كنان أبو عفش وحافظ قطين

انطلاقا من التزام البستان بتعزيز اللغة والثقافة العربيتين في المجتمع الأمريكي، ندعو ضيفاتنا في حوارهنّ مع الدكتورة هدى فخر الدين إلى الحديث عن دور الفن واللغة في الهوية العربية بشكل عام والهوية العربية الأمريكية بشكل خاص، عن علاقتهنّ باللغة العربية، عن دور المرأة في بناء مجتمع متعدد وعادل، عن أهمية النشاط الثقافي في خلق شعور بالانتماء. في مواجهة المحن والتحديات التي يعيشها عالمنااليوم، نبقى في البستان متمسكين بالأمل مفهوما وممارسةً

Naomi Shihab Nye, the Young People’s Poet Laureate of the U.S. through the Poetry Foundation (Chicago), was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in Ferguson, Mo., Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Recently she was the New York Times magazine poetry editor for more than a year. In 2020 she received the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle. She is the author or editor of more than 30 volumes, including Sitti’s Secrets, Habibi, The Turtle of Oman, and The Tiny Journalist, which advocates for justice for Palestinian people. The book received the top Poetry Prize in 2020 from both the Texas Institute of Letters and the Writers League of Texas.

Nadine R.L Touma is an award-winning polymath, author, artist, publisher, pedagogue and a teller of tales. In 2006, she and Sivine Ariss co-founded Dar Onboz, a multidisciplinary creative platform producing Arabic publications, films, songs, performances, educational tools, games, objects, and exhibitions for the young and not so young, winning 34 international awards and changing the rules of the game in a sector dormant for years. Since childhood she is taken by words and questions like “Are clouds the ears of the sky? Are leaves the nose of the trees?” And words have never left her since, neither have questions.

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Middle East, and educated in Asia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Claire Messud writes, she “illuminates the luxuriance and longing of deracination—a contemporary Orpheus.” Her recent poetry books include Life in a Country Album, winner of the 2020 Palestine Book Award; and the flash collection The Republics, lauded as “one of the most inventive books by one of today’s most diverse writers,” and winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing, and the Arab American Book Award. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, The Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, among others. She is a professor at Columbia University, and writes the literary travel column “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders magazine and “Journeys” column for Publishers Weekly Arabic.

Dr. Huda J. Fakhreddine is the author of  Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015), Zaman Saghir taht shams thaniya (A Small Time under a Different Sun) (Dar al-Nahda, 2019), and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh UP, forthcoming in 2021). Her translations of modern Arabic poems have appeared in Banipal, Asymptote, World Literature Today, Nimrod, ArabLit Quarterly, Middle Eastern Literatures, among others. She teaches Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

Kinan Abou-afach, a Syrian-born cellist and composer, is a recipient of the 2013 Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He received his Bachelors degree in cello performance with a minor in oud performance from the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus. He relocated to Chicago in 2000 to pursue a master’s degree at the DePaul University School of Music. As a composer, Abou-afach crafts music that is saturated with unique scales, rhythmic grooves, and improvisation-esque progressions. His works are influenced by Eastern and Western traditions. Al-Bustan has commissioned him for several new works, notably: Of Roads and Homes premiered in March 2018;  Nur: A Musical Journey in Sufi Poetry premiered in April 2016; Of Night of Solace: Fantasia on Andalusian Muwashshah Poetry premiered in December 2015; {De}perception with digital artist Ayman Alalao premiered in May 2015; and Roads to Damascus with visual artist Kevork Mourad premiered in February 2013.

Hafez Kotain is a master percussionist fluent in both Arab and Latin rhythms–a fluency he honed in his native countries of Syria and Venezuela. In 2013 he received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Born in Venezuela of Syrian heritage, he grew up in Syria until the age of 16 years. He began playing the doumbek at the age of seven years, made his first stage performance at nine years, and went on to study with master Syrian percussionist Hady Jazan, winning the national percussion competitions in Syria for five consecutive years. Kotian has toured with Syrian singer George Wassouf in Canada and the US; and has performed in Philadelphia with acclaimed artist Sting and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Kotain teaches percussion classes at the University of Pennsylvania, and throughout the year he is a master teaching artist with Al-Bustan at Philadelphia public schools, Al-Bustan Camp, and various community-based programs.