Anthrow Circus

Yalda: An Afghan Winter Story

MIXED-MEDIA VIDEO BY “TILL WE HAVE FACES
INTRODUCTORY TEXT BY HEATHER M. SURLS

Setara, a 17-year-old from Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, remembers falling asleep at her grandmother’s house as a girl. Grandma Gul, or Grandma Flower, would sit beside her with a cup of chai and rock-sugar candies and tell her stories. One of these was the story of Yalda, a traditional Afghan tale about a village girl who meets a feared “witch” on the longest night of the year.

Spirited Away—Again

TEXT AND POEM BY GABRIEL NOEL

Spirited Away is a feature animated film by Hayao Miyazaki, one of the most acclaimed directors of contemporary cinema. Released in Japan in 2001, it follows 10-year-old Chihiro, an innocent, headstrong, sensitive girl moving with her parents to a new home in a Japanese town where she knows no one. As they are about to arrive in their tiny car to their new life, the father takes a wrong turn, leading them instead to an abandoned theme park where the world of the spirits still exists in a parallel reality. p>

Introduction to Arabic Poetry: Poet Nizar Qabbani

VIDEO PRODUCTION AND PHOTO BY ZAHER AL ZAHER
POEM RECITED BY ZAHER AL ZAHER
ARTICLE TEXT BY HEATHER M. SURLS

Today’s poem, recited by Syrian photojournalist Zaher Al Zaher, tells of a man’s love for a beautiful woman who is blind. After insisting that she cannot marry without her sight, the man says he will find someone to donate a pair of eyes for her. Then, when she wakes up able to see, the woman realizes her lover is himself blind and refuses to marry him. Saddened, he releases her with a parting request: that she promise to care for his eyes.

Subway Poem 1

TEXT, POEM, AND IMAGES BY JANE POTTHAST

For a long time, I worked somewhere different each day. I spent long hours on the subway, commuting from location to location. Collecting one lonely descent after the other, hours spent zoning in and out of the rhythmic haul of the trains, I started to feel like I occupied two worlds, spending half my time in the one belowground. Finding myself stuck in this closed circuit of city gears, I had nothing else to do but notice the strange aesthetics of this underworld. .