Mashrou’ Leila, which translates roughly to the Nighttime Project or The Overnight Project (or perhaps it means Leila’s Poject, with Leila meaning night and also being a popular girl’s name in the Levant) as an ode to all-night jamming (or, as I like to think, a cheeky nod to nighttime “fun”), is a Lebanese indie-rock band that formed in 2008 on the campus of the American University of Beirut. The band is popular (dare I say, considered basic even) amongst the Middle Eastern studies/indieovers’ community in the West since their inception 11 years ago, and have been dubbed “The Arab world’s most influential independent…
The Oldest College Literary Magazine in the Nation
By Zachariah Crutchfield
We Sail These Seas
Long ago, they set fire to their homes. At the end of winter, when the snowdrifts began to deflate and the dead trees began to breathe in the changing air for the first time, they would all stand outside their homes and start a fire in the middle of the village. The homes were so close to one another; a family of homes that kept each other warm, that it never took long for the fire to spread. And while the homes fell into it shouting with glee at the spectacle, everyone stood outside and watched as breath floated into…
Baby Blue Sentinel
She found sleepingly dead by the twisted tree in his backyard, curled so tightly into himself that she thought he must warmed in the sun to soften the architecture of his body, before the glacial night air had hardened him into that shape. He was the core of a cocoon of leaves, pressing so tightly…