At the 2013 Hugo Awards, the Michigan-based author Saladin Ahmed was up for Best Novel, an award that has previously gone to William Gibson and Philip K Dick. His book, Throne of the Crescent Moon, is set in a fantastical version of Caliphate-era Baghdad, where an ageing “ghul-hunter” gets embroiled in a struggle between a tyrannical caliph and a Robin Hood-style thief.
It didn’t win, but there was a consolation. “George R R Martin was the first person to come over and say: ‘Don’t feel too bad, I lost the first three years I was nominated,’” Ahmed says. “He sat me down and had a drink with me.”
Growing up, Ahmed latched on to the few Arab characters he could find in pop culture, such as Indiana Jones’s Egyptian sidekick Sallah. “You look back and think: ‘Gosh, that was pathetic that I got so excited.’ He was a sidekick, a happily colonised guy, but, hey, he looked like he could be my uncle.”
When Ahmed started writing his own fiction, “I knew from the get-go that I was going to write something with a kind of Arab, Islamic flavour to it,” he says. This was partly because of current political tensions. “We live in such a demonising time that just to have a book where all of the heroes are quasi-Muslim and they’re all also either quasi-Arab or quasi-African, that’s a radical statement in itself. I don’t know that there’s a more demonised ideology out there right now and an awareness of that fact is always, always there for me.”
Despite all this, Ahmed is keen to point out that Throne of the Crescent Moon is hardly a political tract. “In the beginning and at the end,” he says, “it’s a swashbuckling adventure, so more than anything I hope that people feel like they spent some nice time in another world. But I do hope that when they come back to their world, they look at it a little differently.”
artslife@thenational.ae
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
Family reunited
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was born and raised in Tehran and studied English literature before working as a translator in the relief effort for the Japanese International Co-operation Agency in 2003.
She moved to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies before moving to the World Health Organisation as a communications officer.
She came to the UK in 2007 after securing a scholarship at London Metropolitan University to study a master's in communication management and met her future husband through mutual friends a month later.
The couple were married in August 2009 in Winchester and their daughter was born in June 2014.
She was held in her native country a year later.
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
The%20specs
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The specs
Engine: four-litre V6 and 3.5-litre V6 twin-turbo
Transmission: six-speed and 10-speed
Power: 271 and 409 horsepower
Torque: 385 and 650Nm
Price: from Dh229,900 to Dh355,000
Company%20Profile
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Astroworld
Travis Scott
Grand Hustle/Epic/Cactus Jack
If you go
The flights
Return flights from Dubai to Santiago, via Sao Paolo cost from Dh5,295 with Emirates.
The trip
A five-day trip (not including two days of flight travel) was split between Santiago and in Puerto Varas, with more time spent in the later where excursions were organised by TurisTour.
When to go
The summer months, from December to February are best though there is beauty in each season
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
The%20specs%3A%20Taycan%20Turbo%20GT
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THE%20SPECS
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Qyubic
Started: October 2023
Founder: Namrata Raina
Based: Dubai
Sector: E-commerce
Current number of staff: 10
Investment stage: Pre-seed
Initial investment: Undisclosed