It is paradoxical how the more we become aware of what the world actually encompasses, the duller and more similar it actually gets to what we can find at home. Buildings so high and steep that one’s gaze wavers while trying to scale their walls, carefully preserved aseptic tandoori dishes and burritos at the local fast-food cart—all the details of everyday life, the customary proportions, are swept away by the never-ending highway that can take anyone anywhere one may end up. But, are we really more alike because we live in, eat out of, and ride the same boxes?
The team behind the Arabian Stories project believes that words may actually be the most effective vehicles for travelers to see the magic each spot exudes beneath the asphalt, for locals to uncover and restore what is no longer in plain sight, and for all of us not to forget the stories that provide us with connections to the past and bring us closer to everyone else, in particular our loved ones.
That is the aim of this project: to find the earth’s fading flavor. And to this end, we need your help. If you come from an Arabic country or speak Arabic as your mother tongue and want your story—the story of the places that breathe inside you—to reach everyone in this little village we used to call the world, we encourage you to submit it to us. Capture a story linked to a special location that you want to tell us about and include a few pictures of said location, regardless of whether the area still looks the same as your recollection. In return, our team of professional translators will translate your story into English and Spanish and publish all the versions of your story, the original and the translations, on the project’s website. We will attach your story to the corresponding location on the website’s map, coupled with a short author bio.
All stories should span from 300 to 500 words, be written in Modern Standard Arabic, be original (both unpublished and inventive), and last but not least, be thematically related to a specific location in the Arab world—a place that you as the author can supply us a few pictures of.
Looking forward to discovering the Arabic world guided by the voices of those who are qualified to comment on how it should be recognized,