In 1935, Italian forces carved a colossal stone head of Benito Mussolini into Ethiopia’s historic Adwa plain. Built as a symbol of fascist conquest, the monument later vanished, leaving behind one of the strangest and least-known relics of Italy’s colonial empire.
The Kara of the Omo
A personal travel essay from Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, following the rough road south from Turmi to the Kara people above the Omo River—where myth, landscape, and daily art shape a different sense of time.
Mudbrick and Light: Voices from the Heart of Kerma
Kerma does not feel marginal. It feels like a centre misnamed. Journey through the ancient Kingdom of Kush and the massive mudbrick ruins of the Great Defufa in this reflection on history, memory, and the endurance of the Sudanese desert.
Voices, Madness, and the Limits of Psychiatric Explanation
We live surrounded by voices: experts on screens, echoes of parents and teachers, murmurs we call our thoughts. What if the voices of madness are not meaningless noise, but tell us something our current psychiatry cannot explain?
Where Waters Meet: At the Confluence of the Blue and White Niles
At Khartoum, the White Nile and the Blue Nile flow together and become a single river exemplifying how landscapes mirror human psychology, memory, and the meeting of different currents within a single life.
Poland’s Szeptuchy: The Last Whispering Healers of Podlasie
In Podlasie, a handful of szeptuchy – “whispering healers” – still offer prayers and simple rituals to those seeking help. This article introduces these remaining folk healers of eastern Poland, explaining their practices, beliefs, and the cultural world that keeps their traditions alive.
Shelley’s Heart
A few days before his death in July 1822, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley had a strange experience while walking along the seashore. He claimed to have encountered his doppelgänger—an exact double of himself—and recognized it as an unmistakable sign of his imminent death. Just days later, Shelley’s body was found floating in the sea…
The Invisible Agony of Phantom Pain: My Father’s Story
For nearly forty years, my father endured the torment of phantom pain after losing a leg fighting in Italy during World War II. As a disabled Polish veteran living in post-war Britain, he faced not only physical suffering but prejudice, poverty and neglect.
Santoka Taneda. The Wandering Poet.
“Just walking /And just tears/ Overflow” The poet Santoka Taneda spent the major part of his life as a vagabond, wandering the villages and byways of pre-war Japan as a beggar with a bowl and a staff. He had given up all his belongings, including his home and family, to pursue a vision of poetry…
Mokhanna and the Moon of Nakhshab: The Veiled Prophet of Khorasan
A historical narrative of Mokhanna, the Veiled Prophet of Khorasan, and the Moon of Nakhshab—a tale of illusion, rebellion, and the collapse of a white-robed movement in 8th-century Central Asia.