AlAraby Newspaper

In 1820, the governor of Egypt, Mohamed Ali Basha, established the first Arabic printing press in the world called the Bulaq Press. Egyptians were sent to Rome and Milan to study the printing process and bring some machines back to Egypt. They had to re-engineer the machines to work from right to left so they could print in Arabic. Just like they had to navigate Western machines and make it work for Arabic, I took a more modern approach of navigating the difficulty of being a bilingual third culture kid. I switch between Arabic and English, feeling like I belong to both languages but at the same time, neither one. I wanted to create a space for people like me, someone who knows English and Arabic, and is dependent on both. I created my very own bilingual newspaper, where you need to know both languages to understand and read it. The title, headlines, stories and even crossword puzzle are all a mix of English and Arabic merging together.