FirstLook: Casablanca Not the Movie

FirstLook
- Photograph by “Yoriyas” Yassine Alaoui Ismaili
Categories
- Creatives

I love walking the beach in Casablanca. Earlier this year I saw a dog digging a hole into the sand. The scene grabbed my attention, and I began to take a couple of pictures. When a boy rode up on a horse behind me to watch what was happening, I quickly took three steps back, placing the horse in the left of the frame, and made this photograph. To me this photo represents Casablanca—chaotic yet organized at the same time. It is part of my series “Casablanca Not the Movie,” which I began in 2014 as a love letter to the city that has inspired me the most. The group of images show a truthful representation of Casablanca that you won’t get from Hollywood: one of diverse cultures, people, traditions and urban development.

—”Yoriyas” Yassine Alaoui Ismaili
www.yoriyas.com
@yoriyas

Sepak Takraw Takes Flight

Written by John O’Callaghan
Photographed by Beawiharta

Take the Malay word for kick and pair it with the Thai word for a hollow, woven ball and you have sepak takraw, the name of the acrobatic, lightning-fast Southeast Asian sport in which players use feet, legs, chest and head—no hands—to power a ball over a badminton-style net. (Think “kick volleyball.”) It’s been played across the region for more than three centuries, and recent decades have brought international agreements on rules that have led in turn to local and national leagues, tournaments in schools and capitals—all pushing sepak takraw onto an increasingly global sports stage. With more than two dozen countries now fielding national teams, the sport’s leading promoters have set their eyes on the Olympics.

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Now
Culture

The Middle East on a Plate

Written and photographed by Larry Luxner

His roadside discovery of a discarded Lebanese license plate kindled the author’s 30-year passion for license plates from the Middle East and North Africa. Along the way, he often found pleasant and humorous stories, as well as bright artifacts of the diversity of daily life.

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Culture
People

The Arabian Journey of Geraldine Rendel

Written by William Facey
Photographs by George and Geraldine Rendel

In 1937 Geraldine Rendel became not only one of the first non-Muslim women to traverse the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but also, quite possibly, its first tourist. She and her husband, George, a British diplomat, were invited by King Abdulaziz Al Sa`ud, and 83 years later her account is being published for the first time.

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History
People

I Witness History: I, Eternal Bodyguard

Written by Frank L. Holt
Illustrated by Norman MacDonald

I’m from Kemet. You call it Egypt. Now I live in Texas. Crafted from wood and ritually painted nearly 2,000 years ago, my job in afterlife protection never ends. I haven’t always done it so well.

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History

Flavors: Cherry and Tomato Gazpacho

Fiona Dunlap

Sweet cherries are a Middle Eastern fruit thought to have originated in Anatolia and later cultivated in al-Andalus. Not the case for the tomato, of course, that American interloper

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Tastes

Flavors: Pistachio, Zucchini and Lemon Cake

I started making this cake years ago when I was running my deli. I really prefer it to carrot cake and the green of the pistachio slivers running through it make it not only beautiful but delicious.

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Tastes

Sahara Blues

Written by Banning Eyre
Photographed by Charlotte Doughty

Coming out of the struggles of post colonial desert Africa, Tuareg band Tinariwen adapted blues rock ‘n‘ roll guitars to North African traditions. The result has been nearly four decades of a sound that has inspired an entire genre of “desert blues,” in which themes of loss, home, hope and unity transcend language for audiences around the world.

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Creatives
Culture

The Emperor from Africa

Written by Barnaby Rogerson
Photographed by Don McCullin

One of two sons of a wealthy, politically ambitious, olive-farming family, Septimius Severus grew up in Leptis Magna, along what is now the coast of Libya, in the second century ce. At first not the most promising of teenage scions, he matured to take high command posts on the Danube frontier and, at 48, became the Roman Empire’s first emperor born on the African continent. Over his 18-year reign, he rarely sat on a throne in Rome, preferring travel with the legions to frontiers and far reaches where his efforts expanded the empire to its greatest extent and left legacies in law and architecture that endure today.

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History
People

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