Category: Articles
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History through a grain of pollen
This piece was originally published in Nature Middle East In a small village called El-Hamoul, surrounded by the green fields of Eygpt’s Nile Delta, a young girl gathered herbs from along the irrigation canal. She arranged similar flowers in neat rows on the damp soil. “The plants that grew all year…
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On a bewitching moment of hesitation
In a letter dated 1754, the English politician Horace Walpole wrote to a friend recounting the unexpected discovery of a lost painting he never thought he’d find. For the first time, at least as recorded, Walpole used the term serendipity to describe the event. The word, with a touch of liberty, can…
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There is poetry in the southbound train to Upper Egypt
In recent days, I find poetry in places where poetry isn’t supposed to be. I suspect it’s because I’ve been steadily moving away from traditional notions of what is “poetic” and what isn’t. Some conventional poetry still stirs me, for its lyrical elegance or rhythmic sweetness, and I revisit it.…
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Seeing Order Within chaos
This article was originally published on October 5, 2021, as part of Nature Arabic Edition’s coverage of the Nobel Prizes for that year. The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics honors three scientists from Germany, Italy, and the United States, who have brought clarity to the chaos of complex systems, revealing…
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We are Carrying the Ancients in Our Genes
What Makes Us—Humans—So Different? The eternal question of humanity, one we begin with and return to. With each new attempt to explore an answer, we complete part of an ever-changing and evolving picture. While new knowledge in this area is endless, continuously adding to our understanding, it also serves…
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The Weird Case of H.M
This Article was originally published in The Arabic Edition of Scientific American. In 1933, a bicycle rider collided with a six-year-old boy playing on the streets of Manchester, Connecticut. The collision was minor, but it caused the child to fall at a dangerous angle, leading to a violent impact of…
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“Chernobyl”: Three Attempts to Narrate a Nuclear Disaster
It is hard to encounter a show based on true events, without wondering: What is true in what we watch or read? What happened in reality? And what was added to the events for the drama’s sake? Curiosity here is very common, particularly since the spaces where the creators seem,…
Ahmad Gamal Saad-Eddin 