Mosaic Stories - Sharing stories of endangered cultural heritage in the Middle East

Bilal Abu Khalaf in his fabric shop - by Aaron Cederberg

The Surviving Threads of Syria’s Textile Industry

February 1, 2016

I’ve spent the past few months searching for the threads of a disappearing world. Syria’s textiles—richly textured in blues and yellows, reds and creams, often threaded with gold and silver colored threads, and with a quality that sometimes makes them seem to shimmer in the light—have long been the country’s pride.…[…]

Omar Berakdar is a Syrian photographer and initiator of Arthere

THIS IS NOT A GALLERY: Arthere Gives Voice to Syrian Artists in Istanbul

Stephanie Saldaña

October 18, 2017

DiversityHeritageProfiles

As the civil war in Syrian dragged on and continued to devastate the country’s cultural landscape, and European institutions fretted about how to save the country’s archaeological treasures such as Palmyra and the Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers, some Syrians were preoccupied with an altogether different dilemma: how to save…[…]

Fresh naan bread is served daily on a traditional Kurdish woven basket.

Kurdish Food Culture Comes to Peterborough, England

Stephanie Saldaña

January 15, 2017

Food

On a busy Thursday morning kitchen staff at the Asia restaurant are busy calling out to one another in Kurdish as they prepare for the lunch rush. In the front window, one of them turns shawerma meat stacked up against a flame, making sure that it is evenly roasted. Down…[…]