If the bio-pic of Abdel-Halim Hafez was intended as a celebration of the legendary singer, and as the late actor Ahmed Zaki's swansong, it fails on both counts, writes Hani Mustafa

A new book sees cause for optimism in Arab publishing, writes David Tresilian

Israel's war on Lebanon bears strong reminiscences of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to expel the PLO out of the country. Below, Al-Ahram Weekly prints poetic testimonies of summer 1982 in Beirut. Dhakira lil-Nisyan ( Memory for Forgetfulness ), by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (b. 1942), of which we publish extracts here, is an extended meditation on the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut, closest in genre to the "prose poem", as its translator suggests. The two poems below by Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef (b. 1934) are taken from his collection about the 1982 invasion Maryam Ta'ti (Maryam comes), of which the title poem was first published in the 27 July 1982 issue of the newspaper Al-Ma'raka (The Battle) issued in Beirut during the 100-day siege

By Mursi Saad El-Din