Here is the view from the balcony off my room at The New Imperial Hotel. No wonder Amedeo thought we were sleeping “in a castle.”
Yearly Archives: 2012
May
28
From Dubai to Jerusalem
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
I am sitting in my hotel room just inside Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City. I arrived here a couple of weeks ago with my wife, Moonira, and son, Amedeo. We flew in from Dubai where I was on a magazine assignment and where we spent a week enjoying the gleaming excesses of the city. […]
May
05
Considerably better digs…
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Over the course of my travel for the Walls book, I slept in a snore-rattled dorm room in Tucson, a dank Belfast hostel, a tent in a desert refugee camp, a Moroccan hotel surrounded by solvent-huffing teens, and a police station in northeast India. Having paid my accommodation penance, the magazine assignment gods – or […]
May
05
“A Hymn in Aramaic”
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
The May issue of Alberta Views magazine contains my profile of Calgarian Chaldean priest Abbé Noël Farman. Farman was born and educated in Iraq, was part of Saddam’s army in the 1970s, and fled the Iraq for Canada in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion. He speaks a handful of languages – including ancient Aramaic […]
Coming soon to a doctor’s waiting room near you….
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
My profile of Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi appears in the May issue of Reader’s Digest Canada (and online here.) Kudos to the folks at RD for a great cover.
April
15
Anne Paq’s photos of the Wall
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Active Stills is hosting a great series of images of the West Bank Wall by photographer Anne Paq. Many of the photos are of the Wall at Jayyous and Qalqilya, two Palestinian towns that feature prominently in my chapter about the Wall. I especially like the images of IDF soldiers posing for photographs in front […]
April
08
“A Story of Bread and Love”
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
I’m a couple of days late on this, but my story about Calgary Italian Bakery – and the charming Bontorin family who operate it – appeared in Friday’s Swerve Magazine. Luigi Bontorin came to Calgary in the 1950s, married his landlady’s daughter, and the two of them founded the business in 1962. Now, a half […]
Wall Construction Nearly Complete
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
My book on walls is, for the most part, complete. I handed in my final draft a few weeks back and the manuscript is now in the able hands of a copy editor. After four years of travel, research and writing, I feel altogether strange about this project being finished. I’ve slowly removed my travel […]
The Border at Lochiel, Arizona
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
This photo of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Lochiel, Arizona, is by musician Glenn Weyant. I’ve written about Glenn’s soundings of the border Wall previously on this blog. (Glenn also appears in the Walls book and in my TEDxCalgary talk.) I love how the fish-eye photo serves to subvert the fence it portrays. The barrier […]
March
05
“The land that maps forgot”
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
In one of the chapters of my upcoming Walls book, I travel to the northeast India to investigate the fence India is building along the border with Bangladesh. Last month, The Economist featured a wonderful story about the absurdity of the Indo-Bangla border and issues surrounding enclaves along the line that are not quite Here […]
Elsewhere 