A New England-style Boarding School Opens in Jordan
By Andrew Lee Butters/Madaba
In the popular imagination, New England boarding schools are a cloistered world where the blond-haired children of America’s blue bloods pick up the arch manners and the strange affinity for boat shoes that will mark them forever as a class apart. But not if you […]
Lebanon’s underground music scene sees its own demise in the fading promise of the ‘Cedar Revolution’
By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
Despite a jihadist uprising in the north, a political crisis in the capital, and rumors of war swirling all around, it’s business as usual in Beirut’s packed nightclubs. The good-looking people in this good-time town have long […]
By Andrew Lee Butters/Gaza City
On Patrol in Shijaiyah, the toughest neighborhood in Gaza City, Lieut. Naim Ashraf Mushtaha, 31, an officer of the Hamas Executive Force, spots a man in civilian clothes carrying an M-16 assault rifle and walking through the street suqs in broad daylight. His officers quickly encircle the suspect and demand that […]
By Andrew Lee Butters/Arbil
A Kurdish family celebrates Nowruz, a holiday marking the Kurdish New Year and the start of spring. Since 2003, no U.S troops have been killed in Kurdish Iraq. Kate Brooks/Polaris for TIME
LIKE RESIDENTS OF BERLIN DURING THE AIRLIFT, inhabitants of Arbil–capital of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq–get a little flutter […]
Thursday, Mar. 08, 2007
By Andrew Lee Butters/Fardis
Every weekday morning, a detachment of Indian soldiers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) embarks on an unusual kind of peacekeeping mission—one that doesn’t require guns or ammo, or even shoes. They operate what must be the first roving yoga ashram ever to appear in south […]
By Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus
Just days before the American invasion of Iraq, Nahdi Mahdi, one of Iraq’s most famous comedians, was starring in a play called The Wanderers at the National Theatre in Baghdad to a packed house of almost 2,000 people. Like many then living in the misinformation bubble created by Saddam’s regime, war was […]
By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
On any given evening in Beirut for about the last month, crowds of often angry demonstrators – mostly Shia Muslim supporters of Hizballah — have gathered downtown in hopes of bring down the Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim-led government. At the same time, crowds – though less large and less angry – have also […]
By Andrew Lee Butters
Sunday, July 30, 2006; B03
BEIRUT
Not even a week after Israel started bombing Beirut, an act of war that
inadvertently revived my failing journalism career, friends began e-mailing
their concern and wondering whether my suddenly frequent appearances on
television would finally change my luck with the ladies of Lebanon. But the
reality of life under siege is […]
As the bombs fall, the nightlife capital of the Middle East grows desperate
By ANDREW LEE BUTTERS/ Beirut
When the electricity finally failed in my East Beirut neighborhood, I set up shop at a rooftop hotel bar and waited for the next Israeli bombs to fall. Almost immediately, the sky erupted with what sounded like antiaircraft fire […]
When People magazine asked me to interview Haifa Wehbe, a Lebanese pop singer, for its 2006 “100 Most Beautiful” issue, the assignment seemed like a welcome break from the usual high-risk, low-paying jobs I receive as a freelance journalist in the Middle East. After all, how difficult could it be to throw a few softballs […]