Meena

NewPages.com | Literary Magazine Reviews| May 20007 Reviewed by Miles Clark

Meena is a literary journal that prints all contributions in both English and Arabic. This second installment of the journal focuses specifically on Hurricane Katrina, the ramifications of rising floodwaters, and related global political-environmental concerns. Its prose elements include a discussion on the anthropological significance of famous bodies of water (the Ganges as bringer of tranquility to the dying, the Volga as a "strong citadel in the face of invaders," are only the two most obvious metaphors referenced). Through reading these, we learn that the allocation of the Nile River resources has become a major component of the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially after Sadat's plan to enrich Sinai with an irrigation channel was stunted by Ethiopian resistance. It is now suggested that Israel's impending water crisis – which already leads to enormous imbalances in usage – may furnish grounds for another war. A brief socioeconomic history of the now-notorious 9th Ward, and a speculative history of the death of Atlantis that’s really about New Orleans, aren't far behind.

Poetically, Meena hahas attracted Paris Review editor Charles Simic and internationally-acclaimed lyricist Mahmoud Darwish; the poems from each are what we've come to expect. Simic's in particular carry detached, almost ghostly, impressions of an interior landscape destroyed by an unnamed political event – the kind of dark, surreal Central European skepticism that once made him a lucid translator of Novica Tadic's work.

Given this issue's politically-charged content, I was left asking: what do the Middle East, Central Europe, and New Orleans really have in common? Meena, to its credit, doesn't state, as much as suggest, that their common attribute is ongoing destruction. Linking three landscapes as disparate as these is an audacious venture for any literary magazine; it’s one whose effort I appreciate, and hope to see more of in the future.

From the Stacks: January 12, 2007

Utne Reader

Meena is a literary magazine written in both Arabic and English. According to the publication's English-language website, "The word 'meena' means port, or port-of-entry, in Arabic, and that is exactly what we would like Meena to be: a port between our cities, our countries, our languages, our cultures." Meena is based in the port cities of New Orleans and Alexandria, Egypt. By a terrible coincidence, both locations were recently affected by water disasters: Hurricane Katrina, and a Red Sea ship accident near Alexandria in which more than 1,000 people died. Meena's second issue, filled with poetry, prose, essays, an interview, and visual art, is devoted to water -- not only as a destructive element but one that connects us all. -- Evelyn Hampton

Clamor Magazine review

Cosmopolitanism redrawn
Hala Halim finds evidence of a new cross-cultural sensibility in the pages of Meena

Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM | 21 - 27 December 2006, Issue No. 825

The recently published second issue of Meena : A Bilingual Journal of Arts and Letters reproduces a postcard with the following message: "Dear Mr. Gould, Thank you for your letter. You are dead right. New Orleans would be the local setting for an American quartet, why not have a try."

The addressee, Clayton Gould, is a resident of New Orleans, the signature identifying the sender as Lawrence Durrell. The felicitousness of the object, offered the journal by Gould himself, lies in the fact that Meena is jointly produced by two groups of writers, one from New Orleans, the other from Alexandria; the card also functions as a gauge of the distance the journal has traveled, and the kind of cosmopolitanism it broaches, from Durrell's canonised but dubious version.

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