By Zachary Latif

Dearest Pakistan, I apologise for forgetting to wish you a happy birthday. Imagine just another year before you hit retirement but I digress let's dwell on the now. I don't really know where to start; I think of you often enough but as you know I don't like to visit. Its not that you're dirty, messy or poor, I could live with that. Or even that you're experimenting with religion in a way in a pretty radical way. Or that you simply don't consider me really as one of the family but insist I troop along anyway.

By Emanuelle Degli Esposti

For almost the entire month of July, the city of London held host to its first ever festival of Arab culture – aptly named “Shubbak”, or “window” – a rare and timely opportunity to gain an insight into the people and places of the Arab world. Over the course of three weeks, this global city was transformed into a cultural melting pot as it gave voice to everything and anything Arab.