In April 2025, this perfect crescent of sand located 300 kilometers from Athens, celebrated as one of Greece’s most spectacular beaches, was transformed into a highly secured film set. Its crystal-clear waters served as the backdrop for The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster scheduled for theatrical release on July 17, 2026.

Right here, three massive triremes sailed the bay carrying Matt Damon as Odysseus and Zendaya as the goddess Athena, while the famous Nestor’s Cave, opening up beneath the castle, was used as Polyphemus’ lair. 

The region of Messenia, with its Venetian and Ottoman castles, a rural hinterland dominated by olive trees, and still-wild coastlines, was chosen by the production precisely to evoke the epic nature of the myth. Yet, behind the Hollywood postcard and the undeniable beauty of these places, this land is proving to be increasingly fragile, exposed to deep environmental, social, and economic wounds.

This is not the first time. The release of a major film has become a familiar mechanism by which cinema rapidly reshapes the destiny of places, and rarely gently. After Game of Thrones, Dubrovnik saw over 1.2 million visitors descend on a city of 42,000 residents, prompting UNESCO to warn its Old Town could no longer absorb the daily influx. 

After The Beach, Maya Bay received up to 5,000 visitors a day until its coral reef was decimated and its beach structurally destroyed forcing a years-long closure. Messenia is the next candidate, and the wave has not yet arrived. 

A Picture-Perfect Postcard on the Verge of Collapse

“Based on data analyzed over the past 30 years, the average temperature in Messenia, in line with the country’s trend, has increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius,” explains Dr. Kostas Lagouvardos, Director of Research at the National Observatory of Athens. “This is a very high figure, compounded by a substantial increase in heatwaves and the near-total disappearance of snow.” 

Lagouvardos warns that when combining these data points, it becomes clear that the climate emergency is no longer a future threat, but a present reality pushing the territory toward progressive aridity. 

The combination of increasingly scorching summers and snowless winters drastically reduces groundwater recharge, exposing the region to chronic water scarcity precisely during the months of peak tourist influx. This alteration puts a strain on local communities, threatening biodiversity and the area’s famous olive groves.

From the Navarino fortress, the view spans the entire area: the beach, the curve of the dunes, and, right behind them, the Gialova lagoon. This ecosystem, protected by the Natura 2000 network, hosts 17 habitats and over 73 protected species. It is a picture-perfect postcard that hides an equilibrium on the verge of collapse. 

According to the European project COASTAL, the entirety of Messenia relies 100% on groundwater, which is being drained by intensive extraction for both hotels and crops. 

Receiving no more fresh water, the lagoon suffers from critical salinity for 30% of the year, which suffocates its biodiversity. The ecosystem is caught in a vice: in summer, it is overloaded by wastewater from mass tourism; in autumn, by residues from olive mills. Added to this is the chemical cocktail of nitrogen and phosphorus washed down by rain, from the fertilizers used in intensive agriculture and neighboring luxury golf courses. The result is an algal bloom that deprives the water of oxygen.

Tourism Monoculture Invading the Territory

Beyond the lagoon, the panorama opens into an even wider gulf: the Navarino Bay. To the right lies the town of Pylos; to the left stands the massive Costa Navarino complex. This network of resorts and exclusive private residences, owned by TEMES, a company belonging to the Constantakopoulos family, features four 18-hole golf courses, an agora with a private marina, and swimming pools in almost every home. 

It is a gated paradise that has hosted the British Royal Family, world leaders, and VIPs such as Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo, who purchased two villas here, and Cristiano Ronaldo, who signed his transfer to Juventus on this very spot.

“Despite being presented as an eco-friendly luxury tourist facility, it is not,” says Ioannis Spilanis, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Environment of the University of the Aegean and Director of the Sustainable Tourism Observatory of the Aegean. “The water consumption of such a model is simply incompatible with the resources of this region.”

But the tourism-driven environmental impact of the area extends beyond the Costa Navarino complex. For a few years now, Messenia has been at the center of heavy investments. In 2010, the airport of Kalamata, the region’s capital, handled just 50,000 passengers; today, it consistently exceeds 180.000 arrivals with direct flights from Central and Northern Europe. 

Furthermore, the airport was recently leased for 40 years to a consortium of companies, including Pileas SA, a subsidiary of the Konstantakopoulos Group, the same family that owns Costa Navarino, and the German giant Fraport, to triple passenger flows. 

A short distance away, since 2023, the hills of Messenia have turned into an open-air construction site. The new Southwest Highway, a project worth over 300 million euros, will cut travel times to the resorts and the Methoni fortress, another set for The Odyssey, where Tom Holland, playing Telemachus, meets the wise Nestor.

“Although Messenia has not yet reached the saturation levels of some islands and we cannot talk about true overtourism, the pattern is the same”, Spilanis warns, “it is a tourism monoculture that invades the territory, depriving communities of their uniqueness.”

The Environmental Impact of Visibility 

In Pylos, just a few kilometers from Costa Navarino, Georgia Visviki, a lawyer and consultant for the Legal Service of the Municipality of Pylos-Nestor, sits in her office. The blue of the sea is visible from her windows, while wedding guests are gathering in the small harbor out front. 

“Everything has two sides,” the lawyer says, “on one hand, these investments bring capital and jobs, even if seasonal. On the other hand, I fear the environmental impact, given that waste is already a problem today, in addition to the loss of cultural identity.”

Visviki is also the president of the Pylos Women’s Association, an organization dedicated to preserving the traditions and culture of the area. “This has always been a multicultural area, open to the outside world, first by the Venetians and Ottomans, and later by the Italians,” she explains, “we have unique music and dances, and a cuisine rooted in our land, made of wine, olive oil, lemons, and oranges.”

In Pylos, the traces of these passing civilizations are still alive, carved in stone. A prime example is the Church of the Transfiguration, located inside the New Fortress, which preserves intact the architecture of its previous life as an Ottoman mosque. 

“What we want is balanced development, a sustainable tourism that does not exploit the local community but integrates with the territory,” Visviki concludes, “the movie will bring a further wave of visibility, and the region is not yet ready to handle it.”

The Tracks of Rural Resilience

Heading north through Messenia, surrounded by olive groves and greenhouses, and moving inland, one reaches the village of Dessillas, boasting 130 years of history, perched on a hillside. 

At the old station, a large group of visitors crowds around the railway lines.

“We are inaugurating a new trail that follows the railway lines between Dessillas and Diavolitsi,” explains Marios Gkrogkos, from the Amiamo Dessillas association. “It is a way to build a bridge between the memory of this place and its future, proving that abandonment can be fought through culture and community participation,” he adds.

In a region with high rates of depopulation, the association has performed a small miracle of rural resilience. They didn’t just clean up the old tracks to make a walking trail, but they have also converted the historic abandoned station into a public library, restoring a social hub to the village. 

This slow-paced walk along the railway ties is not just a local attraction, but the core of a regional debate on slow mobility and the recovery of historic infrastructure to counter depopulation. 

This initiative aligns with the vision of the Ethos social cooperative in Kalamata, which is active in the “Peloponnese Trails” project. “Reactivating the railway in Messenia wouldn’t require new investments, since the network already exists. It would provide vital lifelines for the villages,” Ethos representatives explain, “residents could move back into family homes, commute to Kalamata, save on rent, and alleviate the housing crisis in the cities, while also creating jobs.” 

It is a gamble on authentic identity that clashes with the Hollywood spotlight. “The Odyssey will offer nothing extra to Messenia. On the contrary, we believe it is Messenia providing value to the film, and not the other way around,” the Ethos representatives conclude.

Human-Scale Tourism

Indeed, the beauty of Messenia reveals itself in every village. Heading south toward Koroni, one encounters the hamlet of Vounaria, which for nearly a century was one of the neuralgic centers of Greek pottery. It was an artform that seemed abandoned since 1990, when the last historic kiln closed its doors. But in 2018 it breathed again thanks to the determination of Maria Basilogiannakopoulou.

“I realized that even in Athens, there was strong recognition of the value of this craft, so I convinced myself to return to the places I used to visit as a child,” the artisan explains, “the type of tourism we have here causes great damage. People mistakenly think that money can only be made from that, and so they end up abandoning century-old traditions.”

In Vasilitsi, in the far south of the region, stands another outpost of cultural resistance. The house of Marilena and Voisilios is located just a few meters from the village square. Passing through the gate, visitors enter a garden that leads to their taverna. Inside, an ancient loom, historic photos, and dozens of 20th-century radios are preserved. 

“Our daughter is a primary school teacher, and every year she brings her students here,” Marilena explains, “We organize loom weaving courses, we created an educational vegetable garden, and we take field trips into nature.” 

The couple decided to return to Vasilitsi after living in Athens for several years. “This area is a paradise,” Voisilios says, “but a tourism monoculture cannot be faced alone; we need to network. If we truly valued our culture, which is unique, local youth wouldn’t be forced to work as waiters at Costa Navarino.”

Traces Not Scars

Right across from the couple’s home lives Aris Christopoulos. Together with five other partners, he founded Apo Kardias, a farmers’ collective dedicated to producing organic olive oil. The collective, officially established in 2021, owns several plots of land in Cape Gallo, the southern tip of Messenia, which falls within the Natura 2000 network. 

“We export mostly to Germany. I don’t think tourism is an absolute evil; it all depends on the model implemented,” Aris explains, while driving his pickup truck. The paved road gives way to an increasingly twisting dirt track. Reaching the top of a hill, the horizon opens wide: Nothing but olive trees and the Mediterranean Sea. 

“We sell abroad, especially to people who have been here and developed an emotional bond with our land,” Aris adds, “we don’t want mega-projects or gigantic resorts, but a human-scale tourism, connected to the territory and capable of leaving deep traces, not scars.”

Traces or scars; it is within this fragile boundary that the destiny of Messenia is being played out, a region currently suspended at a deep identity crossroads. On one side is the mirage of mega-resorts and luxury housing developments, which risks turning the land into a beautiful but empty shell. On the other hand is the silent resistance of those who reopen abandoned stations, restart old looms, and defend olive groves. 

The spotlights on the film set have turned off, but the movie’s release will trigger an inevitable media and social media backlash. It is a pressure for which no land can truly call itself ready, as the cases of Dubrovnik after Game of Thrones or Maya Bay after The Beach have already proven.

The post More Scars Than Traces: Christopher Nolan Filmed His The Odyssey in Messenia, But Can the Region Survive the Spotlight? appeared first on Untold.

Sometimes you feel out of place, but being in the middle is not a loss. It’s the point from where you can see two worlds, while others see only one. I feel I’m a crescent that doesn’t need to become sun to shine. 

These were the words of Tamara Al Zool, the 23 years old who goes by her art name TÄRA. She has reached millions of Italians through the mainstream TV-program Le Iene in May with a monologue on identity that soon became viral on social media. 

A week later, her debut EP “Zefiro” went out on a date that could not be more important for her: May 15, the day of the Nakba, a day and a history she has always known from her parents and grandparents who lived it. Today, touring Italy and Europe with concerts and events, she is taking on the Italian music scene with a style that, according to Rolling Stone MENA, “Italy has no category for”. 

To learn more about her artistic journey, UntoldMag sat with TÄRA for an exclusive interview. 

 

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Born in Italy to Palestinian parents, TÄRA is making waves with her own genre. She calls it Arab&B, a new type of R&B where she mixes Arabic, English, Italian (and at times also French) in such a natural way that one would not imagine that at one point in her life, she had challenges in feeling her identity.  It would not seem so either when, two years ago, at her very first appearance on TV for the music program X Factor Italia, she made it very clear why she was there: “I came to X-factor to represent, to be a voice”, she said, wearing a keffiyeh as she performed Ariana Grande’s song 7 Rings with some parts reinterpreted in Arabic. 

Palestine – and all that comes with it, from the ongoing genocide to resistance and memory –, the Arabic speaking world, and the Mediterranean as a whole are constant themes in her songs, through which the listener can soon appreciate that TÄRA makes music with universal messages. Like in “Diaspora”, which draws a line between the Palestinians expelled from their land and the Southern Italians who leave their homes behind out of necessity. 

In the “Petra” music video, shot in Tunis, within 3 minutes the music takes the listener through a romantic journey from Maghreb to Mashreq. Not to mention her rendition of Ya Helwa Ciao, her Arabic rendition of Bella Ciao, the song adopted by the Italian Resistance calling for freedom and an end to fascism, so popular among Palestinians (and generally among minorities fighting for their rights). 

Stefano Nanni: Identity is a recurrent topic in your songs. But who is TÄRA before and after becoming the artist, and has that helped in affirming your own identity?

TÄRA: The beauty of all that I’m living is that before, during and after, it’s always me. I can definitely say that my public persona is not a ‘character’ but genuinely who I am, expressing my values without fear. 

It has not always been easy to belong to different worlds at the same time, but I learned with time that being in the middle is an additional perspective rather than a deficiency. And I think I grew in awareness and courage to translate my innate self into art. Being able to represent all these middle lands is certainly not an easy task, but it’s like my whole world is made of many different points of view. 

For example, in the song “Petra” we chose Tunisia as a destination because it perfectly encompasses my multifaceted world, highlighting the beautiful similarities among seemingly different cultures and transcending societal divisions.

SN: Still on identity, in the very powerful music video “Beauty standards”, you seem to affirm something also about the type of aesthetic you want to embrace. 

T: With this EP I am going through a whole journey, including certain beauty standards because it is a theme that I have personally experienced, having felt ‘not beautiful enough’ according to certain norms imposed by society. 

I am sure many other girls have experienced and continue to experience this type of ‘discomfort’ – that’s what I call it. With that video I wanted to represent, through a short monologue, how the beauty you have today, even if it may not conform to mainstream models represented by the media, actually carries history and tradition. 

It is important to acknowledge and remember that the people before you have fought to make you be here, so you have to bring these unique features, with pride, not shame.

SN: Do you feel somehow that your music is able to represent people who often had no one to identify with? And can it contribute to more unity?

T: Let’s say that my goal is precisely to represent those often unrepresented: The too many Italians with foreign roots caught in the middle like me. If in my own small way, my music succeeded in attracting even two or three persons who feel I am doing something positive for them, then I am very happy and I hope it will go even better. 

I don’t want to sound too utopian, but it would be nice to get to a point where we don’t even have to make all these divisions among all of us anymore, and then be able to live in unity simply as human beings. I have a strong desire for my music to foster unity among all people, dreaming a world without such divisions, where cultural beauty is celebrated by all humans. I hope that my art will play a role in all this.

SN: How are you handling success? Did your direct relations with fans change by becoming so popular? 

T: When it comes to my relationship with fans I think it is even improving, as I continue to live the direct connection with them through social media, receiving immense support and love. I think it is a very beautiful way of living this experience. 

At the same time, it is obvious that social media can be a double-edged sword, as the toxicity of certain users brings also a lot of negativity. Sometimes it’s hard to confront that, especially hate speech and comments about Palestine, but I am learning to use indifference as a more effective strategy, because in the end, those who want to hate stick to anything in front of them.

Generally, about success, I think I’m living a fairly quiet relationship with it, actually. I see it as a means, I have the privilege to access a wide audience, to share the messages I want to transmit, especially about Palestine and the genocide we’re still suffering. So why not do it? Indeed, in certain places like on mainstream TV there seem to be certain rules about not talking about certain topics, but I am approaching them, as much as possible, with my naturalness and my identity, without hiding anything. 

SN: On the power to use popularity to take a stance, recently in Italy there were some controversies about the words of Francesco De Gregori, a very popular singer, who said that he “feels embarrassed when an artist takes a political position”. What do you think of that?

T: I have honestly not read what he said, and I don’t want to decontextualize his words, but my opinion is a totally different one: I want my art to give a voice to the voiceless and to minorities. 

As an artist, I believe I have the power and responsibility to educate younger generations and empower those who might otherwise feel silenced. I don’t want to live in a world where somebody grows up fearing that exposing themself is something that leads them to something negative. I don’t want that, I want something different.

The post Giving Italy a Sound It Has No Category For: An Interview with Palestinian-Italian Singer TÄRA appeared first on Untold.

Calypse is us, and at the same time she speaks to us: the conscience of a generation condemned to resist and survive.

The comic has been created by the UntoldMag collective together with artist Francesca Cogni.

The post Abu Calypse, Episode 4: “Rarer Than Diamonds” appeared first on Untold.

The sociologist and intellectual Shkëlzen Gashi, author of “Massacres in Kosovo 1998–1999”, has long been aware of the price to be paid for challenging the dominant narrative of those in power. 

According to the Special Prosecutor’s Office of Kosovo, his offence is “distorting the truth about the Kosovo War of Liberation”. Gashi, however, believes that the reason for the persecution is that he has written “the first book on this subject that avoids hate speech and addresses all victims on all sides, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or political ideology”. 

Gashi’s book lists names, numbers and locations, totalling 10,333 bodies across 83 massacres, arranged in chronological order. “In total I counted 105, but there are 22 about which nothing is known,” he says as he turns the pages featuring photographs of piles of bodies, funerals and mass graves, “and the most significant thing is that, for the majority of these killings, no one has been convicted. 90% of the massacres I recount in the book end with this sentence: to date, no one has been tried or convicted for these crimes.” 

Regarding the identity of the victims, he explains that “90% are Albanians killed by Serbian police, military or paramilitaries. Crimes committed by Albanians account for only 10%; they took place after the war, as acts of unorganised revenge, and were not carried out by Albanian military or police.”

Gashi dared to break the taboo surrounding the war crimes committed by Kosovo Albanians against Serbian communities; at the same time, he honours the memory of other ethnic and religious groups—Roma, Ashkali or Catholics—who have been marginalised from the official narrative and are difficult for both Serbian and Albanian nationalism to come to terms with.

The Albanian writer and dissident Fatos Lubonja has written a scathing article in which he argues that “this lynching speaks volumes about the kind of state that is in danger of being built in Kosovo (…) History teaches us that tragedy, in the form of war or dictatorship, begins when the parties identify with the truth and seek to impose it on everyone by any means”. 

For their part, representatives of the veterans’ associations of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), the guerrilla group that fought the Serbs, are calling for “a law to be enacted to protect the history of the UCK, and for anyone wishing to write on the subject to obtain evidence from the relevant authorities”. Or, in other words, from those who do not question their version of events. 

“Peacebuilding also involves establishing the truth and creating shared narratives about what happened, as well as reconciliation and letting go. In Kosovo, we haven’t had that, and it’s a serious problem. The Albanian and Serbian communities continue to live within their own constructions of reality, so there are competing narratives about the past,” laments Ramadan Ilazi, head of research at the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies.

Whilst this was happening in Pristina, thousands of kilometres away, in a cell at The Hague prison, Hasim Thaci, the former leader of the UCK and the West’s main ally in NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia, awaits sentencing following the trial that concluded last February. 

The Prosecution at the Special Court for Kosovo is seeking 45 years’ imprisonment for Thaci and three other guerrilla commanders for war crimes, crimes against humanity, kidnapping, torture, cruel treatment of prisoners and murder in 102 cases. 

Whatever the jury’s verdict, which is expected by the end of July 2026 it will have a major impact on Kosovo’s politics: “If he is convicted, it will have consequences for the UCK and would give Serbia a weapon to use against Kosovo and oppose its independence. If they are found not guilty, I believe it would have a major impact on domestic politics, because they would return as heroes,” explains analyst Emir Abrashi. 

Disinformation and Hybrid Warfare

On 24 April, a court in Pristina found three Kosovo Serbs guilty of terrorism and “serious acts against the constitutional order and security of Kosovo” for their involvement in an attack carried out by a Serbian-backed group of armed men in the Kosovo village of Banjska in September 2023, which resulted in the death of a Kosovo police officer.

According to the judge’s verdict, this was a “well-trained” group that “in an organised manner, entered the Republic of Kosovo illegally from the Republic of Serbia with dozens of vehicles, some armoured”. “The aim was to destabilise and destroy the basic political, constitutional, economic, and social structures of the Republic of Kosovo, through a well-organised plan. They attempted to secede parts of the territory in northern Kosovo, which have a majority Serbian population, and join them with Serbia”, the judge argued. 

Furthermore, it claims that the attackers were trained at a military camp in Serbia, and that Serbia provided all the military and logistical infrastructure needed to carry out the attack, in which up to 44 people are implicated. According to a journalistic investigation by BIRN, the grenade launchers seized by the Kosovar police had passed through Serbian state maintenance centres; and the ammunition used by the attackers matches that manufactured in 2022 by a Serbian state arms producer. 

“Serbia continues to harbour hegemonic ambitions over Kosovo,” says Arben Fetoshi, a professor at the University of Pristina and director of the Octopus Institute for Hybrid Warfare Studies, “but it is waiting for a favourable geopolitical context to reclaim Kosovo. Right now they cannot invade Kosovo, which is why they are resorting to hybrid warfare: disinformation, propaganda and acts of aggression to destabilise Kosovo as an independent country.”

“In the months leading up to the attack in September 2023, we detected a large amount of disinformation originating from Serbia and focused on northern Kosovo,” confirms Fitim Gashi, executive director of SBunker, a media organisation dedicated to monitoring and combating disinformation in Kosovo, “and the main argument behind all that disinformation is that the Kosovo government wants to expel the Serbs. The message conveyed by these campaigns, many orchestrated by the Serbian government, is that Serbs are not safe in Kosovo and must take action to defend themselves.” 

According to Ilazi, this is a misguided view of the nature of Kosovo’s political system. “Kosovo wasn’t designed to be a state of a single ethnic group,” he argues, “but I think social media is amplifying these kinds of messages that seek to perpetuate this sense of permanent conflict because certain politicians stand to gain from it. You can win elections by selling dreams or selling nightmares, and I think politics has a lot to do with maintaining this atmosphere of fear and hatred.”

To Question the Narrative is to Question the Elites 

Jeton Neziraj has devoted much of his literary work and his role as a public intellectual to the very opposite: to breaking down taboos, bringing people of different backgrounds together, and telling stories that overcome fear and hatred. This playwright knows well the feeling of being the one who challenges the prejudices of the majority and the demands of the powerful. 

He was one of the promoters of POLIP, the first literary festival to bring together Serbian and Albanian authors. Furthermore, his plays explore the most uncomfortable aspects and blind spots of his country’s culture, politics and society: corruption, the LGBT community, the role of guerrilla veterans, relations with Europe and post-war reconciliation. 

For his plays, he has been branded ‘unpatriotic’, ‘Yugonostalgic’ and a ‘traitor to national interests’. His latest play is “Under the Shade of a Tree I Sat and Wept”, a co-production with a South African theatre company exploring forgiveness between communities.

“I don’t know if I’ve been very stupid or very brave,” says Neziraj as he looks back on all the times his words have proved controversial or divisive. “But I believe that is the role of an artist, to be critical. And I think it’s been useful. I believe there is now more freedom of expression in Kosovo than there was fifteen years ago. There are still problems, of course, but I think that now we wouldn’t have to call the police at a theatre premiere because there are people protesting outside, as happened to us on one occasion, or because veterans wanted to boycott the play which, allegedly, defamed the UCK.” 

It is precisely this problem with veterans that has placed Gashi at the centre of the storm in recent weeks. Gashi, like Neziraj, knew that questioning the heroic narrative of the war was ultimately tantamount to questioning the system of power that has governed the country ever since. 

The former guerrilla leaders and affiliated organisations, explains the sociologist, took control of all spheres of public life: “The university, the judiciary, television, the administration, the political parties and the media are under the control of this so-called elite that has ruled Kosovo for two decades.” In these circumstances, “the UCK has manipulated the war and its memory to stay in power. Since they supposedly liberated the country, they claim the right to rule it and justify their corruption through terror”.

In 2020, Gashi received threats and lost his job as an adviser to President Kurti for stating on television that “some senior officials in the UCK committed war crimes and should be punished for them”. The focus of his historiographical work centres on civilian victims and on the peaceful resistance against Serbian oppression, which, in his view, has been overlooked by official historians intent on highlighting the role of the guerrillas. 

“My aim with this book was to clarify what had happened in each of the massacres. A book like this should be written about every single violation of humanitarian law that took place during the war. First we must know exactly what happened, then there must be reparations, and it is very important that the history textbooks used in schools are revised.” 

The Views of Veterans

Gazmend Syla joined the UCK at the age of 16 and today, at 45, he is the vice-president of the National Veterans’ Association, an organisation with branches in virtually every municipality in the country. Syla speaks with pride of the sacrifices made by his comrades, which, in his view, have not been sufficiently recognised by his compatriots.

We are at the organisation’s headquarters in Peja, one of the main guerrilla strongholds during the conflict, and the walls are covered with flags, emblems and photographs of the martyrs. “Nobody likes war. But you have to go if someone wants to kill you,” he explains after recounting the exploits of some of the “3,000 martyrs” recognised by the organisation.

Syla explains that the organisation’s mission is, at its core, like that of an NGO: “We help veterans when they have a need and mediate with the government to convey their demands.” And what about its influence in politics? “We don’t have a party of our own, but we do have relations with many different parties,” he replies. 

Asked about the trial in The Hague against Thaci and other guerrilla leaders, Syla replies indignantly: it is a set-up against innocent men, the witnesses have been bribed to testify against the UCK and it all boils down, in essence, to “a political issue”. 

The veterans’ association has organised mass demonstrations in Pristina, Tirana and The Hague to demand the acquittal of the accused. He does not wish to conclude the matter without pointing the finger at Western nations: “We fought alongside the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. They helped create the UCK, fought with us and supplied us with weapons. If we are guilty, then NATO is too.”

Syla is unwavering in his defence of the UCK’s political and military role in Kosovo’s independence, and regards the guerrilla movement as one of the pillars of national life. “We are free now and my children go to school,” he explains, “before, in Yugoslavia, we had nothing and the police and the military would beat us for speaking our own language. We had to fight to be free, and now we are doing well. Perhaps we’re not like Switzerland or Spain, but this is our country and we’re happy here.” 

However, his view on relations with Serbia and the Serbs of Kosovo is not what one might expect from a former guerrilla fighter. “The Serbs are citizens of Kosovo just like anyone else. They’re not to blame. They are my neighbours and I get on with them just fine. Their freedoms and political rights are recognised by the Constitution, and that is how it should be.” 

Syla is highly critical of Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s attempts to exclude Lista Sprska, the main Serbian political party in Kosovo, from the elections or to outlaw it: “They should be left in peace.” 

“The things I think and am telling you now, I can’t say them at meetings with the veterans,” Syla laments, sadly, “there, they only want strong, more aggressive rhetoric. And it’s a shame.”

The post To Question Memory is to Question Power: The Narrative of Violence is Shaking up Political Life in Kosovo appeared first on Untold.

The building does not just display history; it selects which histories can remain visible, and which must be softened, abstracted, or forgotten.

This is where the stakes emerge. The museum’s beauty carries political work: it naturalizes a version of the country in which conflict, inequality, and rupture are treated as noise rather than memory. By monumentalizing continuity, the institution implies consensus. By designing awe, it designs obedience. The danger is not that the museum tells a story—every museum does—but that it presents its story as the only one with the right to fill space.

The Grand Egyptian Museum is both architecture and argument. Its material language, spatial choreography, and territorial placement operate like a voice: articulating what the state wants to be believed about the past, and what it hopes the public will no longer remember about the present.

Architecture and the Performance of Sovereignty

The Grand Egyptian Museum acknowledges that architecture is a performance of authority, a stage on which the state rehearses its preferred version of Egypt. Its size, symmetry, and alignment with the desert plateau are not only aesthetic performances; they are choices that speak in the state’s voice. Through these gestures, the structure suggests that the nation is continuous, cohesive, and immune to rupture. What appears to be a museum of the past is, in practice, a projection of the present—a carefully built argument about who owns history and who is permitted to stand inside it.

Official discourse reinforces this message. The museum is presented as a “national gift to the world” and a testament to an eternal civilizational identity, as though a single architectural form could gather every fragment of Egypt into one unbroken narrative. The effect is deliberate: to make political discontinuity feel like historical continuity; to transform instability into destiny. In this framework, the museum does not claim legitimacy; it manufactures it. The visitor is invited to marvel not only at antiquity, but at the modern state’s ability to summon antiquity as proof of its right to rule.

Inside, form becomes instruction. The procession from forecourt to atrium to monumental staircase guides visitors through a spatial lesson in belonging. Awe is not incidental—it is engineered. By directing the gaze upward, outward, and forward, the museum implies that the state is both heir to the ancient past and guarantor of the national future. The body learns by moving. The eye learns by being guided. Authority is absorbed not as argument but as atmosphere.

This is where the strings attached become visible. The question is not whether the museum is beautiful; it is what this beauty is doing. Architecture performs sovereignty not by describing power, but by making it feel natural, inevitable—like the only possible order. In the Grand Egyptian Museum, design becomes a form of speech. The building does not say the state is permanent; it teaches permanence. And in that lesson, certain histories—revolutionary, contested, or inconvenient—must be quiet enough to fade beneath the alabaster light.

Site, Form, and Design

The Grand Egyptian Museum does not sit neutrally on the edge of Cairo; it occupies the city like a statement. Its site, drawn between the density of the urban plain and the rising desert plateau, stages a threshold where the state can curate what Egypt looks like before one even enters the building. The approach—highways, forecourts, controlled access points—prepares the visitor to see the museum not as a public institution but as a destination that has already decided how it should be seen.

The building’s triangulated geometry, derived from the visual lines to the Giza pyramids, is more than an architectural concept; it is a strategy of affiliation. By joining itself to the horizon of antiquity, the museum anchors the present regime to the authority of the ancient past. Material choices reinforce the logic: alabaster, historically used in temples and tombs, glows at dawn and dusk in a way that suggests reverence, authenticity, and inevitability. It is a calculated softness—an aesthetic of welcome that conceals the precision of control behind it.

Inside, the museum’s interior volumes are organized as if they were a landscape of ascent. Wide halls, controlled perspectives, and the long pull of the monumental staircase train the body to read space as progress. The building is not merely walked; it is climbed, ascended, and internalized. Architecture becomes choreography, and choreography becomes instruction. Even the generous sightlines toward the pyramids are not simply vistas; they are confirmations: this is where the story comes from, and this is where the state claims the right to continue it.

At this scale, design produces a political effect. The museum does not demand belief; it designs the conditions under which belief becomes the easiest response. It organizes the city’s edge into a controlled frontier, turning territory into narrative and access into agreement. The message embedded in the site is clear: Egypt can be seen from here—but only in the way the state prefers it to be seen.

Materiality, Light, and the Aesthetic of the Sublime State

Light does a particular kind of political work in the Grand Egyptian Museum. The alabaster façade, glowing at dawn and radiant from within at night, softens the building’s edges just enough to make authority feel gentle. It produces an atmosphere of invitation, but one in which the terms of entry are already decided. Transparency is suggested, not granted; openness is performed, not lived. What looks like light is also a kind of veil.

Inside, illumination becomes a form of direction. Daylight enters through triangulated skylights and alabaster fins that scatter brightness across statues and vitrines, creating a visual field where artifacts appear suspended in reverence. The visitor is not simply observing objects; they are being positioned in relation to them. Light gathers the eye, concentrates it, tutors it. The museum does not tell the visitor what to think—its spatial glow teaches them how to see.

This aesthetic is not accidental. By producing awe, the museum produces agreement. The softness of the alabaster, the slow bloom of light across stone surfaces, the calibrated passage from shadow to radiance—they are emotional cues that smooth over rupture. The technique is subtle: instead of commanding, it persuades; instead of asserting power, it normalizes it. Authority arrives not as an order, but as ambience.

What emerges is a choreography of perception. Light does not simply reveal the architecture; it completes its argument. It ensures that the emotional register of the museum—wonder, pride, belonging—leans toward acceptance rather than interruption. And in that emotional current, alternative narratives lose volume. Under the alabaster glow, disagreement dims, critique quiets, and the idea of a single, unbroken national story becomes easier to believe.

Spatial Choreography and State Pedagogy

The Grand Egyptian Museum is not only a sequence of rooms; it is a sequence of lessons. The spatial journey—from the forecourt to the atrium, to the monumental staircase, to the galleries, and finally to the terrace facing the pyramids—produces a controlled progression in which movement becomes meaning. Each transition feels natural, but it is choreographed with intent. The visitor is ushered from anticipation to reverence to confirmation, as if the architecture were guiding thought through the body rather than through language.

The forecourt acts like a threshold of discipline. It separates the turbulence of Cairo from the curated calm of the museum, signaling that one is crossing from the city’s contested present into a state-managed version of the past. The atrium, dominated by monumental figures, shifts the scale of the body: the visitor becomes smaller, and the state—architecturally speaking—becomes larger. The monumental staircase then performs the emotional climax. Ascending it feels like rising into the national narrative itself, as if the visitor were being placed inside the timeline the state prefers.

Pedagogy happens through design. The galleries are arranged to unfold history as an inevitability: a straight line from antiquity to modern authority, uninterrupted, unbroken, unquestioned. Rooms do not simply display objects; they display a worldview. The architecture directs pacing, determines sightlines, and maintains focus, allowing little room for hesitation or doubt. Even when the visitor pauses, the building continues narrating around them, as if the story could not be stopped.

This choreography carries a political charge. The museum does not instruct through argument or didactic panels; it teaches by shaping how the visitor moves, sees, and remembers. It performs the state’s preferred logic: that belonging is simple, that continuity is self-evident, that the nation has always been whole. The effect is persuasive not because it demands consent, but because it makes consent feel like the most intuitive response. In this sense, the museum behaves less like a cultural institution and more like a training ground for a particular way of imagining Egypt—one where disagreement has no spatial equivalent and where dissent finds no place to stand.

Urbanism, Mobility, and Territorial Control

The Grand Egyptian Museum does not stand alone; it is the anchor of a redesigned territory. The highways, landscaped approaches, security perimeters, and dedicated access routes are not supporting infrastructure—they are part of the project’s architecture. Before the visitor reaches the building, the city has already been edited. Mobility is directed, visibility is managed, and arrival is staged as proof that the museum exists at the center of an orderly national landscape. The edge of Cairo becomes a frontier where the state can choreograph what the capital looks like, and who gets to approach it.

This territorial framing reimagines the western periphery of the city as a controlled zone of presentation. The new roads bypass neighborhoods that once surrounded the plateau, replacing the improvisation of informal life with a curated route that leads directly to the museum’s entrance. What appears as efficiency is also isolation; what appears as access is also filtration. The surrounding communities, markets, and everyday noise of the area are quieted by distance. The museum reads as if it rises out of empty land, even though it does not. The silence is engineered.

Tourism infrastructure intensifies this effect. Airports, arterials, and hotel corridors link into the museum like arteries feeding an image. The state gains not only visitors but vantage points. The approach offers views that feel cinematic—framed horizons, measured distances, controlled skylines that hide the city’s contradictions. This is not about hiding Cairo; it is about selecting which Cairo will be seen. The result is a geography where the museum becomes both destination and filter: a place that promises access to the nation while deciding what the nation looks like on the way in.

In this configuration, territory becomes narrative. Space is made to speak. The controlled approach routes tell the visitor that the city is coherent, the nation is continuous, and the state is the author of both. And because this coherence is experienced physically—driven, walked, entered—it becomes easier to believe. The choreography of arrival, movement, and containment performs a political claim long before architecture comes into view: that modern Egypt can be understood from here, and that the legitimacy of the present depends on the disappearance of what surrounds it.

Authoritarian Monumentality in Historical Perspective

The Grand Egyptian Museum joins a longer tradition in which states build at scales that exceed function in order to exceed doubt. Monumentality here is not an architectural genre, but a political method: a way for governments to materialize certainty where consensus is fragile, and to project continuity where history has been fractured. Across different contexts and eras, monumental projects have served the same purpose—to turn authority into something that looks like geology, something too large to argue with.

Seen in this light, the museum inherits more than its alignment with the pyramids; it inherits the logic of monuments that stabilize regimes by stabilizing narrative. Just as earlier authoritarian and developmentalist states built to outlast the criticism of the present, the museum builds to outlast the memory of rupture. The gesture is familiar: when politics is unsettled, architecture is asked to appear immovable; when identity is contested, stone is asked to speak more loudly than people. The building functions as reassurance, not evidence.

But unlike older monumental projects, the Grand Egyptian Museum operates under conditions shaped by global capital and transnational cultural networks. Loans, consultants, partnerships, and international museological standards do not weaken the national message; they amplify it. They allow the state to present its narrative as globally verified, technically endorsed, and culturally neutral—when it is, in fact, a deeply situated political argument. The museum becomes not just a monument to heritage, but a monument to the credibility of the state itself.

This continuity with past monumentalism is less about imitation than adaptation. Ancient complexes sacralized divine rule; twentieth-century megaprojects dramatized ideological futures; the museum sacralizes heritage as proof of modern authority. In each case, scale stands in for consensus, and spectacle stands in for negotiation. The architectural language changes, but the political instinct does not. The building does not ask the public to believe; it asks them to stand in front of something that makes belief feel unnecessary.

The result is a paradox: a project that appears inclusive by virtue of cultural pride, yet exclusive by virtue of the narrative it enforces. It remembers too much of one history and too little of another. It claims to gather the nation, but it gathers only the version of the nation that can fit inside its myth. What is absent is not forgotten by accident; it is forgotten by design.

The Authoritarian Sublime and the State Machine

The Grand Egyptian Museum presents itself as a place of preservation, yet its power lies in what it constructs rather than what it protects. It uses alignment, scale, and the softness of light to turn architecture into a statement of endurance. The building does not argue for the state’s permanence; it rehearses it. It makes authority feel architectural—quiet, inevitable, already decided.

This is what gives the project its force. By organizing sightlines, controlling approach routes, and scripting movement, the museum draws a boundary around which futures are imaginable and which histories are permitted to matter. The narrative it offers is coherent and compelling, but it is a coherence built on selection. What exceeds the story is allowed to fall away. What disrupts continuity remains outside the frame of alabaster and glass.

None of this negates the museum’s achievements as a work of design. It is visually extraordinary, technically sophisticated, and unmistakably ambitious. But ambition is not neutral, and beauty is not without consequence. If the museum succeeds, it is because it persuades—not because it proves. It gathers visitors into a vision of Egypt that feels seamless enough to stand, and silent enough to hold.

The question that remains is not whether the museum will endure, but what it will ask the public to forget in order to endure. In this sense, the building’s most powerful exhibition is not its collection, but the story it makes possible—and the stories it leaves in the dark.

The post Building Belief: The Grand Egyptian Museum and the Architecture of State Power appeared first on Untold.

Calypse is us, and at the same time she speaks to us: the conscience of a generation condemned to resist and survive.

The comic has been created by the UntoldMag collective together with artist Francesca Cogni.

Episode 3: “Prove you Are Human”

The post Abu Calypse, Episode 3: “Prove you Are Human” appeared first on Untold.

Calypse is us and at the same time she speaks to us: the conscience of a generation that is condemned to resist and survive.

The comic has been created by the UntoldMag collective together with artist Francesca Cogni.

Episode 2: “Rights We Can’t Afford”

The post Abu Calypse, Episode 2: “Rights We Can’t Afford” appeared first on Untold.

Through free-form writing and illustration, the contributors reflect on what divestment can mean for academics of color within knowledge-producing institutions across the Global North. Grounded in the urgency of documenting the present moment and its reverberations in academia, the series reveals how the dehumanization of the “other” has always been structural and systemic.

This story is by Watfa Najdi, with illustrations by Pascale Ghazaly. 

What does it mean to think beyond extractivism in times of war?

I was invited to speak at an event. At the time, I was feeling vulnerable and constantly worried about the situation in Lebanon, and I rarely felt like leaving the house. 

However, it was an important event, so I said yes.

That night, as I was sitting on the stage speaking, a strike hit al-Nuweiri neighborhood in Beirut. Among the martyrs, there was a family with the same last name as mine: Najdi. I didn’t know, and I kept talking about the importance of moving beyond the North/South paradigm that casts certain populations as perpetual beneficiaries or aid recipients in need of Western expertise… I remember saying something about care, holding space, and listening to voices from the majority world. I didn’t look at my phone until the panel ended.

When I finally did, I saw several messages about the strike, the victims, the names.

“Israeli air strikes on central Beirut have killed 22 people and wounded at least 117, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said… The strikes appear to have hit densely populated residential areas as flames and smoke rose from two residential blocks.” (Al Jazeera, October 2024)

For a few minutes, everything inside me froze until my dad finally answered his phone and said they were okay. I then texted a friend who lived close to the targeted area. She replied briefly that they were still trying to process what happened, but they were okay.

After that, I put on a smile and said I needed to leave early. So, while everyone went upstairs to continue the conversation, I slipped out and rushed back home. That day I realized that academic conversations feel impossibly small during war, and the world you come from suddenly becomes too heavy to carry into these spaces but also too real to just put on hold.

Excerpt from Megaphone’s X account posted the following day (October 11, 2024):

“Hussein (51) and Lara (40), along with their twins Bassam and Zakaria (15) and Fatima Najdi (4), were laid to rest on Friday in their hometown Srifa, as well as their grandmother Inaam Saqlawi, her brother, and his wife. The death toll from the Noueiri massacre has now reached 22 martyrs, with over 117 others injured.”

How are you doing? How’s your family?

A professor asked me how I was doing. Over the past months, I’ve learned not to answer those questions fully. Most people ask because (I assume) it would be impolite not to, and what they expect is a short confirmation that your family back home is “doing okay,” even while surviving a war. So, I usually say exactly that: “they’re okay” then I smile and nod.

But this time there was something in his tone that made me believe he actually wanted to know more about what’s happening. So, I let myself say a little more. “It’s terrible,” I said. “Last night I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up following the news… watching which buildings were being bombed…”

I was tired and angry, so the words kept coming. “They hit a building close to my neighborhood in Beirut. It’s just…”

I don’t remember what I said after that, only the moment he gently cut in: “Can you walk with me? I need to grab my coffee from inside.”

I froze for a second but then nodded and walked beside him towards the class. It took me a minute to put a smile back on… I stood there as he grabbed his cup and checked something on his desk.

He then turned back to me and said, “…you were telling me about the situation in Beirut?”

I felt ridiculous sharing, even if for a few seconds, something very personal to me with someone who preferred to listen to a conversation about war while sipping coffee. I smiled again and said, “oh, that was it. The situation is difficult. Hopefully it will end soon.”

He smiled back, warmly. I don’t think he was pretending. But this is probably as far as he could go. Not because of lack of empathy, but because news about war, suffering and pain from the other side of the world can only be acknowledged briefly, never long enough to interrupt the rhythm of (academic) life.

The post Diaries of an Academic of Color: On the Limits of Academic Spaces, and Life in Two Places appeared first on Untold.

Through free-form writing and illustration, the contributors reflect on what divestment can mean for academics of color within knowledge-producing institutions across the Global North. Grounded in the urgency of documenting the present moment and its reverberations in academia, the series reveals how the dehumanization of the “other” has always been structural and systemic.

This story is by Myriam Dalal, with illustrations by Pascale Ghazaly. 

Having a conscience is making everything much harder.

As if we needed one more layer of complication to add to our “survival of the fittest” battle as Arab academics in the west.

Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, and the war on Palestine, Lebanon, bits of Syria and bits of Yemen in October of 2023-which coincided with my appointment as a research associate at a university in Europe- my work plan started incorporating multi-level scrutiny measures:

For the places I’m invited to speak at, the funding that I seek for my activities and projects, the people I collaborate with, the researchers I interact with, the university where I work, and our center’s preexisting/ongoing/future collaborations, as well as the research projects conducted here, the way the university communicates about its international collaborations, etc.

And when you’re already in a space where your very being is attacked every single day, from the moment you open your door in the morning till the moment you go back to bed at night, this means you’re adding to your already achy shoulders a new reason to shrug.

You say it’s the mattress that got you this back and shoulder pain, but you know deep inside that it’s Orientalism, you just don’t know how to explain it to the white physician.

Being an Arab woman of color comes with all its “shades of anger” as the amazing Rafeef Ziadeh would say. The orientalist machine starts from the very state administration to the individual level that seeks to discredit you, belittle you, and fetishize you or in its most positive manifestation, save you…

The post Diaries of an Academic of Color: All Shades of Anger – Notes from an Arab Woman in European Academia appeared first on Untold.

Calypse is us and at the same time she speaks to us: the conscience of a generation that is condemned to resist and survive.

The comic has been created by the UntoldMag collective together with artist Francesca Cogni.

Episode 1: “A Complicated War”

The post Abu Calypse, Episode 1: “A Complicated War” appeared first on Untold.