Moroccan label Casablanca steps in to help Africans fleeing Ukraine
Updated 11 March 2022
Arab News
DUBAI: Moroccan-helmed label Casablanca has pledged to donate all proceeds from sales on its website this weekend to help Africans fleeing Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion.
In a statement on its Instagram account on Thursday, the Paris-based label said: “Throughout the growth of Casablanca, our ambition is to support as many people in need as we can, on every level. Globally, many countries and people are in need of critical help as a repercussion of countless unnecessary wars and conflicts.”
The post added: “We stand for love, compassion and acceptance. The people of Ukraine face an unbelievable battle, and this weekend we pledge to donate profits from CasablancaParis.com to ensure the safety of Africans leaving Ukraine.”
Casablanca, founded by Charaf Tajer, is known for its use of luxury silk and cashmere in clothing inspired by Tajer’s Moroccan roots.
If you’re a matcha lover in Saudi Arabia, you’ve probably come across Magical Matcha — and yes, the name delivers. I recently tried their Magical Matcha Box, and let me just say: the entire experience felt like a pastel-hued, matcha-scented dream.
From the moment you receive the lavender-colored box, you’re greeted with whimsical, themed packaging that makes it feel like you’ve ordered a little piece of magic. Inside, you’ll find everything you need to start your matcha ritual: a chasen (bamboo whisk), scoop spoon, and a 30g packet of ceremonial-grade matcha, plus a few adorable and very cute stickers.
Let’s talk taste. The matcha itself is stunning! smooth, vibrant, and earthy without any bitterness. I paired mine with vanilla oat milk, and it blended like a charm. The color is also worth mentioning: a rich, vivid green that makes every pour feel like a tiny moment of luxury.
I also tried their vanilla matcha and and with a few drops of their Vanilla Potion and it was magically pleasing. Also tried their Salted Caramel Potion with the original matcha and couldn't believe how strythe flavor is, 2-3 drops are more than enough! both flavor syrups are delicious. They instantly elevated the drink with a subtle sweetness that didn’t overpower the matcha. Together with the dreamy packaging and tools, this became my favorite way to start the day.
Now for the honest part: the only downside is the quantity. While the quality is top-notch, 30g goes by fast, especially if you drink matcha daily. For the price, I was hoping for a little more product or perhaps a refill option within the same kit.
Still, if you’re new to matcha or looking for a beautiful giftable set, this one hits the mark. It’s Instagrammable, high-quality, and clearly made with care.
For more information, check their Instagram @magicalmatcha.sa.
ISLAMABAD: Around 150 Pakistani artists gathered in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad to participate in a eight-day humanitarian art camp to raise funds for people affected by Israeli military offensive in Gaza, the head of Silk Road Culture Center said this week, in a remarkable show of solidarity with the Palestinians.
The camp, “Art for Life – Art for Gaza,” brought together musicians, writers and performers from across Pakistan who presented series of multidisciplinary performances and visual art displays to raise funds for the war-torn people of Gaza.
The event began on April 30 and ended on May 7, amid renewed Israeli strikes on the Palestinian enclave. Israeli’s 18-month war against Hamas has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, Palestinian officials say.
“The idea [behind the event] was to empathize with the suffering people of Palestine,” Jamal Shah, chairman of the Silk Road Culture Center, told Arab News on Wednesday, without sharing details of the total funds raised.
Jamal Shah, Pakistani artist and chairman of Silk Road Culture Center, records live art performance to express solidarity with Gaza, in Islamabad on May 6, 2025. (AN Photo)
A wide range of artworks, including paintings, sculptures, calligraphy, origami and mixed media, were created, exhibited and sold at the event, according to Shah. Many of the pieces are still up for auction, with proceeds pledged to the Palestinian embassy in Pakistan to support humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza.
The participating artists engaged in dialogue around the Palestinian cause and expressed their reflections through paintings, sculptures, theater, music and film at the event.
“My depiction shows their flag and different elements. The golden color represents pain and the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” said Atif Ayub, a contemprary artist from Lahore, describing his installation that combined symbolic imagery focusing on the year 1988 that marked the establishment of the State of Palestine.
“It’s all about shared humanity and emotion.”
Pakistani artists paint during a live performance in solidarity with the people of Gaza, at the Silk Road Culture Center in Islamabad on May 6, 2025. (AN Photo)
The final two days featured live painting sessions, with artists painting silhouettes of performers in real time. These sessions were accompanied by musical performances, skits and poetry readings.
Pakistani singers and musicians such as Arieb, 360 Degrees, Maddy and Sam performed original pieces dedicated to Palestine, contributing to the emotional tone of the event.
Zeeshan Usman Khattak, a filmmaker from the northwestern city of Peshawar, said their collaborative work was a visual metaphor for the crisis in Gaza.
“There was a live performance behind the canvas and we were capturing the shadows,” Khattak said of their live performance. “Those movements reflected the dance of life and death, the aggression, the loss.”
Visitors attend the eight-day art workshop to express solidarity with the people of Gaza, at the Silk Road Culture Center in Islamabad on May 6, 2025. (AN Photo)
Wednesday’s closing ceremony was attended by ambassadors from Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Yemen, Qatar, Syria and Romania, along with cultural attachés from China and Iran as well as representatives from the French film community.
Summera Jawad, a professor who teaches fine arts at Lahore’s Punjab University, highlighted the community-driven nature of the initiative.
“Artists are not just performing or creating here, they’re also contributing to the exhibition and donating their artworks for the cause,” she said.
Saudi ‘farm for experimentation’ on show in Milan exhibition
The curators of the Saudi Pavilion at the Triennale Milano discuss their Al-Ahsa-inspired work
Updated 09 May 2025
Jasmine Bager
AL-AHSA: Saudi Arabia’s lush oasis of Al-Ahsa will be in full bloom in Italy next week at the 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition, which runs from May 13 to Nov. 9 at Milan’s Palazzo dell’Arte.
Al-Ahsa is officially recognized as the world’s largest oasis, and is home to more than 2.5 million date palms.
The Kingdom’s debut pavilion at the exhibition is “Maghras: A Farm for Experimentation,” which, according to the exhibition’s website, is “structured as a transplanted maghras — a unit of land demarcated by four palm trees” and “symbolically frames the dialogues, material traces, soundscapes of field recordings, and speculative gestures emerging from the space.”
Date harvest spread across two maghras_Image by Alejandro Stein. (Supplied)
The pavilion, commissioned by the Architecture and Design Commission under the Ministry of Culture, and curated by longtime friends Lulu Almana and Sara Al-Omran, along with US-based creative director Alejandro Stein, is inspired by Al-Ahsa’s Al-Sbakh Farm, established by the late Noura AlMousa. The farm is now managed by the Abdulmonem Alrashed Humanitarian Foundation (named after its founder, AlMousa’s son) and the Noura AlMousa House for Culture and Arts, housed in AlMousa’s former home.
“We’re really continuing on the lineage of the matriarch,” Al-Omran tells Arab News when we meet the curators at the farm. “Her spirit feels very present because she really cared about craft and culture.”
Almana and Al-Omran commissioned three Saudi artists to work on the pavilion: Leen Ajlan, a London-based designer from Jeddah; Mohammad Alfaraj, a contemporary artist whose family have been farming in Al-Ahsa for generations; and Tara Aldughaither, founder of Sawtasura, an audio research and learning platform focused primarily on female voices.
(Supplied)
Through videos, sound installations, and participatory programs, the pavilion will invite visitors to engage with the evolving agricultural ecosystems of Al-Ahsa.
The maghras concept symbolically ties the exhibition to the land, offering an immersive experience that bridges past traditions with contemporary agricultural practices.
“Technically, there are three participating artists but it’s more than that — there is a big team,” Almana says. “Then there’s all the research that’s being displayed through illustrations and maps and texts that the team worked on. There’s also all the programs and workshops that have been a big part of it.” The fruits of this collective effort will be published in a book later this year.
Al-Omran explains that her grandparents are from Al-Ahsa. “I always hear, particularly from my grandfather, these stories of Al-Ahsa. And when he speaks about it, it feels like this mythical place that doesn’t really connect to what I see here (now),” she says. “I grew up in (Alkhobar), but would come here every week. Many of my best memories were here; running around on the farm, seeing the frogs and the rabbits and the sheep and playing around. And also understanding seasons and seeing crops and produce. But through conversations with him, I saw this contrast of the place that he talks about and the place I’m witnessing. And I realize that it’s really within a lifetime that the environment has shifted so much.”
A workshop in the ancient village of Battaliyah_Image courtesy of Maghras. (Supplied)
Al-Omran’s family, including her grandfather, attended the opening event at Al-Sbakh Farm last autumn, where they saw their hometown celebrated in a new light.
“They’re proud. They’re really happy to see that Al-Ahsa is spoken about,” Al-Omran says. “They see that it’s not just about the past, but a way of thinking about the future.”
The unfolding narrative of the project has emphasized community engagement. “It was really nice and natural,” says Almana. “It didn’t feel forced in any way. People were saying, ‘You’re doing something important.’ It felt impactful despite its small gestures.”
After nearly a decade of living abroad in large, congested cities including London and New York, Almana says the initial intention for this project, for her, “was that I needed to get rooted into a place, build knowledge, and build a community of like-minded people who share similar concerns, questions and values: How do we preserve the identity of a place that’s constantly changing? How do we share our concerns and ideas for regeneration, for reviving certain things? It matters to build a community around these questions. Then everything becomes more meaningful and interesting.”
Almana had only visited Al-Ahsa briefly up until five years ago, during COVID, when she finally spent a significant amount of time there. She found the place inspirational. “It hit me that there’s this urban-rural tension. The big cities get attention, but the rural, historic agricultural places are overshadowed. I wanted to dive into agriculture and build a community of like-minded people,” she says.
Almana’s partnership with Al-Omran added an insider’s perspective to the project. In Milan, visitors will experience the “true essence” of Al-Ahsa, the pair say.
“We really wanted to represent Maghras in the most authentic way,” Almana explains. “It’s a community-based project within a morphing landscape, not just a static thing.”
And Milan, she hopes, is just the start. “We want this to grow into something longer-term, and we’ve conveyed that to the ministry, which supports this vision,” she says.
Al-Omran stresses the amount of research that was involved in creating the pavilion. “We’re looking at a display of research material that we assembled for our first event back in October. And at that point we had spent about three or four months looking at archival research and doing a lot of interviews.”
The first activation was both a presentation and a checkpoint.
“We wanted to take a moment to sift through the material we’d come across and the conversations we’d listened to. It was important to do that during the opening, where we welcomed the community and spoke about the project, because it was important to hear people’s reflections on the research as it emerges; we felt that would influence the direction,” she says.
“Sometimes we don’t really realize what’s lost until generations have passed. And it felt like we were in a moment where the shifts are happening,” she continues. “So it felt urgent to talk about it now, while that generation is still around.”
Recipes for Success: Chef Soner Muran offers advice and a tasty fried mussels recipe
Updated 09 May 2025
Shyama Krishna Kumar
DUBAI: Soner Muran may have sharpened his culinary skills at one of Turkey’s top schools, but it was his grandmother’s cooking that lit the initial fire.
“My earliest memory is grilling sardines with my grandmother. The smell of the sea and the fire stayed with me. I knew early on this was what I wanted to do,” Muran tells Arab News.
“I started studying in the most famous chef school in Turkey (Bolu Mengen Culinary School) when I was 14. After four years of education, I started working in Istanbul’s fine-dining restaurants,” he continues.
Muran is now head chef at Sur.Dubai. (Supplied)
Muran is now head chef at Sur.Dubai — inspired by SurBalik, a seafood restaurant that has been a cornerstone of Istanbul’s culinary scene for 20 years. Sur.Dubai has a Mediterranean-inspired menu that highlights the coastal heritage of Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean regions.
“We cook fish over a wood fire, which is rare in Dubai,” says Muran. “That fire adds depth, smoke, and tradition. Our flavors are bold but simply focused on quality seafood, modern touches, treated with respect.”
Here, Muran talks about his love for seafood and his favorite dish to cook, and shares a simple fried mussels recipe.
What was the most common mistake you made when you were starting out?
I used too many ingredients. I thought more meant better. But great cooking is about balance, not showing off. Now, I focus on fewer elements, greater techniques, and give extra care to every single ingredient in a dish.
Sur.Dubai is inspired by SurBalik, a seafood restaurant that has been a cornerstone of Istanbul’s culinary scene for 20 years. (Supplied)
What’s your top tip for amateur chefs (cooking at home)?
Reduce ready-made items. If possible, avoid buying them altogether. Good food takes a little time, even if it’s simple. Take your time to cook better food. Also, taste as you go. Trust your senses.
What one ingredient can instantly improve any dish?
Olive oil. A splash of acidity can lift flavors, balance richness and bring freshness. Especially with seafood, it’s magic.
When you go out to eat, do you find yourself critiquing the food?
Yes, it’s hard to switch off. I don’t judge harshly, but I notice details.
Sur.Dubai has a Mediterranean-inspired menu that highlights the coastal heritage of Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean regions. (Supplied)
What’s the most common issue you find in other restaurants?
The most common issue is lack of seasoning or dishes that try to do too much.
What’s your favorite cuisine?
Seafood, always. I like to see how other chefs handle it — how fresh it is, how it’s cooked, what flavors they use. It tells me a lot about the restaurant. And I just love seafood; it’s clean, light, and full of character.
What’s your go-to dish if you have to cook something quickly at home?
A simple risotto with parmesan and lemon. It’s comforting, quick if you keep stirring, and you can adjust it based on what you have — like peas, herbs, or shrimp. It feels special even when it’s simple.
What customer request most frustrates you?
When guests ask for a perfectly cooked fish, then ask for it well done. Or when people expect fast-food timing from a wood-fire kitchen. Good things take time.
What’s your favorite dish to cook?
Olive oil braised root vegetables with a nicely grilled wild seabass together with some butter-glazed mussels.
What’s the most difficult dish for you to get right (whether on your current menu or not)?
Bouillabaisse. It’s a traditional French seafood stew, but making it properly is complex. The broth needs depth from the fish bones, shellfish, and herbs. Timing is everything — each seafood needs different cooking times. It’s a dish that tests your control and your palate.
As a head chef, what are you like? Are you a disciplinarian?
I’m focused but fair. I don’t shout — I lead by example. I want my team to love what they do but also take pride in doing it well. Respect is key, both ways.
Chef Soner’s fried mussels recipe
Mix 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup cornstarch, salt, pepper, and cold sparkling water into a thick batter.
Dip cleaned mussels in batter.
Deep fry at 180°C until golden (2–3 mins).
Drain and serve hot with tarator sauce.
Tarator Sauce
Soak and squeeze stale bread (1 cup).
Blend with 1/2 cup walnuts, 3–4 garlic cloves, 3 tbsp lemon juice, 1/2 cup olive oil, and salt.
Add water if needed for a smooth texture.
Serving Tip:
Serve with pickles and fresh coriander leaves for extra flavor.
DUBAI: Primark is officially making its way to Dubai, marking its debut in the UAE after years of rumors about the popular store’s launch in the country.
The popular budget retailer is partnering with retail giant Alshaya Group to open three stores in Dubai, as announced by Alshaya Group CEO John Hadden on Virgin Radio Dubai’s Kris Fade Show.
Set to launch in early 2026, the stores will be located at Dubai Mall, Mall of the Emirates and City Centre Mirdif.
“Price is the same. We’re going to do jeans at a starting price of AED 50 and a basic t-shirt will be AED 15,” Hadden said on the show. “I’m so excited I can’t sustain it. It’s just brilliant.”
Primark’s regional debut is set for The Avenues Mall in Kuwait, with the store expected to open by late 2025. Following that, the brand will expand to Dubai as its next stop in the Middle East.
Primark began 55 years ago in Dublin, Ireland, where it originally opened under the name Penneys. Since then, it has grown to operate 450 stores worldwide.
With a presence in 15 European countries and 16 locations in the United States, the brand offers a wide range of products including clothing for women, men and children, as well as cosmetics, home goods and accessories.
