HOF — When I was sixteen, I connected to the internet for the first time.
The sound of the modem—its screeching, mechanical handshake—felt like falling through a wormhole. With a single click, I was no longer confined to the orthodoxies of my Shiite Islamic school or the rigid lines of Syria’s Arab Nationalist curriculum. I was somewhere else entirely.
Continue reading “A World Within Reach, Out of Touch”
Today I mark a point in spacetime.
14 February 2026 — Rebirth in Bamberg.
Not the erasure of what came before, but the moment when the lines of my life — names, people, memories, detours, and love — converged briefly at a single focal point before continuing outward again into the beautiful unknown.
Continue reading “Geometry of Rebirth”
This is a personal blog written from experience and metaphor, not doctrine or authority. It reflects how the world looks to me right now, not how it should look to others. Reading it is a choice, as is interpretation.
Image by Jakob Linser
I have many names.
Abdo, after my grandfather.
Abu Saleem (bin Fatima), bin Zeynep — after my parents and my guardian aunt.
Muhammad.
Iskandar (Alexander) — the name I sign with.
Roumani (Roman) — my family name.
Rou — a name given to me by Kholoud.
Mani — a name given by Manar.
Manilein — a name given by my mother-in-law.
Hob (love), as Sarah has called me for the past ten years.
But truly, I am Damascus in bits — and I’m writing this Letter to Vienna.
I was born in October 1987.
My legal birthday, on my passport, is January 1, 1988.
Grainbach — At the time, bipolar was the diagnosis — but it later became clear it didn’t fully explain what was happening.
What happened to me was something else.
In August, from my internal experience, I wasn’t “cycling.” I wasn’t unraveling. I wasn’t losing myself.
I was over-leveraged.
This essay tries to understand, not to excuse. It is not a defense of conquest or cruelty. It is a meditation on how, across millennia, the Middle East has been reshaped by collisions — political, religious, and civilizational — and on what those collisions may yet demand of us. Image by Haley Black
HOF — These days, condemning Israel has become a global ritual. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s politics make it easy. His right-wing populism, his faith in force, and his disregard for international restraint have turned Israel from a fortress into a lightning rod. But the more we fixate on Israel, the more we ignore what its existence exposes in all of us — the ancient machinery of power that keeps the Middle East locked in its endless loop of birth and collapse.
Continue reading “From Theia to Israel — Collisions that Forge the World”
Roumani Line 