My first blog, “Itinerant and Inquisitive,” started in 2008 as a travelogue. I was going back to Jordan on a scholarship and to look for a job, and I didn’t want to subject my friends and family to sporadic mass emails they might or might not want, but I wanted them to be able to keep up with me if they wanted to. If I was lucky, maybe even some other people would read along and learn something that surprised them about Islam and the Arab world. Eventually I got active in the Jordanian blogosphere and picked up some readers that way. Then I went to Egypt, and when revolution broke out, I picked up more readers interested in my particular perspective from where I sat on Tahrir Street.
My second blog, “Arabs I’ve Known,” began in 2014 as a place to reflect back on my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jordan, 2004-2006, and a CASA I scholar in Cairo, 2010-2011. After the election of Donald Trump, I rebranded that blog as “Liberty and Justice for All,” the part of the American Dream that seemed most embattled and endangered.
I’ve now migrated both of those blogs to this site, representing a decade of global citizenry. All those years, I have always tagged my blog entries for their locations, in the spirit of the original travelogue, so I am very pleased to offer this around-the-world look at my travels:
Conversant 