Saira Ansari anchors this essay in Pakistani artist Ali Kazim's recent Urdu Worlds exhibition and an accompanying publication called the Urdu Qaida/Alphabet Book, which explores the qaida as historically a cultural, social, religious, and political object, beyond its intended function as a pedagogical tool. Along the way, Saira reflects on her own relationship to and memories of learning and speaking Urdu while bringing Kazim's work into conversation with the artist Zarina. She further considers what it meant for each artist to turn to the book form as a way of holding onto a linguistic world.

In this short story by Ghadeer Abusneineh, set in a Central American context, the isolation of two neighbours is juxtaposed with the lively happenings of a new bar across the road. Later, we are shown various vignettes of women in the neighbourhood as they go about their daily lives, often intersecting with local men in ways that feel compromising. The story is accompanied by a translator's note from Ibrahim Fawzy, who has translated the story from Arabic. With an accompanying illustration by Simone Khanyi Hadebe.

In this essay, Allison Young examines questions of archival assertion and absence in the art world following 7 October 2023, emphasising the importance of recording, witnessing, and testifying to an ongoing genocide that is simultaneously hypervisible and invisible: livestreamed from social media, yet just as quickly erased at an institutional level. She particularly engages with the work of artists Gabrielle Goliath, Nan Goldin, Mary Hazboun, Ahmed Hmeedat, and Emily Jacir, among others, while reflecting on her positionality as an American of South African and Jewish descent, as well as historic solidaristic action between the global South African and Palestinian anti-apartheid movements.