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Al-Ahram Weekly
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Al-Ahram Weekly
The moral high ground
A few months into the war on Gaza, following the 7 October attacks, I found myself like everyone else, glued to the news around the clock, watching non-stop the horror coming out of Gaza. One night, as the Israeli forces started to bomb Al-Shefa Hospital – a spot I was familiar with, having developed a bond with the reporter who broadcast from there – I realised that reporter was no longer there. He was not even mentioned. That night was particularly heartbreaking for me. I felt pressure in my head, as if it might literally explode. Waves of anxiety surged through me, along with terrible thoughts, and I had to turn off the television and wander around my house at 2:00am, desperately trying to shift my focus. I remembered that night as I watched the Palestinian documentary A State of Passion – directed by Carol Mansour, a Lebanese-Canadian filmmaker with Palestinian ancestry, and Muna Khalidi, who has a very close friendship with Abu-Sittah – which follows the renowned Palestinian-British plastic and reconstructive surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah when he volunteered to enter Gaza for the sixth time at a time of conflict only to realise that this time it was full-scale genocide. He had never performed this number of amputations on children ever in his life, as he said at one of the most moving moments. At this point, when the film was recently screened at Zawya in the lineup of the Between Women Filmmakers Caravan – an independent initiative organised by a group of female filmmakers and film curators – the Gaza war was already one year and eight months old. Still, I'd missed the first screening of the film, which made its world premiere at the Cairo International Film Festival, receiving three awards: the top award of the Horizons of Arab Cinema section, the Saadeddin Wahba Award for Best Arabic Film, and the second prize for Best Palestinian Film as well as a Special Mention for Abu-Sittah. After 43 days in Gaza, Abu-Sittah jumped on a plane to Amman to spend 24 hours with Mansour and Khalidi, who had called to request the meeting. As they stated in an online interview with the audience after the screening, the phone call that appears in the film is the real phone call. In Amman, the camera captures the emotions involved in the meeting, which also involves an old friend of Abu-Sittah's and his proud mother, whose favourite son he was, according to the two filmmakers. Mansour and Khalidi accompany Abu-Sittah on a quick visit to Kuwait, where he was raised and where he reminisces about his father, also a doctor, in front of said father's former clinic. Abu-Sittah was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. His father's family originated in Maain Abu-Sittah in the southeast of Gaza, which they were forced to flee when the Zionists attacked during the Nakba. They moved to Kuwait and later to the United Kingdom in the 1980s and Abu-Sittah eventually realised his father's dream by studying medicine at Glasgow University. The documentary includes some harsh photos of children undergoing surgical procedures, especially when Abu-Sittah is trying to prove that Israel used white phosphorus in their military operations, but such graphic imagery was limited, reflecting the filmmakers' decision to give only a small taste of the horror after they were faced with the predicament of whether and how much to show. Abu-Sittah recalls performing amputations on six children in a single day, and when he elaborates on how complicated the situation is there, he explains that health procedures are based on people directing you to save the life of the only living member of the family or whether a doctor can just clean up a wound that will keep someone alive for a day so as to save a few other lives that require urgent attention. Abu-Sittah made his way to Gaza to treat patients all the way through Rafah many times; his first medical visit to Gaza was during the first Intifada in 1987. He was back during the second Intifada in 2000 and then in the wars of 2009, 2012, 2014, 2021 and finally 2023. Mansour alone accompanies Abu-Sittah to London where he lives with his family: his wife Dima and three sons. Khalidi couldn't go due to complications with her visa. And this is where the documentary becomes a more personal exploration of Abu-Sittah's extraordinary character. When he's not working, he is with his family, a dedicated husband and father whose presence is a delight to them. He is seen ironing his sons' school uniforms and putting together their lunch boxes in the morning. There is a sequence in the 90-minute documentary when we hear the exchange of voice messages between him and his three sons. It is touching how he says good morning to each of them in spite of the horrors he is enduring so many miles away. Dima and Abu-Sittah have a sweet relationship with the Palestinian cause at its core. Dima explains how she took the children to Gaza, showing them every corner of it with a strange presentiment that it might not survive. They went to the beach and visited all the landmarks. Her presentiment was right: they returned on 7 September, exactly a month before the horrific incidents began. When Dima and Abu Sittah were in Gaza, they took along Dima's mother, who needed medical attention in London while her father remained alone, an old man tired of being repeatedly displaced, refusing to leave his house. The mother could not return to Gaza but she has been living in Egypt: she was even present at the screening of the film. When Dima spoke of Palestinian resilience, it rang true in a way it usually doesn't. 'If he hadn't gone to Gaza, I wouldn't have known how to maintain my respect for him,' she also said of Abu-Sittah, who, for his part, said they were both so clear about his need to be there, the decision didn't even have to be discussed. * A version of this article appears in print in the 5 June, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Forbes
10-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The AI Startup Helping Uber, Salesforce And Hundreds Of Companies Cut Costs
Itwas 2016, and May Habib was in the most important meeting of her life. The Lebanese-Canadian entrepreneur had just moved to San Francisco from Dubai and was pitching Visa on her startup's translation software. To have any chance at a Series A, she needed to land the deal—and fast. But Visa's executives, who wanted to roll out a digital payment product in 40-plus languages, had only ever worked with human translators and didn't understand how her software would integrate with theirs. So Habib, now 40, stepped up to a whiteboard and mapped it out. And when they discovered a gap, she and her cofounder, Waseem Alshikh, went back to their house-cum-office in the Mission District and cranked out a GitHub integration to fill it. Guerin Blask for forbes Visa became Habib's first major enterprise client with a $126,000 contract soon after, and she raised $5 million a few months later. 'You're not selling your software, you're selling a different way of doing things,' she says. That's the conceit behind Writer, Habib's artificial intelligence company, which has evolved dramatically since those early days. It now sells AI Studio, a Swiss Army knife suite of AI tools intended to expedite the corporate world's many simple, but often tedious and expensive, menial tasks. For cosmetics giant L'Oréal, Writer drafted thousands of product description blurbs, for Uber hundreds of answers to frequently asked questions. Salesforce uses it to quickly gin up email and social media marketing campaigns. Those are just three of the 300 companies that pay—sometimes millions—to use Writer's customizable AI apps to automate time-consuming everyday work. The enthusiastic embrace of enterprise has helped Writer, one of the sizzling startups featured on Forbes' annual AI 50 list (see page 82), raise some $320 million from top venture capitalists. Its November $200 million round valued the company at $1.9 billion; Habib retains an estimated 15% stake worth $285 million. Forbes At a time when so many companies are trying to figure out exactly how AI can help grow their business—and whether the investment is worth it—Writer's customers are using its tools to cut costs in a material way. An AI executive at a top health product retailer says their team uses Writer's AI to advertise on TikTok, Amazon and Walmart, which has generated $5 million in value annually between cost savings and new sales opportunities—a number they expect to balloon to $25 million in the next two years. Victoria's Secret–owned lingerie brand AdoreMe used Writer's AI to translate 2,900 product descriptions into Spanish as part of its expansion to Mexico, distilling a months-long process down to 10 days. 'The ROI is screaming at you,' says Sandesh Patnam, managing partner at private equity firm Premji Invest, who co-led Writer's funding round last year. Such savings have spiked Writer's net retention rate to a stunning 160%, indicating that customers end up expanding their contracts by 60% on average. Habib says 20 customers started with contracts between $200,000 and $300,000, quickly found new ways to use Writer's tools and are now spending about $1 million each. A pitch deck from last fall shows it brought in $9.3 million in revenue in 2023 and was forecasting $28 million in revenue for 2024. Writer said the figures were inaccurate and declined to comment further, but shared that it currently has more than $50 million in signed contracts, which it projects will double to $100 million this year. Writer's confidence stems from its newest product, 'AI HQ,' which includes tools to build artificially intelligent agents that can perform a series of tasks that are typically part of the workflow of an actual job. A financial analyst, for instance, could create an agent that pulls data from earnings-call transcripts, analyzes it and emails a personalized version to their entire client list. No coding is required; you just explain in plain English the sequence of steps you want the agent to carry out and click a button. At an annual cost that can reach into the millions, Writer also provides more than 70 pregenerated apps and agents that clients can use immediately. 'People don't have to do the work,' Habib says. 'They only have to build AI that does it for them.' Already, major customers like fintech Intuit ($16.3 billion in 2024 revenue) and homebuilder Lennar (sales: $35.4 billion) are trying out Writer's agent tools. Lennar CTO Scott Spradley says his team's Writer agents have so far written thousands of email responses to inquiries from potential buyers, scheduling appointments to view the company's thousands of homes and providing information like their price or location. 'It's driving volume, it's driving activity, it's creating better leads,' he says. It also heralds the beginning of a paradigm shift for businesses looking to shave labor costs. Why bother paying people to do what an AI agent can do equally well and faster? That's the real opportunity for Writer and the rest of the $58 billion enterprise AI market. Habib is blunt about what this means for rank-and-file knowledge workers: 'Ten percent of the headcount is going to be enough.' With the enterprise AI software market poised nearly to double to $114 billion by 2027, competition is stiff. Deep-pocketed OpenAI and Anthropic, which have raised a collective $42 billion, sell bare-bones models that businesses can then use to build tools. But they typically require a team of developers to calibrate, deploy and update. Writer's tech is largely plug-and-play, with user-friendly drag-and-drop interfaces. It doesn't require messing around with AI models or crafting the perfect prompt every time. 'We make so much of the magic invisible for folks,' Habib says. It has done that by home-brewing the models that power AI Studio and AI HQ. That's important for security: Client data is retrieved from dedicated servers and isn't used to train models, mitigating concerns about sensitive information leaking. Writer's models address another core concern businesses have with AI: its occasional tendency to make things up. Writer's AIs pull data directly from customers' documents, guaranteeing far fewer hallucinations, if less creativity. But who needs poetry when your AI is generating market analysis? In a world in which OpenAI spent $100 million to train GPT-4, Writer is doing all this relatively cheaply. Its rival model cost just $700,000 to build. That's far less even than DeepSeek, the Chinese company that upended the AI world by building a model that competes with OpenAI's at a fraction of the cost. 'DeepSeek made efficiency cool, but Writer has been doing it for years,' says Rob Toews, a Writer board member and partner at Toronto-based VC shop Radical Ventures, which is an investor. Not everyone is sold. Some industry experts are unsure whether Writer's smaller models can keep up with the giants. On popular leaderboards, which rank models based on how well they answer a host of questions, Writer trails AI juggernauts like OpenAI and Anthropic, whose revenue is in the billions. OpenAI has 2 million paying users for ChatGPT Enterprise, and Anthropic reportedly projects it will grow to $34.5 billion in revenue by 2027, two-thirds of which will come from enterprise users. 'Writer's great strength has been evangelizing what they're doing. I think the challenge is making sure the technology can live up to that,' says one venture capitalist who has invested in other enterprise AI companies. Writer trained its own models (named Palmyra after the ancient Syrian city) even though everyone advised them against it. 'You don't need to play by the rules all the time," says CTO Waseem Alshik." Habib is confident it can. Companies care more about real-world performance than benchmark horse races. And with a client roster that already includes blue-chip outfits like Accenture, Hilton, Spotify and Qualcomm, Writer's investors are happy to continue betting on her. 'She just can run through walls and make the impossible happen,' Toews says. Even VCs who passed on the last round speak admiringly of her. 'She's just kind of a force of nature,' says one. Entrepreneurship runs in the family, says Habib, who grew up in a tiny village on the war-torn border of Lebanon and Syria. Her father started his own tool-and-die shop, while her mother worked at a pita bakery. The eldest of eight siblings, Habib was managing the family checkbook by age 9. Her family fled the civil war to Canada in 1990, and Habib, the only one in her family who spoke English, graduated from Harvard in 2007 with a degree in economics and a minor in Eastern languages. While working as an investment banker in Dubai, she met Alshikh, 40, a Syrian technology executive who had taught himself to speak English so he could learn to code. Alshikh's first company, which converted satellite photos into digital maps for cars, was taken over by the Syrian government because it thought he wasn't 'patriotic' enough, he says; in retaliation, he claims he hacked into the government's servers to shut down the internet in the country. The duo launched the first iteration of Writer in 2015 as machine translation company Qordoba, before pivoting to build AI that could generate content in a company's style and tone, relaunching as Writer in 2020. Twitter became one of its first customers, using Writer's system to pump out blog posts. (After Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he stopped paying; Writer sued and eventually got 95% of what it was owed. X, as Twitter is now known, did not respond to a request for comment.) Habib jokes that Writer has evolved into a different company every four to six months to stay relevant. 'We are the Eras Tour of generative AI,' she says, nodding to Taylor Swift's career-timeline concerts. 'We extract the rate of change for companies that can't get their heads around it on their own.' It's fitting, then, that the next stage of Writer's business involves an entirely new approach to AI. Alshikh calls it 'self-evolving.' His team is building models that learn from mistakes automatically, without needing a human to correct them. 'It's like hiring smart people in your companies,' he says. 'You expect them over time to know more and learn more.' For Habib, this means new possibilities, and she can't wait to get in the room with her customers to sketch them out together. 'Even now, the team knows there has to be a whiteboard,' she says. 'I can't co-think or co-create with a customer without trying to imagine something that doesn't exist.' Additional reporting by Richard Nieva.
Al Jazeera
31-03-2025
- Al Jazeera
The Take: The Copernic Affair – The professor accused of a Paris bombing
Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian professor, has spent nearly 20 years defending himself against accusations of involvement in a 1980 bombing of the Copernic Street synagogue in Paris. The twists and turns of his case raise serious questions about justice, accountability, and the possibility of a wrongful accusation. In this episode: Episode credits: This episode was produced by Marcos Bartolomé with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Hanah Shokeir, Melanie Marich, Noor Wazwaz and our guest host Manuel Rápalo. It was edited by Alexandra Locke. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad Al-Melhemm. Alexandra Locke is The Take's executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
CairoScene
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Abu Dhabi Festival & Paris Opera Announce Historic First Co-Production
The production premiered at Opéra Bastille in Paris on February 28th, 2025, and runs until March 27th. Mar 03, 2025 The Abu Dhabi Festival and Opéra National de Paris have launched a historic co-production of Claude Debussy's 'Pelléas et Mélisande', marking the first collaboration between the Arab world and the French opera house. Directed by Lebanese-Canadian Wajdi Mouawad and conducted by Antonello Manacorda, the production premiered at Opéra Bastille in Paris on February 28th, 2025, and runs until March 27th. 'Pelléas et Mélisande', composed by Claude Debussy and first performed in 1902, is a symbolist opera based on Maurice Maeterlinck's play of the same name. The opera's atmospheric score and impressionistic style explore themes of love, fate, and human emotion. The story follows the tragic love triangle between Prince Golaud, his mysterious wife Mélisande, and his younger half-brother Pelléas, unfolding in a dreamlike setting that enhances the opera's enigmatic and psychological depth. Under the patronage of UAE leaders, the initiative is part of Abu Dhabi Festival's mission to expand global artistic partnerships. Featuring soprano Sabine Devieilhe and baritone Huw Montague Rendall, the opera explores love and destiny with a set design by Emmanuel Clolus.
Trade Arabia
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Trade Arabia
Abu Dhabi Festival, Opéra national de Paris premiere new production
Abu Dhabi Festival is celebrating the opening of its historic collaboration with the Opéra national de Paris for Wajdi Mouawad's new production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande – marking the first collaboration of its kind with the Arab World. This eagerly awaited new production premiered at the Opéra Bastille in Paris on February 28 and will continue until March 27. The event was held under the honorary founding patronage of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and under the patronage of Sheikha Shamsa bint Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Nahyan. As part of the Festival's Abroad programme, this landmark co-production is the first between a Middle Eastern institution and the prestigious Opéra national de Paris. It reaffirms the Festival's commitment to strengthening international cultural partnerships and advancing creative excellence through artistic exchange, further elevating UAE and Abu Dhabi's global cultural influence and stature. An operatic masterpiece by French composer Claude Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande premiered in 1902 as a symbolist opera based on Maurice Maeterlinck's play of the same name. Set to an evocative, atmospheric score that remains one of Debussy's most lauded works, the production explored themes of love, fate and the fragility of human emotions. Renowned Lebanese-Canadian director and playwright, Wajdi Mouawad, celebrated for his profound storytelling and innovative theatrical vision, returns to Opéra national de Paris with his second production. His direction is enriched by internationally acclaimed conductor Antonello Manacorda, Chorus Master Alessandro Di Stefano and a stunning set design by Emmanuel Clolus. Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo, Founder of the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF) and Founder & Artistic Director of Abu Dhabi Festival, said: 'Under the honorary founding patronage of His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, we present the world premiere of Wajdi Mouawad's new production of the masterpieces by the world-renowned composer Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande. Lebanese-Canadian director Wajdi Mouawad will share his innovative direction at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, in a co-production of the Opéra national de Paris and the Abu Dhabi Festival. This historic collaboration is the first and largest of its kind between the prestigious French opera and the Arab world.' She continued: 'This historic performance comes as a reflection of our renewed commitment to promoting cultural diplomacy and our dedication to building human civilisation and envisioning a bright future for the global cultural and arts scene. With soprano star Sabine Devieilhe, renowned British baritone Huw Montague Rendall, and the brilliant world-renowned maestro Antonello Manacorda, performances of the famous Pelléas et Mélisande opera will continue from 28 February to 27 March, highlighting human emotions such as love, loyalty, honesty, hatred, and jealousy, and embodying the rich operatic legacy of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande since its first performance at the beginning of the 20th century. "The co-production of Pelléas et Mélisande by Abu Dhabi Festival and Opéra national de Paris highlights the Festival's long-term vision of fostering multifaceted relationships with leading global arts institutions through meaningful and innovative collaborations that create lasting legacies. It also reflects the deepening cultural ties between the UAE and the global arts community, positioning Abu Dhabi as a key player on the international cultural stage,' she added. Alexander Neef, General Director of Opéra national de Paris, said: "The Paris Opera is delighted to bring this new production of et Pelléas Mélisande to life in co-production with the Abu Dhabi Festival, under the direction of Wajdi Mouawad and the baton of Antonello Manacorda, with Huw Montague Rendall and Sabine Devieilhe in the title roles. I am grateful to the Abu Dhabi Festival for their support in enriching our operatic repertoire and their dedication to arts and culture. I look forward to this shared artistic journey, as we pursue a common ambition for artistic excellence." Fahad Saeed Al Raqbani, Ambassador of the UAE to France, said: 'The historic co-production of Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande between Abu Dhabi Festival and the Opéra National de Paris highlights the power of cultural diplomacy to strengthen the enduring friendship between the UAE and France. 'This landmark collaboration - the first of its kind between a Middle Eastern, or Arab, cultural institution and one of the world's most prestigious opera houses - reflects the UAE's commitment to fostering artistic excellence and cross-cultural dialogue. 'Abu Dhabi Festival continues to create new pathways between countries, artists and audiences through its groundbreaking partnerships with international institutions. By reimagining a timeless opera, this collaboration enhances Abu Dhabi's global cultural presence and reaffirms the arts as a bridge for mutual understanding and cooperation between our two nations." Nicolas Niemtchinow, Ambassador of the France to the UAE, said: 'I am delighted that the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF), through its flagship initiative, the Abu Dhabi Festival, is collaborating with the Opéra national de Paris to co-produce Pélléas et Mélisande for the first time on Friday, 28 February 2025, in Paris. "This masterpiece, which explores the themes of love and destiny, is one of Claude Debussy's most famous operas. This exceptional performance underlines the ever-deepening cultural ties between France and the United Arab Emirates. Congratulations to ADMAF on this great success! On the strength of exceptional iconic symbols such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Franco-Emirati relationship in the cultural sphere is now enhanced by promising new projects in the field of music. Together with the UAE, we are advancing our cultural relationship, breaking new ground, and looking toward the future.'
