We asked beauty experts Asma Sherif Mounir, Diana Richy, Soha Koury, Yasmin Ebeid, and Paya for their best tips and tricks when giving your skin a break from your typical makeup routine. First off, best makeup removers: Coconut oil from Nature’s Way All of Neutrogena’s makeup removal range Micellar solution makeup remover from Bioderma. L’Oreal’s…

If you’re looking for musicians with style as unique as their music, look no further. Here are 5 of the quirkiest and coolest Arab musicians: Souad Massi shows that you don’t need to wear a dress to look elegant, beautiful and feminine. She melts hearts with those lose fitting tops, jeans and a voice to die…

The office of Tadwein, a centre for gender studies, is tucked away in a little apartment block in Maadi. It’s managing director Amel Fahmy has spent her adult life working on issues surrounding gender and established Tadwein in 2014 to find creative ways of solving gender related issues. When it comes to gender related issues…

The feminist Adrienne Rich once wrote “Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.” If you replace assumptions with traditions, then one might see that Family Constellations therapy comes from a similar idea. Bassant El Menshawy, a practitioner and facilitator of this therapy, says the core idea is that…

Have you got little keepsakes from your child’s first year, or a holiday you loved that you don’t want to get rid of but don’t know what to do with? Then Nada Habib has come up with a creative solution for you, ‘Shadow Boxes’. These are customised frames in which you can display these items…

A year or so ago, my Mother started using a book of old Celtic prayers. Early in the morning you can find her in our living room, and late at night in her bedroom, bent over her book. It is a book that has gained popularity among the Christian community in Britain, echoing the more…

Nora Kafafi grew up in the wild, her childhood spent outdoors by the ravine next to her house. Years later, working as a project manager in a company helping start-ups grow, Nora remembered the ravine and, fuelled by her work with start-ups, dreamt up an outdoor adventure company. This company is Rock & Rope. Kafafi…

Even over the phone the gynaecologist and natural birth advocator, Dr Hana Kassem’s enthusiasm is infectious. As Dr Kassem tells us “You know, when you attend a birth and everything is natural and you find out how a woman changes, it changes everything.” It certainly changed everything for Kassem, who in her last year at…

Three months ago 21 year old Shadw Osama received a call from her friend. “She was walking alone and there were some men following her. I was not able to help her because I was too far away.” Shadow stayed on the phone to her friend until, finally, the men disappeared. Though the crisis was…

On Friday, Donald Trump officially became the 45th President of the United States. For many, however, the focal point of the inauguration was not Trump but his wife, Melania. People on social media have begun to collect photos of Melania looking glum at the inauguration. Melania sits next to Donald Trump at a table, glaring…

When she was little, Nabila Radwan was given a silver corn pendant by her mother. It was to become a sort of talisman for, years later, Nabila is now the owner of Dahab’s first corn shop, Dora. “I can walk at 3am without fear” The journey from pendant to store has not been an easy…

On the way home from my first waxing experience in Cairo I saw a flayed carcass lying out in the street. I considered it quite an apt metaphor. The thing is I had gone rather a long time between trips and the lady who was waxing me looked close to tears as she tried, mostly…

A UN spokesman has called the situation in Aleppo ‘a meltdown of humanity’ and perhaps nothing encapsulates this better than the reports that 20 women have committed suicide in Aleppo to avoid being raped by Bashar Al-Assad’s advancing forces. In particular, a suicide note allegedly written by a nurse in Aleppo has held the world’s…

Women stand in the middle of Beirut’s busy streets. They are wearing white wedding dresses shrouded by floor length veils. These clothes represent what it is globally thought of as one of the most significant days in a woman’s life. Yet these women look grim and their dresses, on closer inspection, appear to be made…