New Lines Magazine

1 week ago | newlinesmag.com | Tiléwa Kazeem

“Looks like all the beatings I’ve dealt you with my belt haven’t done anything,” Caleb the Magician recalls his father saying when he caught him trying card tricks for the umpteenth time in his bedroom. “Next time, I’ll use my fists.”This wasn’t an empty threat — it was a final warning. In Caleb’s devout Christian home in Benin City, Nigeria, magic wasn’t a hobby; it was blasphemy. Card tricks weren’t clever; they were corrupt.

1 week ago | newlinesmag.com | Surbhi Gupta

In the wake of deadly bombing and shooting attacks in Mumbai, India, in November 2008, anti-Pakistan sentiments surged in the country. Shortly afterward, in 2009, one of the most revered Sufi devotional music ensembles in Pakistan, Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad Qawwal and Brothers, celebrated globally for their mastery of the form known as qawwali, arrived in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru to perform at a cultural festival.

2 weeks ago | newlinesmag.com | Michael Weiss

There was a darkly comic aspect to watching Europe try to flatter, persuade and finesse Donald Trump into being three things he is not: reliable, constructive and pro-Ukraine. On May 10 in Kyiv, the U.K., France, Germany and Poland contrived to get what looked like a consensual policy in place between the United States and and its Western allies: Vladimir Putin, they said, had 48 hours to agree to a 30-day ceasefire in the war in Ukraine, or else face “crippling” new sanctions.

2 weeks ago | newlinesmag.com | Jessie Williams

The ongoing demining work has provided a lifeline to many and proved a great success, but the country bears other wounds that may be harder to healRavikumar Thamil Selvi remembers running through the forest carrying her 4-year-old daughter in her arms. It was 2009, at the brutal culmination of 26 years of civil war in Sri Lanka.

3 weeks ago | newlinesmag.com | Khaled Diab

The country’s new prime minister, a Flemish nationalist who aspires to dismantle the state, joins an increasingly global movement of local nativismFor the first time in its history, Belgium has a prime minister who is a Flemish nationalist. Bart De Wever, who wants the Dutch-speaking Belgians to separate from the French-speaking Walloons and have their own state, rode a wave of nativist and right-wing sentiment to bring his New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) party to power in the February election.