Understanding Campaign gets Best of Baltimore!

Best Campaign

Local writer/designer Justin Sirois and Egypt-based Iraqi refugee Haneen Alshujairy previously collaborated on the novel Falcons on the Floor. Since the beginning of this year they have been collaborating on another project, the Understanding Campaign. The goal: to get everyone in the world to read just one word of Arabic—fhm (pronounced “fuh’hem”), which means “understanding”—in hopes of getting people to consider opting for understanding over conflict. To date, a number of other artists—including Baltimore’s Post Typography and Squid Fire and Egyptian calligrapher Ahmed Kandil—have created their versions of fhm written in Arabic, and Sirois and Haneen launched their Kickstarter drive for the campaign Sept. 20, hoping to raise funds to start a nonprofit organization that promotes literary projects that bring the Arab- and English-speaking worlds closer. Shukran.

http://citypaper.com/bob/arts-and-entertainment-1.1023680