BURNLEY, England - The Libyan city of Benghazi is perhaps the unlikeliest place to discover Motown's classic soul and funk music.

Yet it was there in the north African city as the dust was still settling from the September 1969 coup d'état - spearheaded by Muammar Gaddafi - where the late Libyan artist Hasan Dhaimish first discovered his life-long infatuation for music.

TAIZ, Yemen - Afnan al-Soroori, 22, used to live a comfortable middle-class existence with her family in Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city.

Like others of her kind, she wore clothes common to more liberal and fashionable Yemeni women, would go outside more or less when she wanted, and hung out with other female students also doing their undergraduate degrees at Taiz University, one of the country’s best.

LONDON - Slowly shaping each letter with a bamboo tool dipped in plant-based ink, calligrapher Joumana Medlej finds a meditative calm amid the chaos of modern life.

"In this time of constant distraction, it reacquaints you with the practice of total focus," she says, as she writes in ancient kufic calligraphy, named after the city of Kufah in Iraq.

DUHOK, Iraq – Shireen was studying for a high school examination at her home in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar on 3 August 2014, when Islamic State group (IS) militants broke into her house and kidnapped her from her family.

At the age of 19, she was sold as a sex slave to an IS militant in the north-western city of Tal Afar. Three months later, Shireen was sold once again to Abu Omar, another IS fighter in Mosul, to become his third wife.

BEIRUT - Farah has morbid memories of the abortion she had three years ago - but she cannot recall exactly how long the procedure took. 

“I just felt like it lasted a whole day, the longest day of my life,” the 26-year-old tells Middle East Eye (like the other women interviewed for this story, she does not give her real name amid fears for her safety).

“I vividly remember the unbearable wait before the operation. Since then, I haven’t been able to stop talking about it...It was gruelling.”

ISTANBUL, Turkey - One summer evening in 2013, Turkish film director Andac Haznedaroglu was driving in Istanbul when a mother holding her sick child jumped in front of her car.

She found herself helping the woman, a Syrian refugee, and soon her life - and her work as a filmmaker - took a new turn, with the moment later becoming a scene in her movie.

After disappointing festival representation and a modest box-office performance in 2017, Middle Eastern film bounced back in 2018. It is a year that shall be regarded as a milestone in the raggedy, unpredictable fortunes of the region's cinema.

LOS ANGELES, USA - The story of Arab cinema is partially defined by unfulfilled potentials, thwarted ambitions and amputated careers. Scorching talents, aesthetical innovation and defiant politics have also been overlooked time and time again.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - Mohamed Gohar is sitting at a table in an old cafe in downtown Alexandria, doing what he usually does when he has some free time: sketching. Not people or scenery, but Alexandria's historic buildings. 

With a Turkish coffee next to his pad, the 35-year-old Egyptian architect says it's more than just a hobby for him.

Fans dressed smartly in elegant evening wear form an orderly queue around the block of west London's Eventim Apollo, some enthusiastically waving Iraqi flags, the cold January air doing little to dampen spirits.

It's an hour before the eagerly anticipated concert of the multi-award winning Iraqi singer and musician Kadim el-Sahir, who has the hit count and songwriting stature of Bruce Springsteen or Tom Jones.

Like Jones, he was a judge in the Arab Voice and the junior version of the hit TV talent show.