Forward_Moves

Raja Haddad

Forward_Moves is a podcast hosted by Raja Haddad, that shares lived experiences and stories of successful personalities in the Middle East from the creative world of art, design, entertainment, hospitality, business, and other disciplines.

  1. The Long Game

    قبل ٦ أيام

    The Long Game

    The algorithm rewards the new, the rapid, the instantly shareable.  Brands need to go viral. Artists need to build audiences in months. Restaurants need to trend or they're written off. The entire vocabulary of ambition is built around the idea that if it's not happening fast, it's not happening at all. And yet, across three seasons of Forward_Moves, the people who built the things that genuinely matter described almost none of it quickly.  Almost all of them went through the same journey: doing the work without being sure it was actually working. The durability of what they built is directly related to the time they spent inside it. This episode is about that time. About what depth actually produces that speed cannot. About mastery as a daily decision, not a destination. And about the part of creative practice that never appears in any portfolio — the silent processing that happens not while you are working on the project, but in the hours around it. Voices in This Episode  Mohamed Maktabi  —  CEO of Iwan Maktabi,  Hani AlMalki  —  Dubai-based food writer and curator known as Bedouin Foodie.  Anthony Maalouf  —  Lebanese architect. Nada Debs  —  Designer and founder of Studio Nada Debs Omar Al-Gurk  —  Emirati designer, architect, and photographer, founder of Modu Method.  Zain Massoud  —  Landscape designer Chapters 00:00  Intro  02:30  Mohamed Maktabi on his Sufi mentor's lesson 05:09  Hani AlMalki on keeping it real 06:20  Hani on the shortcuts 07:51  Anthony Maalouf on the word ostentatious. 09:29  Nada Debs on intuition 10:52  Omar Al-Gurk on pottery as self-knowledge 12:25  Omar Al-Gurk on boredom as creative methodology 14:48  Zain Massoud 15:10  Closing comments "It's a career that you can continue indefinitely. You only get better." Send us Fan Mail Support the show Download. Share. Subscribe.

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  2. Make it Heard

    ١٢ مايو

    Make it Heard

    On creativity as resistance — and why making something from where you come from is never entirely innocent There is a word Raja was initially hesitant to use in this episode.  The word is resistance.  Not the confrontational kind — not the kind that announces itself. The quieter kind: the insistence on being seen, on telling your own story rather than having it told for you, the daily decision to make something from where you come from, knowing that in the current climate that act carries weight whether you intend it to or not. None of the guests in this episode frame their work as resistance. A supper club, a jewellery collection, a gallery, an online radio station, a sound art practice, a restaurant. None of them look the same. All of them function as exactly that — evidence of a culture that is richer and more complex than prevailing narratives tend to allow. The episode's central argument: when you argue with the wrong story, you feed it. When you replace it — when you produce something so true and so full of life that the wrong story becomes less credible without you ever engaging it — that is how the narrative actually shifts. Voices in this episode Radio Alhara  —  Palestinian online radio station founded during COVID Ahmad Halawa  —  Palestinian chef and founder of Ysupper clubs in Dubai. Nadine Kanso  —  Lebanese jewellery designer and founder of Bil Arabi. Amrita Sethi  —  Sound artist and founder of Soundbite. Sunny Rahbar  —  Co-founder of The Third Line gallery in Dubai. Basil Yassin  —  Founder of Yava restaurant in Dubai. Omar Al-Gurk  —  Emirati designer and founder of Modu Method. Chapters   00:53  Intro  03:08  Radio Alhara  05:20  Ahmad Halawa on his supper clubs 06:46  Nadine Kanso on September 11th as the trigger 07:29  Raja on the broader principle 09:24  Amrita Sethi on pioneering a form that had no precedent 11:39  Sunny Rahbar on coming back 12:39  Basil Yassin  14:13  Omar Al-Gurk on the 1960s and 70s 14:43  Closing argument Send us Fan Mail Support the show Download. Share. Subscribe.

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  3. Home is Not a Place

    ٥ مايو

    Home is Not a Place

    Every single person featured across three seasons of Forward_Moves lives between two places. Some between two countries. Some between a homeland they can access and one they cannot. Some between the person they were expected to be and the person they turned out to be. What Raja expected to find in the archive was pain around that in-between state: a longing for resolution, for belonging to one place or another.  What he found instead was almost exactly the opposite. The between is not where the problem lives. It's where the work comes from. This episode explores what happens when you stop fighting the in-between and start creating from it — and what that has produced for five very different people, across five very different disciplines. Voices in This Episode Bady Dalloul  —  French-Syrian multimedia artist. Has been unable to visit Syria since 2009. His matchbox drawings — hundreds of tiny scenes, entire narratives compressed into the size of your palm — carry the weight of a homeland transformed into imagination.  Salma Mousfi  —  Lebanese singer and creator of Salma Nova. Lives between Paris and Beirut, belonging fully to both. Her album Salma Nova was written from the frustration of wanting to return to Lebanon during the 2006 war — and being unable to.  Sumayya Dabbagh  —  Saudi architect. Moved from Saudi Arabia to England at 13 — a jolt that became the most important question of her life. Her buildings, including the Gargash Mosque in Dubai, give others the sense of belonging she had to work hard to find for herself.  Ahmad Halawa  —  Palestinian chef and founder of supper clubs in Dubai. Has never been to Palestine, yet carries it in every dish. He makes maqlubeh from memory — reconstructed by feel in a Cairo kitchen when he was a student abroad.  Yousef Anastas  —  Co-founder of Radio Alhara, the Palestinian online radio station founded during COVID lockdown. Named Alhara — the neighborhood — because the neighborhood is not a location. It is a feeling of gathering.  Ricardo Karam  —  Lebanese broadcaster and founder of TAKREEM. Runs every morning on the Beirut Corniche, greeting the same faces, buying kaak from the same vendor. Chooses to remain in a city that gives him every reason to leave.  Key Moments  00:00:35  Raja introduces the episode's central discovery: that the in-between is not the problem — it's the studio. 00:02:52  Bady Dalloul on what happens when you can't go home: grief, and then imagination. The phase that comes after loss. 00:04:47  Salma Mousfi on landing in both Paris and Beirut and feeling, both times, that she is home. 'I'm lucky.' 00:06:52  Sumayya Dabbagh on the jolt of moving to England at 13: 'It really jolted me into thinking — who am I?' 00:08:26  Ahmad Halawa on carrying a homeland he has never seen: 'Palestine was engraved in us since we were kids.' 00:10:10  Yousef Anastas on Radio Alhara: the whole world as part of the same neighborhood. 00:12:03  Ricardo Karam on why he stays in Beirut: the same faces every morning, the same kaak vendor, the same beautiful smiles. 00:13:39  Raja's closing thought: 'Home is not a place. Home is the clarity about who you are that makes every place a little bit possible.' Send us Fan Mail Support the show Download. Share. Subscribe.

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  4. ٢٨ أبريل

    Keeping the Fire Alive

    What does it actually mean to honour a tradition? In this recap episode, Raja Haddad revisits 6 conversations from the archive to explore a single, essential distinction: the difference between preserving the ashes and keeping the fire alive.  The title comes from Mohamed Maktabi, heir to a Persian carpet legacy stretching back to his grandfather in Beirut, who described Iwan Maktabi as a forward-thinking brand that keeps the fire alive. Not the ashes but the fire. It's a distinction that turns out to run through the work of every guest in this episode.  Guests revisited: Mohamed Maktabi: 3 generations deep in one of the Arab world's most storied carpet traditions, Mo's philosophy isn't preservation for its own sake. It's understanding what the tradition was actually doing and finding ways to keep doing that in the present.  Nada Debs: The Lebanese-Japanese designer went to a Damascus workshop and asked a craftsman who spent 3 months inlaying mother of pearl to strip everything back to the underlying geometry. By removing centuries of decorative convention, she made the logic of the craft visible for the first time and produced work that is simultaneously ancient and completely contemporary.  Anthony Maalouf: The Lebanese architect shared the origin story of the Dabke: Lebanon's celebrated folk dance started as roof maintenance. Neighbours gathering before winter to seal each other's homes, the stomp and rhythm emerging from the work itself. Anthony carries that same logic into his practice. When restoring Salon Beyrouth, he used the same marbles, brass, and woods Lebanese craftsmen used in the 1950s and 60s.  Basil Yassin: The Palestinian culinary creator behind Yava in Dubai doesn't replicate his mother's recipes. He traces the principles behind them - the olive oil, the sumac, the generosity of the Palestinian table - and builds new forms around those principles. Amad Mian: The perfumer's anchor is jasmine as a specific memory - his grandmother, a house, a smell that meant safety and home. That specificity is what makes the scent resonate across Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, the UAE.  Hani AlMalki: The Saudi food writer and Bedouin Foodie invokes the Japanese concept of shokunin - the master craftsman devoted to a lifetime of one thing - and asks why we don't celebrate our own version of it.   Don't reach for the generic version of your heritage. Go to the specific as that's where the life is.  Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:01 Mo Maktabi: Keeping the Fire Alive 00:03 Nada Debs: The Visible Craft 00:04 Anthony Maalouf: The Origins of Dabke 00:07 Basil Yasin: New Forms around Original Principals 00:09 Amad Mian: Scent Memory 00:11 Hani Al Malki: The Sukonins among us Send us Fan Mail Support the show Download. Share. Subscribe.

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  5. Success is a Trap

    ٢١ أبريل

    Success is a Trap

    What does it actually look like when someone changes course?  In this recap episode, Raja Haddad revisits 5 conversations from the archive and finds a common thread running through all of them that reframes how we think about pivotal moments. The insight at the heart of this episode: we tend to tell success stories backwards. We start at the destination and trace a line back to the beginning, making the turning point sound inevitable.  But almost none of the people Raja spoke to knew they were in a pivotal moment when they were living it. The leap wasn't a moment of clarity but a moment of honesty.   Guests revisited: Natalya Urmanova - After 15 years thriving in luxury fashion, Natalya didn't leave for photography. She left for nothing. Photography came after, finding herself in the space the leaving created. She talks about what it means to be "leaving to nowhere" and why that might be the most honest description of a real leap.   Zain Massoud - 15 successful years directing art fairs and curating collections across cities. What stopped her wasn't failure but the uncomfortable gap between what she was good at and who she actually was. A landscape design course taken alone during COVID, in an empty flat changed everything.   Bader Najeeb - Founder of Burnt Orange Café, Bader turned down a full culinary scholarship to finish his accounting degree. Then he spent 6 months in that accounting job to prove to himself that it wasn't for him. He calls it closing the what-if permanently.   Salma Mousfi - Known for years as the voice behind the celebrated Monodose album, Salma eventually stepped back, lived her life, and returned to music entirely on her own terms. Salma Nova, written partly from the anguish of being unable to return to Lebanon during the 2006 war, is not a sequel. It's a completely different statement from a different artist.   Sunny Rahbar - Founder of the Third Line Gallery in Dubai, Sunny nearly closed the gallery during COVID after 15 years. A friend's question, what would you do instead? produced an honest answer: nothing. Because the gallery wasn't what she did. It was what she was. She refocused, returned to the original spirit of what she built, and calls where she landed Sunny 3.0.   In every story, the leap was not a bet on something external. It was a decision to trust something internal: an instinct, a sense of self, a recognition that the person they were becoming had drifted too far from who they actually were. Chapters 00:00 Intro  02:30 Nataalya Urmanova: Leaving to Nowhere 04:10 Zain Masud: Excellence is The Trap 06:35 Bader Najeeb: Testing it Out 08:15 Salma Musfi: Away from Success 10:57 Sunny Rahbar: Leap Back to The Start 13:15 Closing words Send us Fan Mail Support the show Download. Share. Subscribe.

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  6. Who Are You?

    ١٤ أبريل

    Who Are You?

    What if the identity question isn't something to resolve before you start creating, but the creative material itself? In this first episode of the Forward Moves recap series, Raja revisits 38 episodes across 3 seasons and surfaces the thread that runs through nearly every conversation: identity. The guests who've done the most original, durable work aren't the ones who figured themselves out early. They're the ones who learned to live inside the uncertainty and made it productive. Voices from the archive: Bady Dalloul (French-Syrian multimedia artist) says answering the identity question will take a lifetime and means it without frustration. That open-endedness is what keeps driving him back to the studio, and into the fictional nations, invented archives, and miniature worlds that define his practice. Nada Debs (designer) spent years treating her Japanese upbringing and Arab heritage as 2 separate things she had to keep apart. The breakthrough was realising she didn't have to. East and East, she calls it. Amad Mian (founder, Dastaangoi) started from a place of shame about his Pakistani identity and built an entire fragrance and storytelling house in order to change that. He didn't wait to feel proud. He created in order to get there. Nadine Kanso (founder, Bil Arabi) was galvanised by September 11th, watching people around her become afraid of their own Arabic names. Her response was to make the Arabic language the most visible, celebrated thing she could. The brand name itself is the statement. Ricardo Karam (media personality, founder of the Takreem Foundation) has spent 3 decades arguing, through thousands of hours of conversation, that the Arab world is richer and more extraordinary than the prevailing narrative allows. What we need, he says, isn't a new identity but a return to what we already have. Nez Gebreel (co-founder, Dubai Design Week) stopped seeing her layered British, Arab, Italian, Greek and Turkish influences as a conflict to manage and started treating them as a creative advantage. Why can't I be all of them? she asks, and means it as a creative position, not just a personal one. Meshary Al Nassar (Kuwaiti interior designer) offers the most freeing take of all: no one knows what they're doing. We're all figuring it out. We're all humans for the first time. 00:00:00:00 – Cold Open 00:03:29:08 – Intro 00:05:56:18 – Bady Dalloul 00:07:59:23 – Nada Debs 00:09:52:04 – Amad Mian 00:11:29:02 – Nadine Kanso 00:13:30:15 – Ricardo Karam 00:14:42:13 – Nez Gebreel 00:16:02:05 – Meshary AlNassar 00:17:11:24 - Outro Send us Fan Mail Support the show Download. Share. Subscribe.

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  7. ١٣ مارس

    Bady Dalloul is Drawing History, Stamp Size

    History has always been a point of view. Bady Dalloul has built his entire practice around proving it.  In this episode of Forward Moves, host Raja Haddad sits down in Paris with Bady Dalloul—French-Syrian multimedia artist whose work spans drawing, collage, objects, and installation—to trace a practice built on imaginary nations, miniature archives, and the deliberate blurring of fact and fiction. From inventing fictional countries with his brother during summers vacationing in Damascus when they were young, to a lesson in Byzantine art history that cracked open everything he thought he knew about who gets to tell the story, Bady's work is less about documenting history and more about exposing how it's made.  He didn't plan any of it. He was just a kid cutting pictures out of his grandparents' books to fill the scrapbook pages of an imaginary nation called Badland. What followed—fine arts training in Paris, exhibitions from Tokyo to Doha, and a major traveling work, Land of Dreams—reads less like a career and more like a lifelong question that keeps getting deeper.  This episode outlines what it means to make work that protects the people whose stories it carries—and why, for Bady, working small is never a limitation. It's an invitation.  You will listen to different narratives:  The genesis: Inventing Badland and Jadland with his brother during Damascus summers—and why that childhood game never really ended History as point of view: The Byzantine art history lesson that revealed official knowledge as constructed—and gave Bady license to intervene Growing under magnificent trees: Finding his own entry point as the son of two established artists Fiction as protection: How blurring fact and fiction can be an act of care—making difficult testimonies listenable without stripping them of their truth The matchbox as archive: Working at human scale, and why forcing viewers to lean in sets the pace of how a story lands Land of Dreams: Drawing parallels between his own migration to Japan and his parents' journey from Syria to Paris Bady's story is a reminder that the most powerful archives aren't always the official ones. Sometimes they're drawn in miniature, on a matchbox, by someone who had to invent a country just to have somewhere to put everything they felt. Tune in, subscribe to the show, and join us as we chart the creative journeys shaping the Middle East. And if you feel like it, share your thoughts by sending us a message. Until then—keep moving forward.  Episode Timeline:  00:01:25 - Welcome & Introducing Bady Dalloul 00:03:33 - Growing Up Between Paris and Damascus  00:08:06 - Badland and Jadland: The Genesis 00:12:46 - Art History as Point of View 00:15:34 - Finding Your Own Shade 00:17:22 - Archive, Intimacy, and the Daily Drawing Practice  00:19:31 - Blurring Fact and Fiction 00:24:37 - The Matchbox Series 00:30:15 - Living and Working in the Same Space 00:32:19 - Japan, Migration, and Land of Dreams 00:41:41 - Can Art Change History? 00:43:11 - Rapid Fire Questions  Connect with Bady Dalloul  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badydalloul/  Website: https://thethirdline.com/artists/79-bady-dalloul/  Connect with Raja Haddad | Forward_Moves YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forward_moves/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/forward_moovz Raja’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/octoraj/ Send us Fan Mail Support the show Download. Share. Subscribe.

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  8. ٦ مارس

    Salma Mousfi: The Voice That Keeps Moving

    Some artists define an era. Salma Mousfi lived through several—and made music in every one of them, redefining each of them.. In this episode of Forward Moves, host Raja Haddad sits down in Paris with Salma Mousfi—the Lebanese singer whose voice became inseparable from Ziad Rahbani’s legacy through the cult classic album Monodose— to trace a life that refuses to hold still. From rehearsing in bomb shelters as a twelve-year-old in wartime Beirut, to belting Madonna covers that caught the ear of Lebanon’s greatest musical genius, to recording a Bossa Nova album inspired by her war-canceled move back to Beirut in 2006, Salma’s story is one of constant reinvention driven not by ambition, but by sheer necessity to live. Salma didn’t plan to become a central figure of Middle Eastern avant- garde music. She was just a teenager who had to sing to exist. What followed—a decade-long collaboration with Ziad Rahbani, years of stepping away from the spotlight to raise children and run a shop in Grasse, a pivot to jewelry design in Paris, and now a return to the stage with a tribute to the mentor she lost—reads less like a career and more like a life fully inhabited. This conversation explores what it means to carry a legacy without being crushed by it. It’s about the politics of being a Lebanese woman expat who reinvents herself not by choice but by circumstance. About recording an album over one summer with two babies and no expectation it would matter—26 years before it still does. And about why Salma believes every musician who ever played with Ziad owes it to him to perform his music live. This episode explores: • The Beirut that made her: Growing up during the civil war, rehearsing in shelters, and why music wasn’t an escape—it was proof of existence • The discovery: How an 18-year-old singing Madonna covers at a BUC concert caught Ziad Rahbani’s attention and changed everything • Monodose, unplanned: How Lebanon’s most beloved jazz album was made with no expectations, two babies in tow, and a summer’s worth of recording sessions • The Salma sound: Emotional but never melodramatic—how she learned to live the meaning of a song without letting it tip into performance • Salma as collaborator, not muse: The moments she pushed back, and why Ziad listened • Salma Nova: Writing a Bossa Nova album while displaced by the 2006 war—an expat’s love letter to a home she couldn’t return to • Keeping Ziad alive: Why she believes his legacy must be performed, not just streamed—and the 22-year-old musician from France who might carry it forward • Two homes: What it means to land in Paris and feel home, then land in Beirut and feel home too Salma’s story is a reminder that the most enduring voices aren’t the ones that shout the loudest—they’re the ones that keep showing up, in shelters, in studios, in borrowed apartments, on stage. She is proof that a creative life doesn’t need a plan. It just needs the refusal to stop. Tune in, subscribe, and join us as we chart the creative journeys shaping the Middle East. Until then—keep moving forward. Episode Timeline: 00:01:14 - Welcome & Introducing Salma Mousfi 00:03:05 - The Night Ziad Heard Her Sing 00:06:10 - Singing to Survive: Music in Wartime Beirut 00:08:37 - Musical Influences: Stevie Nicks to Astrud Gilberto 00:09:13 - How Ziad Structured Her Voice 00:12:44 - Recording Monodose: A Collaboration, Not a Commission 00:19:44 - The Birth of Salma Nova 00:24:11 - Women Expats and Constant Reinvention 00:26:43 - The Weight of Paying Homage to Ziad 00:32:53 - Life Beyond Music: Shop, TV, Jewelry 00:41:43 - What’s Next: Concerts and a Third CD 00:46:08 - Rapid Fire Questions Connect with Salma Mousfi Instagram: https://www Send us Fan Mail Support the show Download. Share. Subscribe.

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مشاهدة الكل (٤٤)

حول

Forward_Moves is a podcast hosted by Raja Haddad, that shares lived experiences and stories of successful personalities in the Middle East from the creative world of art, design, entertainment, hospitality, business, and other disciplines.

المعلومات

  • صناع العمل
    Raja Haddad
  • سنوات النشاط
    ٢٠٢٤ - ٢٠٢٦
  • الحلقات
    ٤٤
  • التقييم
    ملائم
  • حقوق النشر
    © 2026 Forward_Moves
  • موقع البرنامج على الويب
    Forward_Moves

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