ist Auslands-Reporterin des SPIEGEL. Nach ihrer journalistischen Ausbildung in München arbeitete sie als Autorin des "Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazins". 1991 wechselte sie zum SPIEGEL und berichtet seitdem aus Kriegs- und Krisenregionen wie dem Balkan, Zentralasien und dem Mittleren Osten, darunter Afghanistan, Pakistan und Iran.
A man with a lute plays Beethoven's "Ode to Freedom," before moving on to play a piece from an Iraqi composer. Men are sitting next to women as they listen to the music. What's so special about that?
The man tensely holding the lute is Khalil AlMuwail. He barely slept the night before. His day job is as an information technology specialist at a large hospital in the capital city Riyadh, but his true passion is playing the oud, the Arab lute. The deeply religious claim that people who play the oud also have other vices, and if the religious police catch someone playing the instrument, they destroy it. That's how it has been here for decades.