COFFEE PAINTINGS   Nisreen El-Hashemite		ISSUE NO. 1
	NISREEN EL-HASHEMITE uses coffee and water as organic media in her artwork. Behind each painting towers a poem or a story, hiding a web of fragile emotions and complex meanings. Her subjects treat love and hope, drawn from a deep well of Arabic literary scholarship and a long lineage of royal roots—much longer than the Tigris and Euphrates of her ancient Iraq. When she doesn’t paint, El-Hashemite, as a medical doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, conducts research on sex differences in tuberous sclerosis. She holds a degree in biomedical sciences and a Ph.D. in human genetics.