Throughout Arab northwest Africa, the light, steam-fluffed semolina grains known as couscous are topped with an almost infinite variety of vegetables, meats, sauces and even sweets. Served both ceremonially and simply, it is a food that defines a region.

In Tajikistan, as in much of the world, tea symbolizes hospitality and friendship. What finer gift, then, for the Tajik capital of Dushanbe to give to its sister city of Boulder, Colorado than a teahouse—carved, plastered, painted and sculpted into a masterpiece of traditional Central Asian art?

As European museums, theaters and arts festivals try to find ways to pique interest among "new Europeans"—mainly African and Asian Muslims—the multicultural policies of the Netherlands' second-largest city may be leading the way.

Imperial porphyry—glowing purple flecked with white— is found in only one place: atop a few barren peaks in Egypt's Eastern Desert. At the apogee of Roman power, the beautiful stone became a jealously guarded symbol of rulership itself. It was quarried in Egypt under appallingly difficult conditions and carted to the Nile along the Via Porphyrites, the Porphyry Road. Today, the area is a fascinating—and still very harsh—early industrial landscape.