Torn between science, politics and art, cartography has long been an object of dispute. While a map is based on data that has to be handled scientifically, it also draws on forms, colors and movements, i.e. “artistic devices”. The same material has to be handled scientifically but also aesthetically and artistically, all at the same time. When brought together, these elements produce a vision of the world as it is seen by the cartographer. The result is an image which represents a specific location, i.e. the way the cartographer sees, understands and interprets the world. In this respect, a map is fundamentally a political object; there is no such thing as an innocent map. Precisely because of the complexity of establishing what a map is and stands for, disputes about mapping are bound to remain unsolved. Still, they offer important clues as to how maps may be employed in disciplines where representations of the world and of people’s experiences are inflected by subjectivity and power, domination and resistance. In the context of the social sciences, this is precisely what makes the use of maps and mapping processes – here understood as “experimental” or “radical” cartography – simultaneously complex and controversial but also insightful, generative and potentially liberating: perspectives and (dis)connections that would remain invisible using other methodological approaches are rendered legible by maps, and especially so when combined with ethnographic material based on long-term fieldwork. Taking its cues from these insights, this paper reflects on collaborative work with maps and with ethnography in three Middle Eastern metropolises: Cairo, Beirut and Istanbul. It argues that neither orthodox cartographic approaches nor ethnography alone could do justice to the particular entanglements of space, multiple temporalities and politics under consideration in these sites. Instead, the paper demonstrates how the nuances of these contexts could be teased out and made legible from a radical cartography point of view. Besides reflecting on the challenges and limitations of this methodological innovation, the paper will provide an analysis of how the “operationability” of particular scales in each context might be tackled. How do we represent – in text and/or in maps – a multilayered phenomenon, including both static patterns and dynamic time-bound movements, spatially as well as temporally?