By Layal Haddad, Al-Akhbar - Tuesday November 24th, 2009

In the beginning it was Palestine, then came the marginalized and the poor, and after that was born the female (woman) to complete the triangle of struggle of Zeina Zaatari. A triangle that made her the most famous feminist activist in Lebanon and the Arab World. She did not live a childhood stained by patriarchal chauvinism, nor did she suffer gender discrimination in her family. To the contrary. This Sidonian¹ woman was born and raised in a progressive family, whose members had been for years involved in leftist and nationalist political parties. Her mother was even arrested once as she was caught distributing political pamphlets to stores at night in the streets of Saida. This mother taught Zeina to break all social chains.

Despite that, Zeina continued to find herself a stranger in her own society, at school. She did not understand why her girlfriends would secretly meet with boys, and thus have to lie to their parents, or have to fabricate stories when they want to go with their friends to a picnic. She used to see in all of these practices, a way of curtailing women's rights and value.

This value that Zeina realized all too well at nine years old, in 1982, where in that year, Zeina, the child, witnessed the crucial role of women in managing their own households, managing their families, and providing water sources from the sea of Saida, while men were at the time either in the battlefield or being investigated by the Israeli occupying forces. Zeina remembers this period: having to run from military checkpoints to get to her school, having her classes moved from one building to another to escape Israeli bombardment Despite her young age, political priorities became very clear in little Zeina's head: resisting the occupation is a right and a duty.

Except these priorities did not manifest themselves finally until 1987, with the first intifada in Palestine. During these days, Zeina would sneak out without her parents' knowledge to participate in demonstrations in support of the intifada, only to be surprised and find her mother and father at the demonstration!

Saida days were soon over and in 1990 with the transition to the "civil peace" in the country, Zeina moved to the American University in Beirut to study sociology and architecture. Why not and she was the girl who was excellent in Math? However, she quickly realized that she was not interested in designing places, but more interested in how people saw those places. As such she left Architecture and began studying sociology and anthropology.

Here too, Zeina found herself a stranger in her environment: AUB had transformed from the University of the middle classes to an elitist school, dominated by sectarian and class discrimination among the students. The Sidonian girl was surprised by the prefigured stereotypes that many students had of people of the south and by the sectarian engagement among students. "I had very few friends in the program I was studying; very few I could communicate with including Professor Nabil Bayhum". The story of this brave academic stayed engraved in Zeina's head. He led fierce battles against the Rebuilding Project of downtown Beirut with the Solidere Company, which cost him a lot; he left the university under pressure and moved to France.

Zeina finished her studies at the University and the project of traveling continued to strongly appeal to her. The destination, was the United States, specifically, Iowa State University, to prepare a Master's program in Anthropology. "I went to meet my new colonizer," she says, with a wide smile on her face. There from the first week, she met two Palestinian students and became an activists at the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS). In the US, Zeina broke an invisible barrier that used to block her actions in Lebanon; this transition can be summarized in colloquial: "I got outside myself". Her political and social activities began to increase. 1996, the year of the Israeli operation Grapes of Wrath on South Lebanon, she organized along with friends demonstrations and other activities protesting Zionism and the war on Lebanon. Parallel to this national struggle, was her struggle on another front, the Women's front. She wanted to fight the large amount of negative stereotypes and preconceived perceptions that Americans had of Arab and Muslim women, especially that western feminist studies were largely full of these narratives.

Since then, the young researcher will be active on two parallel fronts: the progressive-nationalist, and the feminist. "The feminist issue is as much of an existential cause as all other national causes for justice." Based on this belief, Zaatari participated in many associations and helped to create a number of them, such as the Free Palestine Alliance, Students for Justice in Palestine, RAWAN: Radical Arab Women Activist Network, in addition to the National Council of Arab Americans.

As such, Zaatari's name began appearing more and more on the feminist movements' front. Why not, when she was the only woman who dared criticize the feminist movements in Lebanon and the Arab world. Women have a right to determine their own future; they have a right to their bodies, to choose marriage, or simply to choose not to get married Zeina discusses the ideas that she sees are crucial in the path for women's liberation, which are ideas that are not readily available for many of those who defend women's rights. "The problem is that many women's organizations do not ask for more than what is already available or simple." She remembers some of the interactions that she had which proved to her that feminist work in Lebanon is still in its early beginnings: "some organizations are still afraid to discuss women's sexual freedom." Parallel to that, Zeina Zaatari discusses an issue that is rarely discussed when one is talking about women's liberation, which is political sectarianism "which entrenches the patriarchal structure in the societal and governmental institutions particularly in terms of the personal status codes, after patriarchy was already solidified in the religious and familial institutions. As such, there is a need to put forth a feminist critique of political sectarianism in Lebanon, not only from a secular perspective or modernity of the state, but also from the perspective of women's relationships as citizens to society."

Nonetheless, her struggle has not fully come to fruition except through her work as a manager of the Middle East and North Africa program of the Global Fund for Women in 2004. This work that allowed her to know more deeply women's organizations in the region, especially that the fund provides financial support to women's groups. It also plays a role in introducing women's groups to each other. We think that the road is still long, but Zeina has moved those first steps forward, and this on its own is reason to celebrate.

Five Dates:

1973

Born in Saida

1995

Joined Iowa State University in the US

2003

Received PHD in Anthropology from the University of California at Davis

2004

Began working at the Global Fund for Women

2009

Participated in the conference Arab Feminisms: A Critical Perspective, held at AUB

Original in Arabic

¹in reference to Saida or Sidon in English, my hometown in South Lebanon