About our guest:
We chatted with Zahra Hankir, a Lebanese-British journalist, about her first book Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporters From the Arab World. Here, we are reposting the same interview with updated transcript to honor the Press Freedom Day on May 3rd.
Hankir writes about the intersection of politics, culture, and society in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in Vice, BBC News, Al Jazeera English, among others. This is our second interview with her.
About the book:
Amazon.com – Nineteen Arab women journalists speak out about what it’s like to report on their changing homelands in this first-of-its-kind essay collection, with a foreword by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour.
A growing number of intrepid Arab and Middle Eastern sahafiyat—female journalists—are working tirelessly to shape nuanced narratives about their changing homelands, often risking their lives on the front lines of war.
From sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo to the difficulty of traveling without a male relative in Yemen, their challenges are unique—as are their advantages, such as being able to speak candidly with other women at a Syrian medical clinic or with men on WhatsApp who will go on to become ISIS fighters, rebels, or pro-regime soldiers.
Below, please read the selected parts of our conversation
Why is it tough to be a female reporter in the Arab nations?
There are many different challenges at many different levels. Often the most immediate challenges start at home. I do not want to generalize here. But generally, many women are in conservative households in which their families or their partners might not necessarily want them to engage in a journalism career, particularly in countries where there are socioeconomic upheaval that would put the life of the woman reporter, and her family at great risk.
So if you are a reporter on the ground, you will be reporting on very difficult subjects, and engaging with men that may not welcome you in those spaces. There may be some restrictions on your travel. Or, you may face sexual harassment and other issues when reporting on the ground in public spaces. And then also in the workplace, you may not be taken seriously. You may not be granted the same opportunities as men do.
And then there are other broader issues that have to do with the actual political developments in whichever country we’re looking at, particularly those in which there is warfare.
So you are dealing with non-state and state actors whom they would much rather that you don’t report the truth, that you don’t out there on the ground, doing the work that you do, and would want to repress and suppress the journalism that you’re doing.
So you [as a female reporter] may be at risk for being detained, and oftentimes also death, or being shot at, or being assaulted. So there’s so many threatening challenges.
And these challenges are not particularly women challenges.
Who is a good reporter in your opinion?
I think it’s someone who really tries to tell stories, of what they see, by not only speaking with politicians and non-state actors, but with the people who are really calling the shots when it comes to socioeconomic and political developments. Also, a good reporter is the one speaking with the people who are suffering from the decisions made by those actors.
So for me, I find stories that really speak to the suffering of people. Hearing from those people themselves creates the most compelling stories.
Do women give up journalism just because it becomes too dangerous to report?
Yes, definitely. There are several cases in the book where the women could no longer be journalists.
And I would say this was largely the case of mothers whose families were put at risk because of their journalism work. Their stories agitated particular governments or non-state actors, and therefore they felt that their lives, or the lives of their children, were at risk.
So Heba Shibani, a Libyan journalist, specifically discusses how she left Libya for this very reason. She now lives in exile in Malta. And this theme comes up again and again for the mothers who felt that it was too risky for them to continue doing their journalism work and to have that constant risk and concern, which is a very legitimate one.
Was it personal for you to write this book?
Extremely.
It’s, I appreciate you asking me that question. I mean, the story of the Middle East is the story of myself, of my family. It’s the story of my identity. It’s the story of who I am today.
I, I live and I breathe and I think and I feel the Middle East all the time, even though I live in New York City.
So for me, being able to engage with the women in this way; women who I really respect and whose work I had been watching and listening to and reading for many years; in many ways I understand some of the traumatic experiences that they had.
Do you have any criticism over how Western media covers Arab world?
I mean, I really want to emphasize here that I think that a lot of great work is done and that a lot of these foreign correspondents are themselves also risking their lives to tell these great stories.
And they are also telling fascinating stories too. So I don’t want to diminish from that. But I think that generally there is a lack of nuance sometimes in some of that coverage, particularly on the more contentious conflicts such as Palestine and Israel, for example, that telling either deliberately skewed a narrative or a narrative that is wholly incomplete and does not tell the stories of victims sufficiently.
So for me, when I’m approaching the work of a foreign correspondent, I often do so with a little bit of hesitation. I think it’s important to read and watch their work, but also more important to seek out the voices of locals.
So Zahra, let’s say that your editor sends you to a country in the Middle East to cover a particular story related to women. You do have 19 women in your book. So which one would you pick to couple with you to produce a meaningful story?
Wow, that is an excellent question. And it’s so difficult.
But honestly, the person who comes to mind is Aida Alami, because she’s a formidable journalist, but Aida in particular is attracted to the same sorts of stories that I am when it comes to the stories of victims and telling, or searching for the most human angle and going directly for that human angle and showing empathy and compassion in her writing, but not showing bias.
A matter of very, very difficult balance to strike. And yeah, Aida comes to mind immediately.
Is there any particular story or storyline or person that you think stands out in your book?
To be very clear, you know, I had very different reactions to each piece, and I thought they were all fantastic.
So I’m obviously not speaking of my favorite author here, but certainly, Lina Atallah’s piece, On a Belated Encounter with Gender.
Tell me about the piece, if you can remember it.
Yes, of course. She wrote the piece on her father’s deathbed as he was dying. And she had a very complicated relationship with her father that is almost like an extension of her relationship with the state, because essentially it’s a relationship with patriarchy.
He was a very patriarchal man. She writes about this in the opening of her book in the most beautiful way possible. She recalls memories of her as a child, you know, believing that he’s going to show her the utmost protection and then realizing as she grew older that he was restricting her from pursuing certain dreams and a way of life, and then how that impacted her career, her relationship with her gender and the things that she focused on in her career.
And then ultimately, when her dad dies, Lina finds some peace in her understanding of her relationship with her father. And to me, that’s very, very relatable. I have a similar relationship with my father in which he was very strict with me when I was growing up, and it was a problematic relationship, which of course changed with age as I matured. But then that sort of mirroring the relationship with the state or perhaps in my situation, more religion and Islam.
Thank you.
Raw footage of YouTube interview with Zahra Hankir with Sara Jamshidi
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Goltune Editorial Team