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Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki returns to Toronto International Film Festival as a jury member.
Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki has been announced as a jury member for the 48th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), scheduled from September 7th to the 17th. Labaki, a distinguished writer, director and actor, will join the TIFF Platform jury alongside Academy Award-winning American filmmaker Barry Jenkins and Canadian Platform Prize-winning filmmaker Anthony Shim.
Labaki’s international acclaim began with her 2007 debut film ‘Caramel,’ which premiered at Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight and was Lebanon’s official entry for the 80th Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film category.
The filmmaker continued to make waves with ‘Where Do We Go Now?’ in 2011, earning the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Later in 2018, her drama film ‘Capernaum’ secured the Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
TIFF’s Platform programme is known for its selection of distinct and bold directorial visions since its inception in 2015, and for the upcoming edition, ten feature films will be competing for a CAD 20,000 prize.
Longtime scholar Linda Jacobs calls it “the best-kept secret in New York history.” She is talking about New York City’s forgotten Syrian enclave of immigrants (often referred to as Little Syria) that once thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, forming the first Arab-speaking community in the US.
As part of an initiative supported by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Jacobs led in-person walking tours on Washington Street, the main hub of Little Syria, this summer. For Jacobs, it is a story that hits close to home.
Just-landed Middle Eastern immigrants at Ellis Island, ca. 1905. (Supplied)
All four of her grandparents emmigrated from modern-day Lebanon in the late 1800s, moving to Washington Street. “I was just interested in doing my family genealogy, and more importantly, for me, understanding if the myths or stories we were told as children in our family matched the reality … Some made it, some didn’t,” she told Arab News.
Aside from the presence of Arabs, Washington Street was home to other nationalities, including German and Irish families. It was an economic and cultural center, full of stores, cafes, and factories. It was not a bed of roses, though, according to Jacobs.
Built on landfill, Washington Street suffered from poor living conditions and a lack of clean air. Because the area was located near the tidal Hudson River, water would come up through the basements of tenement buildings.
60-62 Washington Street, where dozens of Syrian-owned businesses were located, 1903. (Supplied)
To make matters worse, the rate of infant mortality, due to tuberculosis, was high. “It makes you cry, it’s really sad,” said Jacobs. “You can imagine that people did not want to remember this time of their lives, and I think that’s why my grandmother never talked about it. She never mentioned the word(s) ‘Washington Street’.”
A majority of the people referred to as Syrians who came to New York City most likely hailed from Lebanon, seeking better economic opportunities. Those who initially arrived were farmers and laborers, later followed by wealthier classes. The lucrative trade of peddling was a common profession amongst Syrians, who saved up money to open their own businesses and relocate to safer boroughs, such as Brooklyn.
By the 1940s, the Syrian community was non-existent on the street. The physical neighborhood was destroyed, making way for building the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel. Today, Washington Street is a neglected area, where only three buildings, including the facade of St. George’s Melkite Church of the Syrian Community, have survived, but most lack landmark status granted by the city.
Conducting such walking tours around the area is important for Jacobs. “All were surprised because no one had any idea that this community existed,” she remarked. “It’s a mixed blessing, because in a way, it’s a real lesson to others to try and save their communities from total destruction. And on the other side, it’s very sad to have it all be gone.”
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
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New York City’s forgotten Syrian enclave of immigrants (often referred to as Little Syria) thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Supplied)
Kassem Istanbouli, Lebanese actor-director, and Hajer Ben Boubaker, French researcher and sound director, were awarded the 19th UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture at an award ceremony at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 26th June 2023.
The event, organised by the Sharjah Department of Culture in collaboration with UNESCO, celebrated the achievements of two winners.
The ceremony was attended by Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Owais, Chairman of the Sharjah Department of Culture; Ernesto Ottone Ramirez, Assistant Director-General for Culture at UNESCO; Mohammed Ibrahim Al Qasir, Director of the Department of Cultural Affairs in Sharjah; Ahmed Al Mulla, Deputy Ambassador of the UAE to France, and Aisha Al Kamali, Representative of the Cultural Attaché at the Embassy of the UAE in France, along with dignitaries, writers, intellectuals and accredited diplomats to the United Nations (UN).
Al Owais and Ramirez presented the 19th edition of the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture to Istanbouli, winner of the Arab Personality Award, and Ben Boubaker, winner of the Non-Arab Personality Award.
The UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture recognizes recipients’ outstanding artistic achievements celebrating Arab art and culture globally. Core to UNESCO’s anti-racism and anti-discrimination agenda, the Prize promotes peace and dialogue to foster intercultural understanding and celebrate diversity.
For this 19th edition of the Prize, the international jury recognized Mr Istanbouli and Ms Ben Boubaker’s extraordinary contributions to promoting the arts and Arab culture and supporting their local communities.
Kassem Istanbouli is a Lebanese actor and director. Since 2014, he has led the rehabilitation of historical cinemas in Lebanon, including Stars Cinema in Nabatieh, and Al-Hamra and Rivoli in Tyre, abandoned or destroyed during civil war.
Mr Istanbouli is involved with several international projects focused on skills enhancement, youth empowerment and collaborative partnerships. In 2020 he co-founded the Arab Culture and Arts Network (ACAN) to design and implement online cultural activities across the Arab region. The Network includes over 700 organizational and individual members from across the world.
Mr Istanbouli is also director and founder of the Lebanese National Theater in Tyre and the Lebanese National Theater in Tripoli and has been a project manager at the Tiro Association for Arts in Lebanon since 2014.
Hajer Ben Boubaker is a French-Tunisian independent researcher and sound director. Her research focuses on a socio-historical analysis of Arab music and the cultural history of the Maghreb community in France and around the world.
In 2018, she created and self-produced the Vintage Arab podcast, which explores Arabic musical heritage. At the intersection of research and art, the podcast allows her to keep a foot in each sphere.
Ms Ben Boubaker is a producer and documentary director for France Culture, where her work questions the sound and political memory of immigration. As a researcher, she is associated with the Arab and Oriental music collection at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and continues to write for scientific journals, including “Paris, capitale maghrébine: une histoire Populaire” in October 2023.
Created in 1998 and run by UNESCO at the initiative of the United Arab Emirates, the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize awards two laureates per year — individuals, groups or institutions — in recognition of their contribution to Arab art and culture, or for participating in the dissemination of the latter outside the Arab world.
The initiative contributes towards the Organization’s objective of fostering inclusive, resilient and peaceful societies. The Prize carries a monetary value of USD 60,000, which is equally divided between the two laureates.
Americans born in or with ancestral ties to Arab-speaking countries have made countless significant scientific, medical and engineering contributions.
While Americans born in or with ancestral ties to Arab countries have made countless significant scientific, medical and engineering contributions, most have never made it into record books. From cryptography, to the artificial heart, to the iPod, here are a few examples of some of the major advancements by Arab Americans.
1. Television Transmission and LCD Screens
Born in Nabatieh, Lebanon in 1895, Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah studied and then taught mathematics at the American University of Beirut before immigrating to the United States in 1921. After a brief stint studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Al-Sabbah earned a master’s degree in engineering sciences from the University of Illinois, says Lujine Nasralla, communications specialist at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
“In 1923, General Electric (GE) hired him to work in its Engineering Laboratory under a contract that awarded him a dollar for each of his patents,” Nasralla explains, noting that between 1927 and 1935, he applied for patents for 52 of his inventions while working at GE. Some of the patents Al-Sabbah was awarded during his time at GE include three for innovations in television transmission technology (granted between 1928 and 1930), and two for cathode ray tubes (1935).
Though Al-Sabbah died in a car accident 1935, GE engineers continued to rely on the technology he invented, including developing the liquid crystal display (LCD) based on one of his patents. Al-Sabbah made numerous other significant contributions to science, technology and engineering, especially in the field of solar energy.
2. Emotion Recognition Technology
RANA EL KALIOUBY, CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF AFFECTIVA, SPEAKING DURING THE NEW WORK SUMMIT, CALIFORNIA, 2019. / DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
While Rana El Kaliouby was completing her doctoral research at the University of Cambridge in England in the early 2000s, she never felt as though she could ever truly connect with her loved ones back home. “Away from her family and friends in Egypt, El Kaliouby wished her computer could better convey her emotional state,” Nasralla says. That’s when she decided to find a way to make more emotionally intelligent technology.
After earning her doctorate, El Kaliouby took a position as a research scientist in the Affective Computing group in the MIT Media Lab. There, she was part of a team that developed an “emotional hearing aid,” as well as a pair of eyeglasses that could read emotions, along with social cues. Officially known as “the Emotional-Social Intelligence Prosthesis,” El Kaliouby and a colleague created the wearable technology in 2006 for people living with autism who have difficulty identifying and processing other people’s emotions as they communicate.
In 2009, El Kaliouby and the same MIT colleague co-founded a company called Affectiva, which used deep learning, computer vision, speech science and vast amounts of real-world data to develop emotion recognition technology. “Her pioneering technology accurately reads minute changes in facial expressions that convey emotions,” Nasralla says, adding that El Kaliouby is a member of the Women in Engineering Hall of Fame.
3. The iPod and iPhone
TONY FADELL, WHO OVERSAW THE DESIGN OF THE IPOD AND IPHONE, PHOTOGRAPHED IN SINGAPORE, 2019 / WEI LENG TAY/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when listening to music outside of your home meant bringing the physical album with you on a record, audio cassette or compact disc. And while portable MP3 players existed before 2001, none were popular enough to make the device the standard way of listening to music on the go. That is, until Apple CEO Steve Jobs hired Arab American inventor Anthony “Tony” Fadell and put him in charge of a new special projects group within the company tasked with doing exactly that.
The result was the iPod, which launched in 2001. Fadell, who is now known as “ the father of iPod,” went on to oversee the first 18 iterations of the device before Jobs gave him his next assignment: to create a mobile phone with many of the same features as the iPod.
This time, the end product was the iPhone, which essentially allowed people to carry a highly compact computer with internet capability around at all times, and, in the process, changing the way people access information. Fadell was involved with developing the first three generations of the iPhone.
4. Developments in Surgery
HEART SPECIALIST DR. MICHAEL DEBAKEY, C. 1994. / F. CARTER SMITH/SYGMA/GETTY IMAGES
Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1908 to Lebanese immigrants, Michael DeBakey (the Anglicized form of Debaghi) grew up spending time in his father’s pharmacy and enjoyed sewing, gardening and learning how motors and other machinery work. He earned his medical degree in 1932 and served in the Surgical Consultants Division of the Army Surgeon General’s Office from 1942 to 1946.
It was during this time that DeBakey and his colleagues developed special units dedicated to providing surgical care to soldiers wounded near the front lines. They were first deployed in 1943, though are best known for their work during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, when they were known as the Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospital (MASH) units.
DeBakey’s surgical contributions continued for the next several decades and included performing the first successful removal of a blockage of the carotid artery (1953), developing the concept behind coronary bypass surgery (1963), pioneering the field of telemedicine with the first demonstration of open-heart surgery transmitted overseas via satellite (1965), and being the first to use a partial artificial heart (1966).
5. Internet Security
While internet security is top-of-mind now, that wasn’t the case when Egyptian-born cryptographer Taher Elgamal began his pioneering work in the field in the 1980s. “Elgamal published a paper in 1984, ‘A Public Key Cryptosystem and a Signature Scheme based on Discrete Logarithms,’ which became the basis of the Elgamal Digital Signature algorithm,” says Richard Gardner, a software developer and CEO of Modulus. This work was then utilized in the development of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA).”
Elgamal’s work became even more influential after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) adopted it as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS). “Like the name implies, it became the standard for electronic signatures,” Gardner explains.
And according to Abdulrahman Henedy, an Arab American entrepreneur and founder of Financeive , Elgamal’s invention of the discrete logarithm was also an important milestone in cryptography. “His work inspired other encryption variations and paved the way to create more advanced algorithms, like Advanced Encryption Standard,” he explains.
In addition, Elgamal was the driving force behind the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a protocol that keeps online communications like email and instant messaging secure. Because of this major technological development, he is known as the “father of SSL.”
6. The Waffle Cone
Though it may not be the most high-tech invention on the list, the waffle cone stands out not only because it’s delicious, but because not one, but four different Arab Americans claimed to have invented it. And what’s perhaps even more bizarre, is that in an origin story with so many inconsistencies, all four of the men contend that their ice cream innovation was born at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition—better known as the Saint Louis World’s Fair.
According to Nasralla, Ernest Hamwi, Nick Kabbaz, Abe Doumar and Leon B. Holwey each had their own story about how they came up with the waffle cone in 1904. “We give credit to all four of them, but we don’t recognize any of the stories as more plausible than the others,” she explains. “It remains a mystery to this day!”
But that mystery extends beyond which of the Arab American vendors (if any) deserves credit for the waffle cone. That’s because on top of these four narratives, there are several other origin stories , including some that took place prior to 1904. And though we may never know who first devised a handheld edible ice cream container, it’s safe to say that the 1904 World Fair and its Arab American dessert vendors did have a hand in popularizing what we now know as the waffle cone.
source/content: history.com (headline edited) / Elizabeth Yuko
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HEART SURGEON DR. MICHAEL DEBAKEY. CREDIT: BETTMANN ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
Since 1973, L’Oréal Paris supports each and every woman on her journey to success and self-worth. Through the “Women Of Worth” program, L’Oréal Paris honored 10 leading Lebanese women, who have overcome challenges and achieved greatness in their respective fields, in Lebanon and in the whole world. The awards were delivered during a gala dinner ceremony titled “Walk your Worth”, held on March 28, 2023 at the Middle East Airlines (MEA) Training Center in Beirut.
During the event, Mrs. Emilie Wahab Harb, Managing Director of L’Oréal Liban, said: “As a brand that has always taken on the cause of women’s worth, L’Oréal Paris is proud to recognize and celebrate the outstanding achievements of 10 exceptional Lebanese women who have overcome challenges and achieved greatness in their fields. Their accomplishments inspire future generations and contribute to the development of the Lebanese society, thanks to their passion, dedication, and commitment to excellence.” Moreover, she asserted that “L’Oréal Paris firmly believes that all women are worth it, whereas it’s evident to support their journeys and recognize their successes”, asking all women and those present at the ceremony, to “recognize the power of beauty as a catalyst of self-worth”. She further added: “We are entirely convinced that women’s causes should be celebrated and highlighted. That is the reason why we founded “Women Of Worth” which gathers us tonight, as we follow a journey we started 50 years ago, and which we will firmly continue because women are worth it.”
The honored Lebanese women were chosen by L’Oréal Paris not only for their accomplishments, but also for the values they embody, namely self-confidence, perseverance, resilience:
–Mrs. Nayla Tueni – CEO of An Nahar Newscorp and Editor in Chief of Annahar newspaper. Awarded under the Media category, Mrs. Tueni is a prominent Lebanese journalist.
–Dr. Hiba Al Kawas – President of the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music. Awarded under the arts category. Dr. Kawas is a Lebanese composer, opera singer, scholar, and pioneer of Arab Opera.
–Mrs. Ghida Anani – Founder & Director of ABAAD – Resource Centre for Gender Equality. Awarded under the Social Responsibility category, Ms. Anani led a number of public opinion campaigns, notably the #Undress522 which resulted in the abortion of the article 522 of the Lebanese penal code.
–Captain Rola Hoteit – Airline Pilot at MEA. Awarded under the bravery category, Mrs. Hoteit is an Airbus A320 and A330 Captain, and the first Lebanese female airline captain.
–Mrs. Mireille Hayek – Founder & Owner of Em Sherif: Awarded under the Culinary Category, Mrs. Hayek is well known among the Lebanese and Arab society for her passion for cooking, her dedication and leadership in her restaurant that revives the Lebanese tradition, and which has been a success in Lebanon and abroad such as in London and Monaco.
–Mrs. Yola Zard Noujaim – Architect, Founder of Jabalna Festival & Owner of Al Fundok Hotel. Awarded under the sustainability category, she restored the old school of Maasser el chouf in an understated rural style to become Al Fundok boutique Hotel. This eco hotel is a non-profit community project, which encourages local tourism, creates a sustainable income for the community and promotes environmental, cultural, and culinary estate preservations.
–Mrs. Fadia ElMendelek – Hair Consultant. Awarded under the beauty category, Mrs. ElMendelek is a hair stylist whose talent and creativity earned her many European awards. With an online service and her own line “K by Fadia El Mendelek” of premium all-natural hair care products and extensions, she became the stylist to many celebrities and Arab Royalties.
–Mrs. Danielle Hatem – Founder & CEO of D Does Business. Awarded under the Digital Business category, Mrs. Hatem is an influential blogger who highlights strategic economical facts and figures, with the aim to create awareness about latest business headlines, while influencing and motivating the youth into entrepreneurship and business growth.
–Miss Rana Hayek, Electro-Mechanical Engineer & Car Mechanic. Awarded under the outstanding category, she’s Lebanon’s first female car mechanic. She is a diagnosis engineer at Sigma, the exclusive agent for Seat, Mitsubishi, and Ducati.
–Miss Aleen Sabbagh – Founder & Owner of The Concept. Awarded under the fashion category. What started as a personal devotion to fashion turned into a full-fledged clothing brand. Aleen Sabbagh, the young Lebanese face behind it all, goes from one factory to the other looking to constantly design drop trendy collections that always manage to sell out quickly.
The event was presented and moderated by Ms. Nadine W. Njeim, who discussed with each awardee her journey to success. It was attended by an audience of more than 150 invitees including public figures, the awardees’ families, journalists and representatives of various Lebanese media outlets, bloggers and social media influencers, as well as L’Oréal’s team and partners of L’Oréal Paris in Lebanon.
Lebanese designer represents Moroccan culture and feminine beauty at Maroc Fashion Week.
Maroc Fashion Week ran from March 8 to 11 in the city of Marrakech. The purpose of the event was to represent the Moroccan caftan and to further celebrate International Women’s Day.
Morocco World News spoke with Lebanese fashion consultant and designer Bernard Jabbour about his newly presented collection, Poisonous Beauty.
The esteemed designer has 28 years of experience in the fashion industry, some of Jabbour’s extensive experience includes his work as a consultant for Lebanese fashion designer Elie Saab and Project Runway Middle East. The designer is mostly known for his work at his Lebanon-based fashion studio, in which he specializes in haute couture – high-end, custom, and handmade fashion – including evening and wedding gowns.
Jabbour has visited Morocco twice before, but the most recent visit marks more of an official trip at one of the “biggest events,” hosted at what the designer described as a “beautiful country.” Poisonous Beauty is also the first-ever collection that he has debuted at Maroc Fashion Week.
“They say I’m classic yet with a twist. I try every time to put something new in my designs, but you can always see the touch of Bernard Jabbour. My DNA is always present in my designs,” Jabbour explained.
Enticing and dangerous inspiration
His primary inspiration for all of his collections is the presence of the woman; each collection simply approaches the woman figure a little differently to create a unique design for every season. Poisonous Beauty is one of his more ambitious and “tricky” projects.
The thought process behind the idea relays his thinking that women are a “beautiful poison that … we want to have … Her soul, her look and everything is poisoning us, but we also ask for it.” The designer sees a woman’s figure and aura as something both enticing and dangerous, a familiarity that when studied and analyzed through an artistic lens, appears unique and foreign.
Furthermore, Jabbour explains that he has experimented with “unconventional material” for this very collection as well, with new volumes and calmer color palettes.
Jabbour’s most prized dress in the Poisonous Beauty collection is one that is inspired by Moroccan architecture. It was never intended to be a part of this collection, but Jabbour says that “because I’m here in Morocco Fashion Week, I said no. I have to do one dress dedicated to Morocco.”
In regards to Maroc Fashion Week, Jabbour applauds the beauty and representation of the caftan: “I have … few Moroccan designer friends … [but] I like how they make the caftan. The handwork they put in the caftan, it’s like really magic.”
The designer felt amazed by the multiculturalism that he and other designers were exposed to at Maroc Fashion Week. Jabbour mentioned that the event unites people from across the globe he said, including countries such as “Kazakhstan, Italy, Lebanon, and Palestine.”
Jabbour is one of many international designers who helped in paying tribute to women’s presence and cultural recognition in the ever-developing world of the international fashion industry.
James Abourezk, 1st Arab American US senator, dies at 92.
James Abourezk, attorney and Democratic politician who served as a United States senator and United States representative from South Dakota and co-founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee(ADC), died today on his 92nd birthday.
He was born in Wood, South Dakota, the son of Lena (Mickel), a homemaker, and Charles Abourezk, an owner of two general stores. Both of his parents were Lebanese immigrants. He grew up near Wood on the Rosebud Reservation and has lived in South Dakota most of his life.
Abourezk represented South Dakota in the United States Senate from 1973 until 1979. He was the author of the Indian Child Welfare Act, passed by Congress in 1978 to try to preserve Indian families and tribal culture.
He was instrumental in the creation of both the American Indian Policy Review Commission and the Select Committee on Indian Affairs. He became chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee from its creation in 1977 to 1979.
Abourezk was elected in 1970 as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives and served from 1971 to 1973. In 1972 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1973 to 1979.
Abourezk was an outspoken critic of Israel and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East after touring the region and visiting his parents’ hometown in Lebanon as a senator. The position lost him many political allies, and he decided to retire from the Senate after a single term.
In 1980, Abourezk co-founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and traveled throughout the U.S. organizing Arab Americans in the wake of the “Abscam” debacle. Abscam was an FBI sting operation where agents dressed up as “oil-rich sheiks” in the late 1970s and early 1980s that led to the convictions of seven members of the United States Congress, among others, for bribery and corruption.
Abourezk’s marriages to Mary Ann Houlton and Margaret Bethea ended in divorce. In 1991, he married Sanaa Dieb, a restaurateur. They moved to Sioux Falls where she opened an award-winning Arab restaurant.
Survivors include his wife; children Charles Abourezk, Nikki Pipe On Head, and Paul Abourezk from his marriage to Houlton; daughter Alya Abourezk from his third marriage; a stepdaughter; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Warren David, president of Arab America and a former national president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said, “during a time when discourse regarding the negative portrayal of Arabs and the injustice faced by Palestinians were scarce, he (Abourezk) acted as a pioneer who instilled a sense of immediacy in the Arab American community–he was a trailblazer in that regard.”
The Lebanese Army confirmed that Cadet Officer Jana Sader has achieved a momentous milestone by becoming the nation’s first-ever fighter jet pilot. Sader finished her training course at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, USA, following nearly two years of demanding curriculum and flight training.
As a graduate of the Lebanese Army’s training program, Sader is now ready to embark on a new mission. The A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft, a sophisticated and formidable aircraft utilized for a variety of missions such as close air support, aerial reconnaissance, and armed surveillance, will be her maiden deployment.
The Lebanese Army said in a Tweet, which also noted and acknowledged her accomplishment that the A-29 Super Tucano has shown to be a dependable and successful aircraft for military operations, and Sader is eager to begin her career with the aircraft.
In her response, Twitter user Leila Hatoum praised Sader for her accomplishment and recalled learning in the 1990s that women aren’t permitted to join the air force: “In the 90s, we went to the Universities and Careers Exhibition. I went to the military stand where an officer and 2 assistants were. I asked him what is needed to become a pilot officer in the Air Force and, without an explanation, told her girls aren’t allowed to serve in the airforce.”
Many others, including the Lebanese army, used Twitter to congratulate the cadet on the achievement, proving that it was cause for celebration. Sader’s new position ushers in a new era for women in Lebanon, where the integration of women into the military has been a long process. According to the Lebanese Army’s website women joined the Lebanese Army Forces for the first time “when the chance emerged in the late 80s,” during Lebanon’s 1975–1990 Civil War, when the army required fresh recruits for its different formations.
In 1991, the government passed a new resolution mandating that 10% of the troops working for the Defense Ministry be female. Female recruits must undergo the same training as male recruits, and they are not just given administrative duties, but also jobs in combat units.
Sader’s accomplishment as a fighter pilot follows that of Captain Rola Hoteit, a pilot for Middle East Airlines, the national airline of Lebanon (MEA). When Hoteit took command of her maiden solo flight to the Jordanian capital of Amman in 2010, she made history as MEA’s first female pilot.
Six of the 190 pilots employed by MEA are now female, and in 2020 Hoteit flew with an all-female crew.
The Syrian-Lebanese economist and activist favours advocacy now over anger in her humanitarian mission to protect refugees.
Rouba Mhaissen was on a spring break in Beirut to visit her parents when she heard about the 40 families fleeing lives that had become intolerable over the border in Syria.
It was 2011, when the term “Syrian refugees” did not yet exist, and the arrivals were a harbinger of something inconceivable to Ms Mhaissen back then – the largest displacement crisis of our time.
Little knowing that the families would still be refugees more than a decade on, the 22-year-old student at the London School of Economics raced off to see what they needed.
“I took the family car and drove to meet the families to offer them help,” she tells The National.
“My parents were very worried. At the beginning of my work and until this day, they worry about me because there are risky situations.
“You get threats, and our advocacy work, in particular, can be very controversial. But they believe in the cause and support me.”
Fast forward a decade, and Ms Mhaissen is in London to appear at a charity event run by the Hands Up Foundation as the founder of Sawa for Development and Aid, a grassroots organisation that offers protection, education and relief for Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Sawa, which means “together” in Arabic, now has about 400 employees, many of whom are from refugee communities, and operates in 130 camps.
In some ways, it is a continuation of work that the young Rouba began as a child in Beirut and Damascus, where she would often volunteer to assist orphans, and refugees from Palestine and, later, those from Iraq.
“I never knew that this would be my career,” Ms Mhaissen says. “I thought I was going to be an academic.
“When the war started in Syria in 2011, I had already applied for my PhD and had no idea I would only end up being a part-time academic.”
Born in Beirut, a “surprise” 10 years after two brothers and a sister, she had been gently steered towards academia by her Lebanese stay-at-home mother and father, a Syrian businessman.
She claims to have been raised as a very spoilt last child yet her parents convinced Ms Mhaissen against studying her heart’s desire, theatre, because it was not what they described as a rigid path.
“I definitely think that, if I was reborn, I would be a dancer because I love to dance and perform,” she says.
It was not to be. Ms Mhaissen grew up going to school in Beirut because the education was deemed better there, and then driving as a family two hours to Damascus for the weekends.
After an undergraduate degree in economics at the American University of Beirut, she embarked on a master’s in development studies at the LSE, followed by a PhD in gender and development at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
Somehow, in the middle of all these studies, she found the time to start Sawa, through which Ms Mhaissen unsurprisingly gives priority to education.
Of prime importance to her is that refugees acquire skills to live in dignity, take ownership of their lives and rebuild their communities themselves.
The demands have been many, and, with the spread of coronavirus, she thought that perhaps she might finally learn what it is to relax a little.
“I love, love, love travelling, learning about new cultures, new food and new countries,” Ms Mhaissen says. “But with my son now it’s very hard.”
She shuttles between southern Turkey, Beirut and London with her husband, a one-year-old and another baby on the way.
The pandemic gave rise to a more acute need for aid than ever, although one silver lining is that the whole world has for the first time experienced what it is to be refugees – at least the uncertainty, the inability to plan ahead and lack of communication.
“Camps are one of the hardest environments to sit out Covid as there is nowhere to self-isolate, no internet or devices for home-schooling, and gender-based violence rose dramatically,” Ms Mhaissen says.
“People talk about refugees and their ‘resilience’, a term that is so misused. Conditions for refugees in host countries and their neighbours are constantly terrible and getting worse all the time.
“A Syrian family in Lebanon has to move their tent three times on average in winter when it floods, and then people wonder why they get on boats. It’s because they have no hope.”
Over the years, Ms Mhaissen has received many accolades and honours, including being named on the 2017 Forbes 30Under30 list of most influential people in Policy and Law.
There was also the Vital Voices Global Leadership Award and the Rafto Prize “for defending human rights from the local to the global level for people living as refugees”, both in 2019.
She has been invited to conferences, summits on Syria – at one in Brussels she met her husband, an activist from Aleppo – and this year became the 10th Arab woman to address the UN Security Council.
Late last month, days befor 27 migrants died in the English Channel, she was at the Opera Garnier in Paris being presented with the International Diane von Furstenberg Award alongside businesswoman and philanthropist Melinda Gates, CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward, Burmese human rights advocate Wai Wai Nu, and climate change activist Vanessa Nakate.
She took the opportunity to tell the room full of European policymakers and philanthropists that attempting the crossing is not an illegal act.
“You have the right legally to apply for asylum in whatever country you are in,” Ms Mhaissen says. “We need to live up to our responsibility to these people.”
She also talked about the refugees stuck at the border of Belarus and Poland, and of one in particular, Ahmed, who had grown up in a camp, but was the first of the refugees to be buried officially after he drowned in a river there. His mother joined the funeral on a conference call.
“I reminded those listening that this was a woman who had been pregnant with him, who had celebrated his birthdays, who had brought him up like any mother, and who was now connecting with him on social media, just like [those in the audience] used social media to connect with their loved ones during the pandemic … except this was his funeral.
“Everyone was really moved and many were in tears. I always try to humanise it for the wider public, and I use the word ‘humans’ as often as I can when I talk about refugees.
“‘Refugee’ carries a lot of legal rights with it so while there is certainly fatigue associated with the word, it’s not a redundant word that we should stop using.
“Politicians, on the other hand, want us to call them migrants because it sounds more scary.”
The citation on the DVF award was for Ms Mhaissen’s “dedication and fierceness to support displaced Syrian individuals and families”, which world leaders gathered at the Support for Syria donor conference in London a few years earlier experienced in full force.
She was the first speaker up and was introduced by then UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, who said: “Rouba Mhaissen, you have the floor. Two minutes.”
But a stern-looking Ma Mhaissen retorted that, as one of the few Syrians at the event speaking in the name of Syria, she wasn’t sure that she would stick to two minutes. She was at the podium for nearly nine.
It was a passionate speech in which she criticised “Fortress Europe”, her “token presence at an ad hoc event for which the priorities have already been pre-determined without our involvement”, and counter-terrorist legislation stopping funds being sent where they were most needed.
“Don’t fight the wrong people, guys,” Ms Mhaissen said.
She said she could see good leaders in the room but hoped for greatness from them along the lines of “the next Martin Luther King, the next Benazir Bhutto, the next Churchill, the next Madeline Albright, the next Mandela of our time …
“Each one of you can be that person,” she told them, “Remember that.”
Ms Mhaissen smiles at the memory.
“I realised that those in power have incredibly thick skin,” she says. “They are inured to what the situation is on the ground.
“I used to be very angry and lead a crazy life where I would come out of the field where kids had to step over their parents’ dead bodies to get to safety, and then you’re invited as the token Syrian to an event in a five-star hotel where people are drinking champagne and eating caviar.”
With a dawning realisation that advocacy, not anger, was the way to go about beating the system, the focus has since been more on changing laws that help refugees and doing the day-to-day work that affects people’s lives.
Her spirituality has been of great support throughout. “Knowing that God has been alongside me all along, and my faith, have helped me along the way,” she says.
Ms Mhaissen’s message to those gathered on Wednesday night in the 17th-century Great Hall of Lambeth Palace at the annual Singing for Syrians carol concert will be comparatively gentler in nature.
The event raises funds for Hands Up Foundation’s humanitarian work in Syria for which Sawa is a partner on educational projects.
This year it will feature the author and illustrator Nadine Kaadan, Citizens of the World Choir, actress and activist Joanna Lumley and actor Tom Hollander.
She will, she says, of course push everyone to donate to the foundation’s Big Give Christmas Challenge as a firm believer in how the deeds of the few can transform the lives of the many.
“I always say that what goes around comes around, and the more we give the more blessed our lives are,” Ms Mhaissen says. “It’s like investing in the best thing ever.”
The memory of an email received from a young Icelandic citizen will also be shared. It arrived in her inbox at the time of a terrible massacre in Syria, with the sender asking what help he could give.
Shocked, Ms Mhaissen recalls staring at the message for a long time, wondering how to answer a person on a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean.
“I told him, ‘If you want to help Syria today, call your mother. Just call your mother and see how she is doing. We are in a world of small circles and they are all interconnected …
“Sometimes,” she says, “it’s best just to start local.”
With a Lebanese name and a Cairo birthplace in the background, Gabriel Makhlouf is steering Ireland’s financial recovery.
As governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Gabriel Makhlouf is much preoccupied by the issue of resilience in a small, open economy challenged by a year of pandemic.
Mr Makhlouf’s own peripatetic life has shown him how precious an asset the quality of adaptability is at a time of change, be it in a person or for a national economic system.
Upheaval and the Makhloufs on the move could be a theme stretching back to when his father’s side of the family travelled across the Mediterranean from their Lebanese homeland to Cyprus.
When the island was part of the Empire, the family became British subjects and Makhlouf Snr ended up working at the embassy in Cairo after the Second World War.
It was in that palatial building near the Nile that he fell for a Greek-Armenian woman whose forebears had fled the historical turmoil of Izmir in 1922. Her family moved to Athens where she has come full circle to live today.
Mr Makhlouf was talking to The National at a time when Ireland’s strict national Level 5 lockdown is both defining his job and providing a perspective on the decades of movement and upheaval that have brought him to where he is now.
At a conference last week, the governor spoke of how the outlook had deteriorated in 2021 with the renewed lockdown. The short-term need to bolster the economy coincided with structural changes from technological innovation and climate policies. Ireland suffered a 7.1 per cent slump in domestic demand last year but is expected to see a 2.9 per cent increase in 2021.
Unemployment is predicted to reach 9.3 per cent this year and for an economy with a high level of property-focused debt, ensuring that households are supported is a priority. Mr Makhlouf points out that growth is not the same as having the capacity to recover quickly.
“We cannot anticipate every type of shock but we can build resilience,” he said in his keynote address. “Resilience is what has prevented the financial system repeating its previous failure. Resilience is what has protected households, businesses and communities against the worst of the damage from the shock of the pandemic.
“Economic resilience is what helps communities to manage the disruption caused by change and to manage the economic transitions we are living in right now.”
In providing leadership during financial strife, it is perhaps a boon to have some sense of dislocation. He describes his mother’s family as refugees. His parents met in a milieu that was the product of worlds with roots as far back as the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians. And yet the people of Mr Makhlouf’s parents’ generation made their choices and moved to build new lives.
“My mother, who was born in Athens, had spent most of her life outside of Greece, but when my dad retired she came back,” he recalls. “My dad moved on and lived all over the world and settled in Greece at the end, before he passed away.”
Mr Makhlouf was born in Egypt but left at the age of three when his father joined the United Nations and moved to the Congo. Makhlouf pere’s time as an international diplomat exposed the young Gabriel to many cultures.
“My first language was French, because my parents’ mutual tongue was French,” he says. “So I learned English when I was about seven when we went to Bangladesh, and when we got to the Pacific we lived in Samoa.
“I went to school in Samoa. My parents then decided they ought to send me to boarding school if I was going to get a proper education and not one that changed every few years.”
Travelling during the school holidays from the school in England was a regular odyssey in itself. “The trip to get to Samoa and back to England involved stopping in Los Angeles, Honolulu and Pago Pago, an American territory pronounced ‘Pango Pango’,” he recalls.
“But then they moved to the Philippines, they moved to Fiji, they were in Ethiopia and they were in Thailand. So, you know, my brother and I got used to this life.”
It is a puzzle, then, to establish the appeal to the young Mr Makhlouf of embarking on a career as a Whitehall civil servant. He explains it as following his father’s footsteps in to the bureaucracy. Certainly, the career path was more about determination and making opportunities than wanderlust.
“I don’t think I joined the civil service for stability, to be honest, but maybe somewhere deep inside me there might have been that,” he says. “I joined the civil service really for interest. I joined as a tax inspector at the beginning. And it was an interesting career option – it involved law, it involved accountancy and it gave early opportunity to manage.”
Fate intervened to resume the family’s roving tradition when Mr Makhlouf was headhunted in 2010 to run New Zealand’s finance ministry, the Treasury. There, he was responsible for developing a measure of well-being as a replacement for the traditional gross domestic product yardstick.
In one memorable allusion in a speech he compared the role of an economist to that of an artisan, challenged with weaving together different strands of evidence into a structured framework.
Before upping sticks to the southern hemisphere, Mr Makhlouf at one point worked directly with then-UK chancellor Gordon Brown, who became prime minister at the time of the global financial crisis in 2008.
Asked about his former boss and a recent warning that the world now faces another lost decade or perhaps even worse than after that crash, Mr Makhlouf acknowledges how bad it was last time around but disagreed on the dangers now.
“I think that there is one massive difference between the crisis in 2008 and today’s crisis,” he says. “Which is that the crisis in 2008 was a crisis of the financial system, the financial system basically collapsed.
“Today, the financial system is still standing, and it’s the financial system that’s playing a very important role in supporting businesses and households through the pandemic and hopefully into a recovery and out the other end.”
World leaders are proving to be different kinds of players, having recognised that this is an economic crisis caused by a health crisis. “Governments throughout the world have chosen to close down economies for the sake of people’s health. In some respects that is been planned. In comparison to what happened in 2008 where actually events completely overwhelmed us.”
So Mr Brown’s fears are too pessimistic? “A lot of the changes and challenges that are ahead of us, I think if we manage them, then I think they can be managed well,” he says.
Mr Makhlouf takes heart from the rapid adjustment of businesses to home-working and new patterns of demand. “Economies across the world and certainly in the industrialised world have adapted to the restrictions,” he says. “More businesses are set up for that and more consumers were ready and knew how to proceed.”
The scale of “technological adaptation” since he accepted the Irish job in 2019 is something he could well have guessed was just around the corner.
The governor has not been immune to the extraordinary pressures imposed by lockdowns. Even at the outset of the pandemic, the family’s far-flung ways isolated him in Athens just as the 2,000-strong staff of the central bank in Dublin were forced to work from home.
With his mother ill in hospital, Mr Makhlouf was on hand to help her recover. “Effectively, I carried on working like everyone else via laptops and iPads. It’s quite an extraordinary thing that we all seem to have got used to.”
History means that a British citizen running the Irish central bank will always be a talking point. The moment that the UK left the EU put Mr Makhlouf in an invidious spot.
First, there is migration of businesses and banking activity from the City of London to Dublin so that firms remain within the EU umbrella. Is this an opportunity?
“Overall, I think the impact of Brexit is negative. It’s negative for Ireland and for the UK and for the EU,” he says. “We’re most exposed as a country in the agricultural sector, in particular. The fact that there was, at the end of the day, a deal albeit a very slim deal was better than there being no deal.
“On financial services, we have seen post-referendum a move of business from London to Dublin,” he agrees. “I’m not sure I would necessarily call it an opportunity at all. I think from my perspective as a regulator this increases the need for us to manage and ensure the financial system works properly.”
With his son, brother and wife’s relatives living in London, the governor observes that the pandemic has played a greater role than Brexit in cutting off families and friends. But things are different.
“I feel sorry for someone like my son — his opportunities to work in 27 other countries have now been limited. So his generation has lost out,” he says. “Ireland and Irish people have got many connections in the UK, we recognise Brexit has happened but those connections haven’t disappeared, they haven’t been lost.”
As two movie-perfect countries on the periphery of continents with roughly similar populations, one wonders what the biggest change is for Mr Makhlouf in switching from New Zealand to Ireland.
There is the remoteness of the former compared with the latter’s position within the wealthy European market. But the answer, he feels, is the perspective on China. In New Zealand, much time was spent thinking about and visiting that part of east Asia. He himself went at least nine times.
“The role that Asia has been playing and will play in the 21st century usually dominated a lot of thinking. And what’s interesting coming back to Europe, and perhaps now it’s not surprising at one level, but it was noticeable how little of our time was spent thinking about Asia.”
For the well-travelled, there is the unchanging truth that proximity is often the most powerful force in geography.
The lockdown both defines Gabriel Makhlouf’s job as Governor of the Irish central bank and provides a perspective on the decades of movement and upheaval that have brought him where he is today. Courtesy Central Bank of Ireland
