The Storyteller’s Stories: Voices of Arab Women Journalists
Bravery. And then guilt.
That’s the typical emotional trajectory of a female journalist from the Arab world, according to Zahra Hankir, author of the critically acclaimed 2019 book, “Our Women on the Ground.”
“There’s always this feeling you’re not doing enough,” said Hankir, a Lebanese-British journalist who has written for BBC News, VICE News, Al Jazeera English and the Los Angeles Times, among others. “That guilt stays with you; I think particularly if you cover the Arab world because there’s so much tragedy, complexity and nuance.”
Born in the United Kingdom in 1984 after her newlywed parents fled the Lebanese civil war in 1980, Hankir represents a crossroad not only between Western and Muslim reporting, but also between the identities of a local and a foreign journalist. In her own journalism, and in that of the journalists she’s written about, she bridges cultural understanding and brings nuance to portrayals of the Arab world, showing how Western reporters can follow suit to accurately cover Arab and Muslim women.
Women on the Ground
Though she grew up in Belfast as a British citizen, her parents instilled in her immense love for Lebanese and Arab culture. With phone lines often down in Lebanon, the news became her family’s only way of knowing what was happening back home. News became an important aspect of Hankir’s identity and connecting with her homeland.
“I always used to think of journalists as heroes,” Hankir said. “I used to watch the news thinking, wow, these people are committed to telling the truth of what is happening in various regions across the world.”
There was no doubt in her mind that journalism would be her career. She thought, perhaps naively, that she would find fulfillment from it.
Local Reporting
Hankir moved to Lebanon as the civil war subsided in 1994 when she was 10 years old, and later, in 2002, enrolled in the American University of Beirut. She became the editor of her university’s newspaper, which further instilled her desire to become a journalist upon graduation. She found her calling covering politics, culture and society, and the realities of what was going on around her.
Although a British citizen, Hankir never thought of herself as a foreign reporter in Lebanon — she was just a journalist covering news in Lebanon for a local media outlet. That’s where she saw the contrast between a local and foreign journalist, and the difference, she says, is in insight and access. Insight refers to knowledge of the culture, while access is in speaking to local sources accurately. Still, as her career progressed, she noticed that those qualities sometimes weren’t appreciated by Western newsrooms.
“There's always this feeling that I didn't have the worthiness of some of the other people in the newsroom who might have been white or male,” Hankir said. “This was very much a reality for me, particularly when observing who was commanding the narrative on the Middle East. I always felt like locals were almost sidelined, or people with that background were not treated on the same level as Westerners, even though I myself am a native speaker of English.”
Covering Women from the Muslim and Arab World
She returned to England for a year to earn her masters in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Manchester in 2006. After completing her degree and returning to Lebanon, Hankir wrote an article in 2007 for a now-defunct Lebanese digital news outlet, NOW News. The piece, titled “A Second First Time,” covered hymenoplasty, the restoring of the hymen, which is a common practice among Lebanese and Arab women. She knew it was taboo to discuss virginity in their conservative society but wanted to investigate why women were undergoing the procedure.
“I think myself being a Lebanese woman and a Muslim woman from a conservative society who is also quite liberal, many of the women felt they could speak to me quite candidly and quite openly about not only the reasons they chose to do it, but also their fear about having done it,” Hankir said.
She spoke to many Lebanese women anonymously to not only ask what compelled them to do it, but what societal factors were involved. She interviewed gynecologists offering the procedure, asking about its logistics. The main reason for the procedure, Hankir found, was so the woman could bleed during intercourse the night of her wedding — a sign of pure virginity. She discussed the social consequences versus religious ideals inflicting the wide use of the procedure.
“That story was one of the most meaningful ones I’ve ever written,” she said. Since the story’s publication over 12 years ago, Hankir has received over 100 emails from women thanking her for illuminating their voices in the story. She continues to receive them to this day.
In 2008, Hankir won a Jack R. Howard Fellowship in International Journalism to study at the Columbia School of Journalism in New York, where she covered the Muslim community of Queens. She moved to Dubai in 2010 to work as a reporter and editor at Bloomberg News, and then returned to London in 2013 while continuing with Bloomberg. Until 2016, she covered economies and markets of the Middle East and North Africa for the publication, routinely traveling all around the region, from Cairo to Jordan to Morocco.
When the Arab Spring erupted in 2011, Hankir reported the uprisings for Bloomberg. She became acutely aware of the difference between herself, mostly reporting from the office, and the women reporters on the ground. She was inspired to give these women from the Arab world a platform to share their stories, and “Our Women on the Ground” was born.
Hankir edited the stories of 19 Arab woman writers covering war and tragedy in the Middle East and explains how her own privilege loomed over the compilation of the book, which was published in August 2019.
“I never really faced challenges that the women in this book faced,” she says. “I’m quite lucky in that.” She emphasizes the importance of knowing the differences across the Middle East region in terms of press freedoms and women’s rights. Lebanon has certain liberties in journalism that are unheard of in other nearby countries like Syria and Iraq, but there is still some self-censorship, especially when covering the Lebanese government. She did experience sexual harassment on the job, but she explained she was never in danger of losing her life.
At that point, she decided these women on the ground deserved a book of their own.
“Our Women on the Ground” has received international praise for uniting the stories of female journalists from the Arab world in an authentic way.
Dwight Garner, book critic for The New York Times, calls it, “A stirring, provocative and well-made new anthology . . . that rewrites the hoary rules of the foreign correspondent playbook, deactivating the old clichés.”
Hankir’s book allowed the truths of each of the 19 women — who are not only of Muslim faith, but of all backgrounds and religions from the Arab world — speak for themselves.
One of the contributors, Nada Bakri, former foreign correspondent to The New York Times, felt hesitant to contribute, as she hadn’t been on the ground for quite some time. In the end, though, she decided to anyways because she felt the book could help make change.
“My initial reaction, though, was how important and essential this book is at a time when the market continues to be saturated with stories about the Arab World written by foreign journalists,” Bakri said. “It would be the first time that Arab female journalists will have the chance to tell their own stories in their own words.”
In the book, Bakri wrote about the death of her husband, reporter Anthony Shadid of The New York Times, who died while on assignment in Syria in 2012 under unclear circumstances.
Bakri’s story wasn’t just about losing him, but how all the different aspects of the Arab Spring also affected her life in a deep way, leaving her almost hopeless. In the book she said she left journalism, left her home in Beirut and moved away from everyone and everything familiar. “Along the way, I became someone I don’t recognize,” she wrote in the anthology.
“I think the book helped to dispel misconceptions about our part of the world and celebrated the very essential work that we do. Without our women on the ground, countless stories would have never been told,” Bakri said.
Hwaida Saad, Lebanese war correspondent to The New York Times and contributor to Hankir’s book, agrees. Like Bakri, she was uncertain when Hankir first presented the project to her; she had covered uprisings in Syria for the past nine years and wasn’t sure what she would include and what she would exclude.
“But Zahra was determined,” Saad said. Hankir told Saad to take her time and think about it. “She was super patient and encouraging,” she added. “I didn’t know how important my stories were; she knew.”
Hankir’s didn’t set out to challenge Western media narratives of Muslim and Arab women, but inevitably the voices in her book spoke their truths and revealed a pattern of misconceptions.
“There are no two women that are alike, which is sort of an obvious thing to say, but I think given the depictions of Muslim women and Western media, they tend to be quite, let's say, simplistic,” Hankir said.
She wanted to demonstrate the successes and resiliency of Arab female journalists, but also not stray away from the oppression they face.
The stereotypes are rooted in some realities, she says. Women across the region face challenges that are quite dire, but Hankir wanted to redirect the focus from these women needing to be repaired or “saved” from the West, and instead shed light on their realities of courage and bravery required in journalism.
Western Reporting
Today, over a decade into her career, her thoughts have shifted on the state of journalism and its representation of Muslim and Arab women — and the guilt that comes from being on the other side of it.
To represent women of Arab backgrounds accurately in Western media, Hankir says to start with the way international journalists and foreign correspondents conduct their work.
Hankir believes misinformed coverage and biases are rooted in post-colonialism and orientalism — and that such it needs to be challenged. She says it starts by recognizing who currently controls the Arab world narrative.
“For so long it has been Westerners and it has been males,” Hankir said. But more recently, there are far more women on the ground in the Middle East of Western origin and far more Arab bylines in Western press, she adds.
She says women have proved they can do this type of work, which is why she invited CNN chief international correspondent and British-Iranian journalist Christiane Amanpour to write the foreword for her book. Hankir argues she was one of the first woman to become high profile after doing substantial reporting over a period of decades.
“If you see certain success in the field, others will follow. That’s not to say that women were not doing that work before, but I think they were just given more attention and that has a domino effect,” Hankir said.
While Hankir believes there is still more work to be done, the response from her book shows the movement is gaining momentum.
“I get messages from young Arab women and women of color frequently telling me how inspired they feel and how they'd like to pursue journalism,” Hankir said. “I think it’s also been celebrated because there is a recognition that these are women who need to be valued in a way they haven’t previously, and celebrate and acknowledged.”
Hankir believes things are starting to change ever so slowly. “I can’t deny that the publication of this book [Our Women on the Ground] was also a significant step forward, because these voices have been amplified and that has a knock-on effect too,” she said.
She hopes the domino effect will continue to empower Western journalists and Arab women alike to work together and create informed coverage, truly capturing the realities on the ground.
