by Zahra Hankir
* It’s important to note that Ruqia was of Kurdish, not Arab, descent, though she was Syrian by nationality. While this book centers on women of Arab ancestry, many women of the broader Middle East share the exact same social, political, and cultural challenges. That said, by using the catchall term “Arab,” we by no means aim to present the twenty-two countries that comprise the Arab world as monolithic, nor do we want to depict the experiences of its more than 400 million people as one and the same. On the contrary: we wish to illustrate just how rich and wide-ranging this area of the world is. Our decision to categorize the authors in this book as Arab is in part due to their shared linguistic heritage, although it’s worth acknowledging that even then, across the Arab world, dozens of dialects are spoken.
* The notion of a dual, or split, identity isn’t uncommon among those of Arab or Middle Eastern origin, given waves of emigration spurred in part by warfare and forced exile—demonstrated heartbreakingly by the mass exodus of Syrians to surrounding Levantine countries, Europe, and beyond following the onset of the Syrian civil war. I intentionally wanted to reflect this reality in my selection of contributors in the “Crossfire” section.
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