Hello everyone and welcome to this Sex, Love, and Superpowers podcast show. I am super excited for our guest today because she and I knew each other back in middle school and she moved far, far across the world to Lebanon. She’s actually joining us today from Lebanon. Her name is Nadia Tabbara and it’s just a really joyful reunion for me. Nadia Tabbara’s a screenwriter, she grew up in the United States, she moved back to Lebanon to lend her voice and writing expertise to make film and TV in Lebanon regionally successful and globally recognized.
As a screenwriter, her scripts have competed in Hollywood and her short films have screened at top-tier film festivals including South by Southwest and the Milano International Film Festival. Her debut Lebanese short film won Runner-Up and Best Writing at the 48 Hour Film Project in 2013. More recently, she was in the development of a comedy feature film and has completed 15 episode TV series as head writer and creator and Nadia, it’s my understanding you’ve also recently been published in an anthology of women authors? Women Lebanese authors in particular? Tell me more about this anthology.
The anthology is published by a publishing house called Turning Point Books and it’s called Arab Women Voice New Realities.
Beautiful.
It’s just an amazing collection of female voices. It’s just an amazing collection of female voices.
It’s got women from Lebanon, for sure, but also from Jordan, Yemen … gosh, I’m not doing it justice. Egypt, Algeria, I believe. Palestinian, for sure. It’s just an amazing collection of female voices and it’s called Voice New Realities because it’s women not the way that you think you want to portray them, it’s just who we are.
Beautiful.
Especially Arab women are sometimes very exotic.
And we’re going to talk about that because today we’re having a cross-cultural conversation on gender and empowerment and I am really excited for this conversation, and so excited to have you on the show, in particular, Nadia, for so many reasons, it’s just really fun to reconnect. So I want to dive into this conversation, I think it’s such an important one. We’re going to bust some myths today, I’m all about that, our stories that don’t serve us, letting them fly out the window both individually and culturally.
Before we dive into that, I’m going to ask you this question that you’ve had a little bit of time now to sit with and don’t worry, because it’s not written in stone but I want to hear right now, from this place that you’re at, what are your superpowers?
I want to say thank you so much for having me, by the way, thank you. My superpowers, I guess my big superpower is the ability to translate what I’m passionate about to other people and then feed them with the idea that they can be successful because I believe that we are not successful individually, we’re successful collectively.
Amen.
Then when you empower somebody with whatever it might be, knowledge, even just something smaller, it may be a gift that is a little bit smaller per day, something like that. When you empower them, you have no idea the effect and then pretty soon, if they continue with you … I’m a writing coach, so sometimes people don’t continue and that’s fine, I find them succeeding in their own ways and if they do continue, I get to watch their journey and now we’re all successful together. So I guess that would be my superpower.
That’s such an awesome superpower. Talking a little bit before jumping on the recording, but I want to maybe lay out some of what you’ve seen … I think you have a really unique perspective because you lived in the United States for a long time, a lot of your formative years if you will, growing up in the US, although you were in a Lebanese family, and then moving back to Lebanon. What do you see as some of the biggest cultural myths, how they’re perpetuated and let’s just bust those right apart right now.
Oh, well I have to say first and foremost that this country, Lebanese people, we’re not perfect, there is so much that needs work in this country and so much hope that we have and then hope that we’ve lost in our politicians, in our voting system, in everything. We’re not perfect but everything that I have seen … almost everything, I shouldn’t generalize. Almost everything that I’ve seen in Hollywood or in mainstream media, is so skewed, it’s just not who we are. I’m not saying we are perfect, but it’s not that.
So before we started recording, we were talking about that new movie that’s about to hit screens in April and it’s premiering in Sundance, it’s called Beirut and Beirut is the capital city of Lebanon. It’s premiering on April 13th and that’s the anniversary of the civil war in Lebanon, which is a huge part of our history and it’s a very sensitive topic and it has changed us forever and it continues … we are reminded of it so frequently and it just seems very insensitive that that’s when it’s coming out but right now, all we have is the trailer.
Hollywood’s narrative of us is not at all who we are.
I’m writing something right now about it, about how I feel about it but I wish we had something a little bit more profound on the subject of how Hollywood’s narrative of us is not at all who we are and the fact that their narrative is so wrong, even without any need to do any research, they don’t even care to research because that’s how they see Arabs and that’s how they are OK with others seeing Arabs, that it just becomes so disingenuous and it becomes so disheartening that this is out there.
Yeah and let’s talk about that a little bit more because we had also mentioned this idea that a lot of us in the United States and sort of in the Western world have about the Middle East being like this one clump and how Lebanon is its own country, Pakistan is its own country, Iran is its own country and there’s a culture that each carries that is different and distinct from one other.
Definitely, the Middle East, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt which is considered North Africa as well, each country is super different and each country has different cultural norms. Lebanon is such a unique place. Growing up, I used to get a lot of questions that haven’t changed, which is kind of odd because now the world is different, now we have the internet so we can see stuff, but I still get questions from Americans saying, “Do you have dessert?” I would always say, “The only dessert I’ve ever seen is in Las Vegas, is in Nevada.” And I’m like, “Lebanon doesn’t have any dessert, we’re tropical, we’re on the Mediterranean.” Other things are, “How come you’re not veiled?” And being veiled is a Muslim tradition and Lebanon has Muslims and Christians, almost 50/50 and within Christianity, there are 16 different sects and within Islam, there are three different sects, so it’s so multi-
And then on top of that, we have three different languages that most Lebanese speak fluently. Arabic, Lebanese Arabic, and then English and French. French is taught in schools as a teaching language, it’s one of our official languages of the country, so if you come to this country and speak English or French, you do not need any other language. You can always get by within limitations so those are a lot of misconceptions. Like I said, multicultural so some women are veiled, some are not. Beirut especially is super cosmopolitan. Every image I’ve ever seen of it doesn’t look like that, it’s very strange to me.
Yeah and let’s talk about the women since this is a conversation on gender and empowerment. I know that there’s a real storyline going over here about the disempowerment of women. You mentioned a film, I can’t remember the name of it, too where all the women who were portrayed in this film were sort of scared and in the background and that there’s this real storyline that it’s a totally male-dominated culture, that the women have no power, they have no say. What’s the truth?
Oh, the one you’re referring to is Homeland, it’s a TV show, I forgot what network because it’s not part of our lives here, although people have seen it and we can get it. Homeland, the star is Claire Danes, I don’t know she works something, I think, I wouldn’t hold me to this, something about anti-terrorism and there’s an episode where she comes to Lebanon and she goes to a district called Hamra which means red. This district has bars and restaurants, the streets are lined with red brick, it’s a beautiful area, we hang out there. It’s coffee shops, it’s like a fun … and it’s nightlife.
Beirut is crazy for nightlife, we’re known for it. Just as much as the Mediterranean, we’re known for our nightlife and in that scene, in particular, Claire Danes are veiled, which is not necessary, you don’t get veils at the airport like some countries. It’s not necessary, you can choose and she’s definitely veiled and the road is dusty and there are men in tanks, also wearing this traditional dress and there are no roads, it looks like dirt. All the women, including her, she looks scared but she’s a white woman and she looks Lebanese. Claire Danes look like she could be Lebanese. People around her though, the women around her, darker skin, veiled in black sometimes and are always running and scared and it’s just … I’ve never seen this image here in Lebanon, ever. Especially in Hamra which is the district, they were talking about in Beirut, so I find that really strange.
As far as women being empowered, I think in Lebanon is the same as everywhere else, honestly. I’m still teaching the men that I love and tell them that like, “Yes, every woman that I know has been through this kind of encounter.” Or, “Yes, on a daily basis we face some kind of harassment, however much you want to put it on the spectrum.” A lot of them are really, really surprised and it’s the same here, it’s just that we don’t have, right now, the resources or the capabilities, or we’re just beginning to open that conversation. Since it is a sensitive conversation and it’s happening now in the States as well with Me Too, with the backlash that’s happening. We’re about 10 years behind, so imagine the backlash in a sensitive topic.
There are some amazing women here that are doing amazing work but there are in an environment that I believe is about 10 years behind the States. Europe also. Europe isn’t as forward-thinking as the States and even in the United States. I’ve been reading so much commentary on Me Too and on Time’s Up, it’s still … we need a lot of education and I never like to be reactionary, I never like to be excluding anybody from the conversation because I find every conversation, there’s an opportunity to teach or to learn and to ask why. Like, “Why is that person asking this particular question as to why didn’t she leave the room? Or why didn’t she just stop this from happening?” Those are questions we need to ask and then get to the root of them so we understand the movement as a cultural change.
Yes and a cultural change.
Right, but to even arrive at that conversation there needs to be the idea that this is a culture.
Yeah.
That rape culture exists, that objectifying women, this is a culture and that takes time and that takes a lot of activism and a lot of work.
I’m really excited to dive deeper into this conversation with you. We do have to take a quick break. Before we go to break, can you tell everybody where they can find out more about you and about your work?
Oh sure, yeah. So Fade In, I opened it when I moved here in 2011. Actually, officially it opened in 2014. We do writing workshops here, we do work on creative consciousness which means helping people find their own creativity, tapping into their own voices. This has been amazing with all the female writers that I’ve been working with, so these themes are popping up for sure and always, so I love that. Our website is called fadeinbeirut.com and yeah, you can check us out there and all of the work and what we do.
Awesome, so fadeinbeirut.com, check it out. We’ve been talking with Nadia Tabbara about a cross-cultural conversation on gender and empowerment. More when we get back, stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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