As I turned 40, and after I moved in Beirut to a certain area, I witnessed more and more how inequality and social pressure dominates women, men and children’s lives. This work is also a recording of my own body clock, as I witness time and over again women faced with oppressive systems. Hence, the hours of the day in Arabic – (to each hour in Arabic, there is a name), are also embroidered carefully on the upper tent sides.

At 40, I became more aware, whilst earlier I didn’t want to accept these facts. Thus, I made these tents loosely after a tent that belonged to Mohammad Shah in Iran, that was a ceremonial tent initially. But to me, my tents funciton as breathing libraries, whereby you can enter to read a selection of women’s stories, defying a system of inequality and war conditions, whilst keeping some humor and strong position. Among those stories that I collected, are some belonging to my mother for instance, and others told and lived by friends and neighbours.

I sometimes wrote a story, after I witnessed what has happened. With one of the women, we were able to write the story together, and with two of the women, they wrote their own story after I asked them to do so, because I think their story deserves to be preserved, such as in the case of Rana, and since she’s also a writer.

However I wrote all the stories in the first pronoun, to personify them, and I kept them very short, so that the spectator can read them, and enjoy what is embroidered on the upper parts of the tent.

The embroidered elements are decorative interlace that I made up after my own body parts, and others are from my drawings of aninmals that belong to certain areas in Lebanon and are endangeroured, and I wanted to have them on the tent, because they were also mentionned in one of the stories. On one tent we have animals that run usually in the mountains, and on the other tent we have sea animals found in the mediterranean on the Lebanese shores. 

Women in those stories, dare to transform from victims to active members provoking change in their environement, no matter how small, because they did not just accept how things are “supposed to be”. 

Until today, we carry the heavy weight of a patriarchal approach in all details of our quotidians in Lebanon, in Syria and in the Arab world, also in the West in my opinion. Change comes from recording stories defying that system. At least for me, this is how I can proceed for now.