Rana Sweis

Arts Review

Syria’s Women Prisoners

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This is Hiam, a 65-year-old woman smoking a cigarette and sipping matteh, a warm herbal drink popular in Syria. It is a moment of solitude in a soul-crushing place; the bed is a prison bed. Hiam spent two and a half years in prison, most likely for the simple reason that she came from an area that rebelled against President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The artist who drew her, Azza Abo Rebieh, was one of 30 women sharing a cell with Hiam in the Adra prison in Damascus. Then 36, Ms. Abo Rebieh was on her own surreal journey through the Syrian security system, detained because of her art and her activism.

Ms. Abo Rebieh’s artwork, from the start of Syria’s uprising in 2011, held up a mirror to a society in turmoil. Risking arrest, she painted graffiti murals about the protest movement. After security forces cracked down and some in the opposition took up arms, she helped smuggle food and medicine to people displaced by fighting.

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Rana Sweis Articles

Arts Review

In Conversation With Mary Beard

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There are some reading experiences that make me gasp with horrified recognition on every page. Mary Beard’s new book, Women & Power, is one of them. Composed of two lectures that the Cambridge classicist gave at the British Museum, it contains her thoughts on women in public and in politics, from Medusa to Merkel.

I met up with her in D.C. while she was in town to give a lecture at the Embassy of Italy. We sat in overstuffed armchairs next to a massive fireplace in the lobby of her hotel. While two little boys chased each other around the lobby, shrieking in French, we talked for over an hour about what it takes to fight misogyny and the future of women in the public sphere.

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