Describe the women who have most influenced your life and the formation of your character.

My mom has definitely given me a lot of guidance. She is one of the first women in her hometown in Libya to actually learn how to drive, which I thought was amazing. When she married my father in the 1950s, she was uprooted from her country. She's Palestinian. When my father went back to Palestine for a visit, he was looking for a wife, which was what most people did at that time. He saw my mom walking down the street and it was all arranged. She moved to Libya with him, and that was hard because she wasn't prepared to do that. It came suddenly.

And then, after living in Libya for twenty-two years, we came here. It was a whole new environment again. When we came here, we actually lived closer to her family who had already emigrated to California. For twenty-two years she had lived away from them and she wanted to really get back, to bond with them and enjoy time with them.

We immigrated when Khadafi came to power, and for non-Libyans, Palestinians who were living there, it was becoming really difficult. And we didn't have family there. Our family, those who had come from Palestine, was mainly here in California. We have such a large family that it wasn't hard to assimilate, because we had our family, and then we had our new community.

There was an organization – it's amazing – called the League of Arab-American Women. It's based in San Jose, and it has been active for nineteen years. My mom was one of the initial members of the organization. And it's amazing because it's all women. They invite men to some of the events, but not all the events. And that bond that they have with each other – I mean they have arguments and they have issues and they've got ideas – the fact that they're still together, and it's basically the same women that started it some twenty years ago, who are still involved to this year. As the generations multiply, there are new members, and the old members are still there.

Everyone's involved and you decide the amount of the time that you want to put into it. The League has kept my mom active, and has kept a lot of women in the South Bay very active. They have meetings once a month and they talk about nutrition or Arab issues, or whatever the case may be. There's a topic a month. And they also have an annual banquet where the proceeds go to a charity. And this past year the proceeds went to providing medicine for the children of Iraq. Living on the outside, you don't really see what's going on. Although you might think it's a minimal amount of money to pay to go to a party, that money helps someone else far away. It is tremendous.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Why or why not?

I think the word itself is a heavy word. I think there are some individuals who believe feminism is when women feel they're superior over men. And there's some people who feel, "Well, I get paid the same amount as the person next to me who's a male who's doing the same job, and I feel that's equality and that's feminism."

I don't agree with women being superior. I think equality is the key word, and that's why it's a very difficult word. There are a lot of people that take it beyond where it needs to be taken. And that's why I don't exactly go around saying I'm a feminist, per se, just because there are so many different interpretations of it. And unless you describe and really define what your definition is of feminism, then it doesn't mean very much to me. I believe that we, as women and men, need to have equality.

I grew up in a family of five kids, three boys and two girls, and there was a difference. It might not have been as great, living in America, for me as it was for my sister. But there was a difference. Growing up, my brother, who is three years older than I am, had more freedom. He was allowed to stay out later. It was okay for him to do whatever he wanted and not explain where he was going and why he was doing it. Whereas for me, it was, "Where are you going, what are you doing, when are you coming home?" And growing up, my mom used to wait for me at the edge of the stairs, and that was difficult. I couldn't understand it. And then she would tell me, and it was really funny, because she would say, "I'm not worried about you and what you might do that's wrong. I'm worried about the people around you." And I thought, "Well, the same thing could happen to my brother." And that was difficult. The double standard in my own family, in my own culture, makes me want to equalize everything.

How would you advise other women to go about finding their own voices?

When I was fourteen or fifteen, I had to do an English paper and I decided to do it on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It was my first exposure to what the conflict was really about. And I interviewed my father. My father is a refugee, he's an exiled Palestinian who was forced to leave in 1948. Just watching his eyes and his facial expression as he was telling me the stories that had happened really made me think about who I am and how important it is to continue being proud of who you are.

In 1948, his village was one of the 418 Palestinian cities and towns and villages that were forced out of the country. There were thirteen members of his family. They were all walking in the streets, and they saw people die. I think they walked for thirty-six hours straight, until they reached a town where my mom is from. For him to tell me the story of how people were actually left, some older people died on the way because they couldn't endure the walking. Infants were left on the streets because the parents couldn't carry more than one child, so they would leave one behind.

To me that was so inhumane that I said, "Okay, it's time for me to do something about my cultural background and my heritage and be proud of who I am." Another interesting event that happened after that in 1987, when I went to take my oath for my citizenship. I was speaking with my mother in Arabic, and the individual who worked there asked me what language I was speaking. And I told him, "I'm speaking Arabic." And I thought, "Uh, oh. Why is he asking, maybe he's not going to give me my citizenship." And he looked at me and he said, "You're an American now, but don't ever forget where you come from. And don't ever forget who you are and your heritage, because it's very important." And that has stuck with me ever since then.

How do you define success for yourself? How would you define success for the film festival?

The film festival is growing. It has been very successful. The first year was a shock to a lot of people, only because it was a new concept. It was well received by the Bay Area community, both American and Arab. This past year we showed about thirty-seven films, that includes shorts and documentaries and feature length, for a total of twenty-eight shows. In the past two years we averaged about twelve to fifteen shows.

I think our goal as a committee, and right now, there are three of us on the committee this year, is to continue introducing some great films. We are going to show a lot of films dealing with women’s issues. But we're also going to expand that and show older films, in addition to newer ones. People tend to identify themselves with more recent images than older ones. But there are a lot of older films that are fifty years old that I see on TV that still need to be shown. And they have been shown, but in the Arab community, and not necessarily in the American community.

We will expand to Los Angeles one day, and we will expand to Boston. We've had requests; so there are more avenues that the festival can travel down. The support that we've received from the Bay Area community has just been tremendous, and that's what keeps us going. Several films that we show might not necessarily be positive images, but they're realistic images. One of the films that we showed this past year was about oppressed Palestinian women, who, if they'd been raped, had been forced by their families to marry their rapist. These are not positive images, but they're realistic images that a lot of different countries around the world have to deal with.

We also try to show a variety of countries or represent but for some reason, and maybe this might be better answered by someone who knows a lot about the history of film, that there are certain countries that films just aren't being made. And that's a struggle that we would like to get more involved in, to try to find films that are from Somalia and from Sudan and from Oman. To get films about their culture and their heritage, because every country is different. There are different dialects within the Arab language itself, and traditions and cultural backgrounds.

What made you decide to pursue your work with the film festival?

The Arab Film Festival evolved two years ago. Three of us from the Arab Women Solidarity Association got together. One of the active members of AWSA had an idea about showing Arab films as a collection in an Arab cinema series in the Bay Area. Something that was probably thought of by many people, but never implemented. And the reason was, we all attended films: Arab-made films, either by Arabs from the Arab world, or Arab-Americans here in the Bay Area, and nationally. We attended films and saw some really great films at the International Film Festival here in the Bay Area, and realized that there was a need for an Arab film festival.

So we met together and we talked, discussing the strategies, but two out of the three of us didn't have the time. I decided that I thought it was a project that I really wanted to work on. So we drafted a letter that day encouraging volunteers to join us. And I just went out and solicited volunteers, funding, and interest from the community, both the Arab community and the American community. I did it just to see what kind of response Iíd get if we put together a film festival.

And the response was great. I went to different Arab-American organizations, meetings, events, board meetings, general membership meetings. I just devoted my time. Every night I went somewhere and solicited interested volunteers. And that's how it really started. We realized that there was a need for an Arab film festival, not necessarily limited by Arab issues, but also films that had been made by Arabs. Many of the films deal with women issues, and that was a key issue for us, because the Arab Women Solidarity Association is the umbrella organization behind the film festival.

What challenges have you dealt with at work or at home due to your gender? What benefits?

My brothers have supported me and encouraged me, and basically have helped me understand who I am. And it's a non-traditional Arab thing to do, for brothers. They are protective of me in the sense that they care about me. One of my brothers is always buying me books on Arab women.

My brothers are just very open minded. They think through what they believe in, and not necessarily what the culture forces them to believe in. And that makes a difference. It's like interpreting the Bible or the Koran. You can interpret it any way you want, and it could be negative or positive, but what you believe in is the most important thing. And my brothers and my sister believe in making sure that we think for ourselves and not let anyone else think for us.

The one thing that I think is important, as people and as women, is we need to treasure and love ourselves. My brothers encouraged me to accept who I am as a woman, and accept the fact that I had come from a very difficult culture, but that I can change it if I want to. And also the fact that they don't follow the traditions. I come from a religious Christian family, both of my parents are religious. And two of my brothers married Muslims. And by cultural standards, by Arab culture, you don't go against tradition. But it doesn't matter where you come from, it's who you are as an individual, and that's worked to help me find who I am. I'm still defining it. It's a lifelong process.

What woman, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with and why?

Susan B. Anthony. When I was growing up, reading history books, they didn't focus enough on positive women figures. Susan B. Anthony’s story is actually similar to mine because she came from a family that was very supportive of women issues. She didn’t just come out of the blue. I also come from a family that is very supportive. I wouldn't mind sitting down and just chatting with her about the difference in society now from the 1800s.