By Jad Abou Serhal – Staff Writer
She grew up under missiles, hoping that every tribulation would only write her a stronger story for what is to come hereafter. She was raised under the influence of the patriarchy, only to become a human definition of feminism. Reclaiming motherhood from those who spelled it out for her, she wrote her story and fit it into the lives of the generation she raised at home. Reclaiming society’s ideology of femininity, she became an educator who broke the glass ceiling for several generations of women to come.
Her last name was Kabrita, Arabic for match–and the flame was inside of her. The second of three daughters, she refused to follow the trend of eloping in exchange for a life of being a financially supported housewife. That was not the kind of mother she wanted to be. The stronger the war got, the brighter the flame was for her to make it out of the country. Her family was unable to support her education, her mother confined to the house and her father reduced to selling chicken on the road over periods of truce.
“For the most part I only remember war and messy stuff. Messy “yaane” running from one place to another, escaping unpleasant situations. There were years where we had to flee in refuge to schools because the areas we lived in were bombarded. To wrap up, it was not a nice experience environment. I don’t really have clear memories, but I do know it’s a very dark period of the past that… I don’t like it.”
One scholarship after the other, she climbed her way up to a Master’s degree, which opened a door for her to pursue a PhD in the United States.
“I applied for scholarships and got full ones. Same thing when I got to graduate school. I had an assistantship, and same for when I went to the US. I also had to work in a teaching assistant post both before and after I traveled. This also helped, or else I wouldn’t have afforded going”.
Along the way, she found love.
His last name was Daou, Arabic for light–and she lit the flame. She fell in love with an officer, tied by occupation to the homeland she tried to escape. Her ambition to carve a name for herself, rather than passively take on that of a man who did it for her, forbade her from succumbing to the patriarchy. The light believed in her so much that he wouldn’t let her put out her own flame either, not in the name of society.
At the end of the day, there could be no light without a match. After their engagement, she took her burning flame with her to the United States, tied by a ring to an officer who waited six long years for her back home. Away from her folks and fiancé, she earned her family’s first ever title–a woman who had earned her family’s first ever title.
“I wanted to get my doctorate degree. It was definitely fueled by the desire to get out of Lebanon. There were so many things that supported that, mainly that the doctorate degree program at AUB closed during the war. So I didn’t have that option to start with, plus “inno ana” I always worked towards leaving the country.”
From then on, it was Doctor Kabrita to society. A woman who wrote her own story over the handwriting of those who transcribed a certain life for her.
Unfortunately, the patriarchy still managed to pull her by the leg. As she was a signature away from becoming a US citizen, background noise called her back to what used to be home. Society had given her a six-year grace period to fulfill her dreams, but there was a catch: “It was time she became a wife”. It was the only time she had succumbed to the pressure of society’s stereotypical expectations of womanhood, and she made sure it would be the last.
Their last name became Kabrita Daou and light finally met the match after six years. She came back a brighter flame, the light waiting for her to walk down the aisle as a doctor in white, except this time it wasn’t her lab coat. To her tough luck, the walk had to be postponed due to the death of a loved one–a time she could have spent working on her US papers. A time she had lost, all due to her mistake of falling for the patriarchy’s trap. She felt as though being able to do all what she did was too good to be true, and that she had suffered the consequences.
“For staying, my husband was working in the ISF, he was bound to Lebanon. As for the nationality, I simply needed to complete my 6th year in the US, and I was half-way there, but I had to come back as soon as I got my degree to marry my fiancée. However, the wedding got postponed for a year due to the passing of a family member. So overall, the nationality thing just did not work out.”
Through redefining motherhood, however, she found purpose once again. With that, she was back to being stuck in her country, not as a married woman, but a woman who was married. A woman who had placed a chair for herself among all the men in the workforce.
The lit flame slowly spread. She became a mother of many children; two of them biological, and the others, students across several consecutive generations. She worked two simultaneous shifts, as a college professor in class and a teacher of life at home. However, despite the war being over, it was as though her story was a broken record.
“When I came from the US, I thought it was over because I didn’t understand the political play back then, but it was just a refractory period. It is a mechanism that has been going on for ages… recurrent but growing in amplitude.”
She came back to a seemingly peaceful Lebanon, up until history was re-winded. An economic crisis hit her family, but it wasn’t strong enough to break the foundation she had built for herself, her family, and eventually her country. She became the breadwinner of the house, as the country mistreated those who fought for it, namely her husband. The woman, however, kept on fighting on behalf of Lebanon’s citizens. She carried her own children on one shoulder and the future of other families on the other. Not only did she have to manage making her children’s dreams come true amid all roadblocks, but also had to guide students through their careers to be able to help their families overcome the crisis. Just like she had the opportunity to learn and find independence, she was committed to pass that opportunity on to her students, many of which were also mothers sitting across form her in class.
She, to this day, has been passing her flame on to generations of young, liberated minds for 24 years. She interpreted motherhood as an opportunity to find a purpose of her own, one that she can inspire her own children through, but the mother inside of her did not let her stop there. Raising minds became a mission of hers, whether at home or in a classroom. With that, chapters can only ever be added to a story like hers. A story that reclaims motherhood in a context of patriarchy and redefines it through the eyes of a working mother to her children and people.