The female writer and art critic, whose right of practical achievement of a literary nature was wronged, was known by many titles such as “the poet’s wife” or “the poet’s niece”.
Mrs. Rana Kabbani, the daughter of the Syrian Ambassador Sabah Qabbani, was born in Damascus in 1958.
Mrs. Kabbani grew up in Damascus and moved between several cities such as (London, New York, Jakarta, and Washington) due to her father’s work as an ambassador and diplomat. [1]
She was influenced by the cultural and literary background rooted in her family, starting with her maternal grandmother Salwa Ghazi, a pioneering feminist, her father, an ambassador to the United States of America, to her paternal uncle Nizar kabbani, and considering the period her generation lived in the year “1967”, it was anticipited how her literary and artistic thought would come out.
Mrs. Kabbani has always loved and pursued knowledge, and has practiced writing and reading since she was little.
On the Arabic level, she favoured poetry, whether it was classical or modern poetry, as for the English literature, she was fond of the literature of English women writers of the nineteenth century, and completed reading her first English novel “Jane Eyre”, by Charlotte Brontë at the age of nine. [2]
She began high school in Indonesia when she moved there with her family – during her father’s work there as an ambassador- and returned to Damascus to finish it.
She married – on short notice- the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish since Mrs. Kabbani loved modern poetry, especially the Palestinian poets, on top of them was Mahmoud Darwish, but their marriage did not last long, as they got divorced twice, the last was in 1978.
Many years later, she got married to the British journalist Patrick Seale and had two children. [2]
Mrs. Kabbani applied to study at Jesus college, Cambridge University in 1984, and she was among the first women to be accepted into this university, she suffered from the discrimination for being a woman and an Arab, but that only motivated her, she submited her doctoral thesis entitled “Europe’s Myths of Orient”, which later was published as a book, in which she defended Arabs, their civilization and culture. [2]
She wrote another book entitled “Letter to Christendom”, and had many articles published in Arabic and foreign newspapers such as “Al-Quds”. [2]
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Georgetown University, and she studied at the American University of Beirut. [1]
Mrs. Rana Kabbani said in an interview: “When I entered to defend my doctoral thesis, there were two great and well-known professors, One of them was shocked and said: “You are white! we thought you were black…”, and this kind of clash between me and Westerners was good for me, because I learned how to converse with negative Westerners, which is something every Arab should learn.” [2]
This strong and confident woman has the right to be remembered when mentioning Arab female writers and literary scholars, being the one whose generation’s vulnerabilities form ravages of wars and crises nor constant travel stopped her from pursuing knowledge, not even her divorce from Mahmoud Darwish, which, today, is considered as a stumbling block for many women in their personal career paths.
♀️ Uplifting Syrian Women Initiative aims at sustainable peace building in Syria through targeting women and providing them with free online courses, workshops, discussion sessions and trainings, with a view to achieving the goals of Gender Equality, Quality Education and Decent Work and Economic Growth, which all fall into the interest of society as a whole and serve the purpose of rebuilding it.