Nourah Lababidi

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” 

― Rumi

From the mountains of Syria to waves of Australia. A story of combatting gendered oppression, domestic violence and a love unmatched.

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We meet on a surfer’s dream day; glassy blue waves peel easily in the distance, as the chorus of the rainforest hums around us. We sit on a fallen log watching the surfers of Gentlemen’s Hour meander down toward the shore. As in this town, there are always two or more ways you have a connection to someone. I first met Nourah through my work, where she’d put her hand up to mentor young Indigenous students in town, we are surf friends and she’s been a much loved friend to my partner from long before me. 

There are so many facets to her deep, and intricate life, leaving me at a stand still to begin collating the tapestry of her array of experiences. Nourah’s story criss-crosses countries, continents, cultural and gender barriers. However, amongst all the different versions and threads that make up her story, a youthful exuberance underpins her being. She laughs so unencumbered. So freely. As Persian, Sufi poet Rumi says, ‘you are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop’. He could be speaking of Nourah. I have deep thankfulness to Nourah, for all the women she has lifted out of the dark, for her lightness and for reminding me, there will always be joy when you have the Ocean. 

Nourah’s Story

Through Syria, Cairo, Beirut, Australia and Berlin her story winds. Nourah was born in Damascus, the capital of Syria. Her mother Armenian, and her father Syrian. She went to an American international high school in Egypt. During this time, on the 6th Day of the Week, her mother sent her and her siblings to Armenia school to ensure the children did not lose touch with their maternal culture. We speak briefly of the sad and complex history of the country and Nourah says how she now feels she is losing her Armenian. When speaking with her mother; ‘I could understand but the words were not coming out, I know what it is but I can’t say it. I’m slowly losing it’. After finishing school, at 21 Nourah, her mother and a handful of relatives, relocated to Sydney. Her father remained in Syria, too old to travel. 

Through a series of fortuitous and unlikely events, she has found herself in our small, regional town. Nearing her eighth year here in Australia, she is on the road to becoming a Clinical Psychologist, having just been accepted into her Masters in Psychology. However, Nourah also works at the Women's Domestic Violence center in town, often playing the role of an unintended translator. Speaking with me, she recalls being asked to translate for a woman from Iraq, Arabic, the lingua franca. In this frequent role, she finds a new complexity we often overlook in modern psychology and treatment. She says to me, ‘the word for trauma just does not exist in that language’. The culture and the concepts don’t have a vocabulary.

Nourah is fervent in supporting women out of domestic and family violence. Each week, she goes to community gatherings of refugee women and sits amongst them. She listens, and floats casually. Little by little, women have confided in her of the domestic violence they are experiencing, something often seen as shameful and embarrassing against the backdrop of their more conservative cultures. Frequently, Nourah is the first and only point of contact for these women. The first to protect them and the first to advocate for them. I ask her why she does this work. What is it about psychology and women’s rights that she has been drawn to? ‘I am fighting for women’s rights one way or another in my work. Sometimes I think back to what it's like at home, and where we are in terms of women’s rights in Australia is up here, where people in Syria are like a 2’. The sexual harassment she witnessed and experienced in her younger life was normalised and silenced. She says, ‘I’ve been sexually harassed [like] so many times. It’s just not something that you talked about. ‘You can wear shorts in Lebanon and Syria but they will harass you in Egypt’. Nourah recalls situations in her past where any personal autonomy and individual sovereignty were disregarded. I ask her, if having experienced and seen a life like this is what has made her choose this path. She says, ‘100%, definitely. I have some way to control things here whereas in the Middle East, it’s so hard’. She speaks with a sincerity and purpose that is captivating, a rarity. Pausing for a moment, I then allow our last topic to settle a bit. Speaking of the daily occurrences and unappreciated severity of the sexual and gendered oppression women experience in countries of her childhood can be alot. We sit and watch someone ride a clean, slow wave.

A Sense of Home I am fortunate to have such a deep and unwavering connection to a sense of ‘home’. I write about this in my first article, and how this is something I acknowledge others are not so fortunate to feel. I ask Nourah where feels like ‘home’. She says, looking to the Ocean, ‘this is home….’ But, ‘home’ is complex. Living in Syria until she was 10, a part of her has a home in Syria; ‘when I think of Syria I think a sense of belonging. Egypt, I feel a sense of belonging’ however, ‘here [our town] is a place I feel closest to home. Because in this town, I experience that sense of community, it is really important to me and a big part of my culture’. My favourite book, Ancient Futures, documents the life of a rural community of late 90s Tibet. The author notes, ‘as part of a close knit community, people feel secure enough to be themselves’, essential to the security a sense of ‘home’ should bring. It surprises me, but Nourah says she experienced more racism in Sydney than she ever has in our country town. On arriving here, she comments, ‘I was walking down the beach and everyone was smiling at me and saying ‘Hi’, and ‘good morning’ and I was like why, are you ok?’ Cities are complex. To me, they promise to offer opportunity, multiculturalism and acceptance yet they are at risk of breeding a narrowness of mind and isolation, a symptom of the erosion of close knit communities. Anthropologist Dunbar’s and his ‘famous’ number, a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships- 150, extends to cities as well. Once a business grows beyond 150 employees, personal ties are harder to maintain, cities beyond 150 000 begin to lose their interconnectedness and the clarity of our interbeing. And thus explains, Nourah didn’t feel a part of the community in Sydney. An immense pride swells in me for my hometown. However, it is beyond the community and the people that Nourah finds her home here. There has always been something of Nourah that feels called to a life lived in sync with Nature. In Syria, Nourah says, ‘we had a home in the mountains and I loved going there, everytime we would go there, I would think like this is my place’. It calmed her. For someone who has spent almost their whole life away from the water, she has taken to the ocean instinctively. Nourah glides across the water, on moody days, her laughter being heard across the lineup.

Alot about this regional living, what to them seems an isolated and disconnected life, her family cannot understand. Another part of who Nourah is that pulls at the conservative apron strings of her culture, is her relationship with Samarah. Nourah has been with her partner Samarah for close to two years now. They are so complementary. Nourah says,

‘I told them [her family] I was seeing a girl last year and they stopped talking to me for six months’.

‘It’s very odd’, who she is compared to her culture. She says, ‘before, it was alot of, [being told] you need to get married….’ to follow a traditional route, now she sees them coming around. They are learning and growing from their unapologetically confident Nourah.

The deep red of pomegranate seeds sit on a bed of white yoghurt, as we sit around a table covered with dishes tradition of the Middle East, laughing. Nourah has spent all day in the kitchen preparing a feast for a small group of friends. She loves it. Cooking and food connects her to her culture. Looking to Nourah across the table, I see that with her, she brings a carefree, youthful exuberance many of us have lost. Despite the repressive and systematically suffocating forces she has had to wade through she finds the joy in dancing on the water, and laughs so unencumbered. If we could all bring a little more of Nourah’s child-like wonder, selflessness and humility to the world, it would be a much happier place.  ‘Toutes les grandes personnes ont d'abord été des enfants. (Mais peu d'entre elles s'en souviennent)“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.” …..