Emily Nasrallah

Emily Daoud Abi Rached was born in the small village of Kaukaba,[4] and raised in al-Kfeir (at the western foot of Mount Hermon in southern Lebanon) on 6 July 1931 to Loutfa, née Abou Nasr and her husband Daoud Abi Rached. The eldest of six children, she grew up working in the village fields with her parents; an experience that would have later echoes in her writings. She watched the village emptying and family members emigrating in search for greener pastures especially that the village offered feeble educational and professional prospects.[5]

Kfeir's public school only received students at the age of six but the four-year-old's passion for learning drove her to eavesdrop on the classes, the school being adjacent to her parental home. She used to recite the poems and stories she heard to her father and his friends.[6][2]

Her maternal uncle, Ayub Abou Nasr, a fellow of the New York Pen League took special interest in her education when he returned from emigration due to a neurological illness. He quickly recognized her talent and encouraged her learning through, for example asking her to write descriptive essays of Mount Hermon to broaden her imagination and further her writing skills.[6][7]

After finishing her studies at the elementary public school of the village which only offered education till the third elementary grade at that time,[5]

Nasrallah wrote a letter to her second maternal uncle, an expatriate businessman in West Virginia, expressing her interest in pursuing higher education and explaining her family's dire financial circumstances that prevented her from paying private schooling fees. Her uncle granted her wish and paid for her tuition.

She left her hometown when she was sixteen years of age to pursue her education at the Choueifat National College, a boarding school in the suburbs of Beirut.[6][8]

She studied in the Choueifat school for four years, during this period her passion for literature deepened as she became an avid reader.[6] She compensated for the absence of a library in her hometown with spending many hours at the Choueifat school library;[5] since she had no resources to buy books, she smuggled Mikha'il Na'ima and Khalil Gibran books – which would influence her writing career greatly – from the college library in order to read them illicitly in her bed. Her fondness of reading was ever-growing, she admitted enjoying the 'interesting reading material' found in the journal and magazine shreds that enveloped dragées and other sweets.[6]

Nasrallah credited Nassim Nasser, her Arabic language teacher, for helping to develop her writing skills and orienting her through his "red correction pen harsh criticism". He was the first to publish her writings in the Telegraph, a local Beirutine magazine, in 1949 and 1950; he also encouraged and selected her to participate in composition and rhetoric contests.[6]

After graduation, Nasrallah's parents wanted her to come back to Kfeir and teach at the village school as they did not wish for her to live alone in the city; she decided otherwise and came back to Beirut where she tutored Edvique Shayboub's[nb 1][9] children. Edvique, editor in chief of Sawt al Mar'a (Woman's voice) magazine, offered her the opportunity to publish articles in her magazine and encouraged her to settle in Beirut.

In 1955, Amal Makdessy Kortas (director of the Ahliah school) offered Nasrallah a job and lodging at the school in Wadi Abu Jamil; she taught for two hours daily at the school where Hanan al-Shaykh had been her pupil.[8] She fell short of paying her college education tuition and was financially aided by her friend and colleague at the Ahlia school, Jalila Srour.

She also tutored, wrote magazine articles in Sawt al Mar'a and lent her voice to the national radio (al-itha'a al-lubnaniyya) to repay her debt to Jalila[6] and pay for her college education at the Beirut College for Women[8] and the American University of Beirut where she majored with a Bachelor of Arts in education and literature in 1958.[6][10]

In 1955, Nasrallah was introduced to Jacqueline Nahas, a journalist at as-Sayyad publishing house and started her 15 years long career at as-Sayyad (the hunter) magazine writing in the society news section; she also contributed articles to Al Anwar newspaper.[6][11] Between 1973 and 1975, she worked as cultural and public relation consultant at the Beirut University College before joining Fayruz magazine from 1981 till 1987 as a feature editor.[11]

Emily married Philip Nasrallah, a chemist from Zahleh in 1957 while still in college. The couple had four children: Ramzi, Maha, Khalil, and Mona.[10] She never left Beirut, even at the peak of the Lebanese civil war, she became one of the Beirut Decentrists.[8][nb 2]

• Al Walad (The Child)

2020

• Al Makan (The Place) autobiography of early childhood. 2018