Rebecca Saab Saade

My journey with gender and sexuality began in 2005 as an avid blogger, which led me to Helem and Lebanon’s broader queer community. While taking ten years to complete my B.A. in biology at the Lebanese University, I became part of the founding teams of Meem (2008-2013), The Feminist Collective (2009-2010) – which later became Nasawiya – and Qorras (2014-2019). Translation found me out of necessity in 2009, and I haven’t stopped since. What started as survival evolved into a deeper engagement with Arabic language(s) – its forms, mutations, histories, and the diverse ways people relate to it. I lived in Cairo from 2012 until my unofficial expulsion in late 2015. Then came the Beirut port explosion on August 4, 2020. By late 2021, I found myself in Paris, where I restarted my academic studies in the history of science, focusing first on gender and sexuality, then on scientific colonization from the late 19th to early 20th century. These days, I spend my time getting lost in books, thinking through the complexities of movement building, writing ambitious projects I may (never) publish, and reclaiming my Arabic language – one word at a time.