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As salaamu ‘alaikum and hello to you all!

I’m Ethar and even though my name has been on the list of contributors for over a month now, I’ve been in Yemen for the past six weeks so this is my very first post.

I’m very happy to join the MMW team as their Arabic speaking ‘Middle East correspondent.’ I am a Saudi born, Egyptian raised and western educated 21 year old.

I graduated from the American University in Cairo with a degree in Business Administration and a minor in Arab and Islamic Civilization almost two years ago. I’m back at university now pursuing two masters degrees: an MBA and an MA in journalism.

I work as a staff writer in the leading current affairs magazine in the region, and I love to write. In fact, I would go so far as to say I have diarrhea of the mouth sometimes 🙂

I don’t have a lot of free time, and what little of it I have is usually spent stuck in traffic. But when I do find a spare hour or two, I’ll usually be reading (I’m a confessed bookaholic) or watching a bollywood movie (though that needs three hours).

I’m very much into ‘women’s issues’ (though I dislike using that term) and I’m a member of the BuSSy project, an organization which aims to raise awareness about women’s rights. Zeynab has actually written about us in this post, and I was the “young woman looking defiantly into the audience” mentioned in the article.

Egypt and its neighboring countries are at a very crucial stage when it comes to the place women occupy in their societies (and when it comes to other things too, but we won’t go into them!) There are lot of issues to talk about and a lot of things going on, so please share what you’d most like for me to discuss.

I look forward to blogging, and I hope you enjoy my posts!