Salwa Jarrah

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Salwa Jarrah سلوى جراح
Jarrah in 2015
Personal details
Born	1946 Haifa, Mandatory Palestine
Alma mater	Al-Hikmah University (BA)

Salwa Jarrah (born 1946 in Haifa) is a Palestinian broadcaster and author known best for her work with BBC Arabic.

Early life

Jarrah was born in Haifa to a Palestinian family from Akka in 1946. As a result of the large-scale exodus of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba, Jarrah grew up in Basra, Iraq. Her father, Zanoun Anis Jarrah, worked in the petroleum industry in Palestine and Iraq and published the book, My Country, My Family, and I, in which he recounted the history of Akka and the Jarrah family. According to Jarrah, her father maintained the dream of returning home to Akka throughout his life and was buried with "a handful of Akka's soil under his cheek."

Jarrah graduated with bachelor's degree in English Literature from Al-Hikmah University in Baghdad.

Career

After graduating from university, Jarrah worked as a translator for the Iraq Petroleum Company and the Iraqi Radio and Television Corporation. She subsequently joined the BBC Arabic Service in 1977, where one of her first pieces covered the death of Elvis Presley. During her time at the BBC, Jarrah made significant contributions as a broadcaster and program-maker, eventually rising to the position of senior producer in 1989, a position she held until her retirement in 1999. She was responsible for creating and presenting a wide range of programs, including Question and Answer, Oasis, and Listeners' Forum. Through her work, Jarrah was aquatinted with the prominent Syrian poet and diplomat Nizar Qabbani.

As a budding talent in the late 1970s, Jarrah emerged as a pioneering female figure in Arab broadcasting, and her time in the BBC Arabic Service coincided with a shift toward the greater representation of women in broadcasting in the Arab world. Indeed, Salwa Jarrah, along with other pioneering female Arab broadcasters such as Madiha Rashid Al-Madfai and Huda Al-Rasheed, is credited for helping establish a precedent for women in the Arab world to get into the fields of broadcasting, journalism, and radio. In 1994, Jarrah produced the first BBC sex education program under United Nations sponsorship. In the 20 series program, titled, About Sex Frankly, Jarrah traveled to five Arab countries and gave platforms to medial professionals and academics to discuss sexual issues and engage in conversations often considered taboo in the Arab world. In 2018, Jarrah participated in a BBC program commemorating the 80th anniversary of BBC Arabic.

Books

Jarrah has written several Arabic-language novels, most notably, Rocks on the Shore, Insomnia (Beirut: Dar Al-Intishar Al-Arabi, 2009), and The Fifth Season, which draws upon her broadcasting experiences. Her first novel, Chapter Five, published in 2005, was based loosely on her own life and tells the story of a Aida Oran, an Iraqi working in broadcasting. Her subsequent novel, Beach Rocks, published in 2007, describes the story of a Palestinian boy in the city of Akka, the "city of the Jarrah family," in the early 20th century, evoking themes of loss, dispossession, and displacement. Some of Jarrah's more recent works include Without Two Shores (2012), A Picture Still in Water (2014), and Narrow Doors (2016).

References

This article "Salwa Jarrah" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Salwa Jarrah. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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