Fleeing Civil War in Yemen
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Documentary by junior Hangda Zhang highlights life of NU-Q student Mariam Al-Dhubhani.
Mariam Al-Dhubhani’s path to Northwestern University in Qatar began with a missile strike.
The civil war in her homeland, Yemen, began in 2015, but Al-Dhubhani, who is from Sana’a, initially thought she was safe from the violence that has since killed upward of 10,000 civilians. But when a missile struck a mountain near her family’s home, the war became impossible to ignore.
“I just wanted to leave,” Al-Dhubhani says. “I had no other thoughts in my head.”
Al-Dhubhani, a first-year student at NU-Q, enjoyed making films when she lived in Yemen. She turned that skill into a ticket out. One of her films was a chalkboard animation about her homeland, and it caught the attention of a Qatari businesswoman who wanted to make a similar film about Qatar. Later, when the war escalated, the Qatari woman offered Al-Dhubhani a job in Doha and helped her move.
“Media allows me to express myself,” says Al-Dhubhani, who is married to a Georgetown University in Qatar student. “It is my way to rebel against social restraints put on women in my society.”
Hangda Zhang, a junior journalism and economics major who spent four months studying abroad at NU-Q, got to know Al-Dhubhani during her time in Doha. Zhang was fascinated by Al-Dhubhani’s experiences and decided to make her the subject of her first video in a series of short films on inspirational women.
“I got lucky,” says Zhang, “because I’d been wanting to do a series about women but hadn’t found a good first subject.”
Zhang has plans to profile other inspirational women. Her second video is about another student in Qatar, a Malaysian woman and aspiring politician who has created youth charities in nine countries. The third video, filmed after Zhang returned to Evanston, features Alaura Hernandez ’16 discussing her decision to undergo a preventative double mastectomy.
Zhang may find more subjects in Qatar when she returns to Doha for a summer internship at Al Jazeera.
