Zainab Salbi's Between Two Worlds: A First Hand Account

Abstract

Zainab Salbi, an Iraqi American writer and social activist, a co-founder and president of Women for Women International, moved to the United States at the age of twenty. The paper aims to present Salbi's firsthand experiences with the Iran–Iraq War which have sensitized her to the plight of women in the war torn countries. She has written and spoken extensively on all forms of violence against women during the war. Salbi's Between Two Worlds (2005) is an autobiographical account narrating her painful story of emergence from a victim of community pressures to a global activist. The memoir speaks of a tyrant through the eyes of a child, a rebellious teenager, a violated wife and further. Growing under the gaze of Saddam Hussein, as a daughter of a ‘chosen' personal pilot of the oppressor, Salbi lets the torrent of vividly recalled memories flow out in her text.