I have George Bush Sr and Saddam Hussein to thank for meeting Barbie. It was 1991 and rallies against the US bombing of Iraq were raging in Australia and around the world.
As an Arab feminist born in southern Lebanon who grew up in white suburbia north-west of Sydney, I had long identified with the underdog.
One day I went to the Sydney Town Hall to stand among the thousands protesting against the futile war. Behind me stood a group of women carrying a banner which read: “Jewish Women for an Independent Palestine”.
“Are you for real?” I asked them. This brazen question would change my life.
Barbie was among the group that day – but I was far more interested in the banner she was holding. In any case, I was married to a man, so romance with a woman was the last thing on my mind.
At the time, Barbie was setting up a Sydney iteration of Women in Black, an anti-occupation Palestinian solidarity group which started in Israel in 1987. I soon became heavily involved. We were a mix of Jews, Arabs and Anglo Australian women who’d meet monthly in public places around the city, dressed in black, and hold silent vigils (although we’d usually hold the banner in front of our faces so we could talk behind the sign – you couldn’t shut us up).
A year later, I found myself single, free and still angry with the state of the world. I’d also developed a few fruitless crushes on women. One night in mid-1993, I went out dancing with a woman I’d been chasing for a while but she fobbed me off. I awoke the next morning feeling annoyed, hungover and tired.
A dozen members of Women in Black were gathering at my place later that day for lunch and a planning meeting. Around 10am there was a surprise knock at the door. Barbie was standing there looking fresh and eager after walking across two suburbs to my place. I knew her from Women in Black meetings but we didn’t socialise and weren’t friends. “I thought you might need help setting up,” she said.
As we prepared food together, Barbie sensed the state I was in and asked if I was OK. Suddenly I was pouring my heart out about the woman I’d been chasing. Barbie counselled me: “Look, if you want to have a relationship with a woman, you don’t want to have it with someone who isn’t sure about their sexuality. You need to get yourself a proper lesbian.”
Later that day, as the group sat on my lounge room floor, I noticed Barbie was leaning against the sharp edge of my stereo cabinet. I grabbed a cushion and placed it behind her back. She held my hand for a split second to thank me, and in that electric moment, something in me shifted. “Oh my god, your hands are so soft!” I exclaimed. And through that small gesture, Barbie was no longer just a political comrade but someone I could see my future with.
Later that evening as everyone started to leave, all I secretly wanted was for her to stay, but a friend insisted on hanging around to give Barbie a lift home.
A couple of weeks later Barbie and I crossed paths again at a talk given by a Palestinian official. It was a packed room and he wasn’t saying anything we didn’t already know. I turned to Barbie and whispered: “Let’s get out of here and get a meal.”
We wandered to a nearby Spanish restaurant and sat in the back corner against the brick wall. It was the first time Barbie and I had been out together where there was no politics involved, no gatekeepers, nothing. Just me and her.
Days later, we went on our first proper date, to see the film Like Water for Chocolate. I felt extremely nervous and self-conscious. The film receded into the background as we held hands in the dark cinema. We went back to her place and ate breakfast together the next morning.
Coming out to family and friends about my sexuality was far harder than telling them Barbie was Jewish. In fact, her being Jewish was not an issue at all for my family.
Our relationship has been described as a political marriage. Now, with the ongoing war in Gaza, the past 10 months have been challenging, but it has also strengthened our relationship.
More than three decades on, we’re still attending anti-war rallies side by side – and eating breakfast together.
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