A Middle East bikers’ club hits the road for women’s empowerment

The Women Riders World Relay (WRWR) is one of the largest global motorcycle events for female riders. (Supplied)
Updated 14 September 2019
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A Middle East bikers’ club hits the road for women’s empowerment

  • Arab motorcyclists turn sisterhood into a support system in a male-dominated sport
  • The Litas Dubai is the first ever chapter of the motorcycle collective in the Middle East

DUBAI: History was made in 2018, when women in Saudi Arabia were permitted to drive for the first time since 1957. As the world watched female motorists across the Kingdom celebrate, a less visible set of women also quietly stepped out of the shadows and revved up their engines. “Women were interested in motorbikes, but they couldn’t
ride openly in Saudi Arabia,” said Zahra AbuAli, founder of social media group Saudi Women Riders and co-founder of The Litas Khobar, a Saudi chapter of the international all-female motorcycle group The Litas.
“It was an underground scene. They used to wear baggy clothes, hide their hair under helmets, and ride at the center of (mixed) groups. Some girls have licenses from Bahrain, some have bikes but no licenses, and some ride with their husbands.”
AbuAli, a 28-year-old Saudi national, learnt to ride a motorbike last year while working in Dubai.
“I just wanted to try something new, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. Cars in Saudi were only a man thing, but that didn’t mean they’re made only for men,” she said.
The horsepower thrill was amplified when the biomedical engineer began to ride her Harley 883 Sportster with Lara Tarabay Saab, founder of The Litas Dubai, the first chapter of the motorcycle collective in the Middle East.
Saab, who is from Lebanon, said that she founded the group to alter perceptions and help female bikers find each other and ride together as a sisterhood.
“My vision is to make our community as women bikers in the Middle East visible to the world. I don’t want them to think of us in stereotypes,” she explained.
The Litas Dubai currently features 10 women from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Palestine, Morocco, Russia and the UAE. The group includes police officers, doctors, artists, engineers, management professionals and mothers.
“Thirteen years ago, if I stood anywhere with my bike, people would come and speak to me in English and be surprised when I answered in Arabic,” Roqayya Abdullateif, 37, said.
The Emirati police officer said that she mastered the handlebars simply by watching her brothers riding bikes. “I saw girls sitting in the back of the bike, and I said why not sit in the front?”
Saab, who initially rode as part of mixed groups in the UAE, said that she also formed the sisterhood as a support system in a male-dominated sport. “Our culture dictates a few things for us. Typical lady behavior wouldn’t be to be on a motorcycle, so it wasn’t easy (for me) at all.
“I was in Italy with my husband, and I wanted to ride a scooter. He said, ‘No, you can’t.’ When I’d ask him to teach me, he’d say ‘It’s very heavy, you can’t even lift it.
“This triggered a lot in me in terms of my sense of existence, freedom of choice and power.”
Saab, a mother of two and a marketing director, now cruises on a Sportster 1200cc, but her journey to this point involved attending 7 a.m. lessons before heading to work.
“I had to come to my husband to sign the form to give me approval … because I’m on his sponsorship,” she said. “He said it’s dangerous and that I should talk to my father first. (But) I said there’s no way I’m not doing this.”
Saab, who also co-founded The Litas Lebanon, is UAE ambassador for the Women’s International Motorcycle Association and Middle East ambassador for the Women Riders World Relay (WRWR).
“We have a lot of women who message us with questions about motorcycles or asking where we learnt to ride,” Saab said. Set to take place in Dubai in 2020, the WRWR is one of the largest global motorcycle events for female riders, created to raise awareness of women across all spheres of motorcycling. The UAE and Oman are the only Middle Eastern states included in the tour of 80 countries, with Dubai marked as the final destination. Saab and her pack are already holding information sessions for the event.
“This is for women’s empowerment because models who pose on bikes are not lady bikers,” she said.


This report is being published by Arab News as a partner of the Middle East Exchange, which was launched by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reflect the vision of the UAE prime minister and ruler of Dubai to explore the possibility of changing the status of the Arab region.


Monsoon-loving Indian expats chase rain in UAE desert

Updated 3 sec ago
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Monsoon-loving Indian expats chase rain in UAE desert

  • After Muhammed Sajjad moved from India to the United Arab Emirates a decade ago, he missed his native Kerala’s monsoon season, so he embarked on an unlikely quest: finding rain in the desert
SHARJAH: After Muhammed Sajjad moved from India to the United Arab Emirates a decade ago, he missed his native Kerala’s monsoon season, so he embarked on an unlikely quest: finding rain in the desert.
Using satellite imagery, weather data and other high-tech tools, the amateur meteorologist tracks potential rainfall spots across the desert country and, along with other Indians nostalgic for the monsoon season, chases the clouds in search of rain.
“When I came to UAE in 2015, in August, it... was peak monsoon time” in Kerala, the 35-year-old estate agent told AFP, adding that he had struggled to adjust to the change of climate.
“So I started to search about the rainy condition in UAE and I came to know that there is rain happening in UAE during peak summer,” he said, adding: “I started to explore the possibility to chase the rain, enjoy the rain.”
Each week, he forecasts when and where rain might fall and posts a suggested rendezvous to the 130,000 followers of his “UAE Weatherman” page on Instagram.
He regularly posts footage of his rain expeditions out into the desert, hoping to bring together “all rain lovers who miss rain.”
Last weekend, he headed out into the desert from Sharjah at the head of a convoy of about 100 vehicles.
But nothing is certain. The rain “may happen, it may not happen,” Sajjad said. But when it does, “it is an amazing moment.”


After driving in the desert for hours, the group arrived at the designated spot just as a downpour started.
The rain lovers leapt out of their vehicles, their faces beaming as the rain droplets streamed down their cheeks in a rare reminder of home.
“They feel nostalgic,” Sajjad said proudly.
Most UAE residents are foreigners, among them some 3.5 million Indians who make up the Gulf country’s largest expatriate community.
Despite the use of advanced cloud-seeding technology, the UAE has an average yearly rainfall of just 50 to 100 milliliters.
Most of it falls during short but intense winter storms.
“While long-term averages remain low, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events has been increasing and is due to global warming,” said Diana Francis, a climate scientist who teaches at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi.
In the summer, the country often gets less than five milliliters of rain, she said, usually falling away from the coastal areas where most of the population lives.
So rain-seekers must drive deep into the desert interior to have a chance of success.
An Indian expatriate, who gave her name only as Anagha and was on her first expedition into the desert last weekend, said she was “excited to see the rain.”
“All of my family and friends are enjoying good rain and good climate and we are living here in the hot sun,” she said.
The UAE endured its hottest April on record this year.
By contrast, April last year saw the UAE’s heaviest rains in 75 years, which saw 259.5 mm of rainfall in a single day.
Four people died and the commercial hub of Dubai was paralyzed for several days. Scientists of the World Weather Attribution network said the intense rains were “most likely” exacerbated by global warming.
“We couldn’t enjoy it because it was flooded all over UAE,” Anagha said. “This time we are going to see... rain coming to us in the desert.”

‘What wrong did he do?’ Gaza family mourn three-year-old shot dead

Updated 11 June 2025
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‘What wrong did he do?’ Gaza family mourn three-year-old shot dead

  • In Gaza, “There’s no hope or peace”

KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories: Gazan mother Amal Abu Shalouf ran her hand over her son’s face and hair, a brief farewell before a man abruptly sealed the body bag carrying the three-year-old who was killed just hours earlier on Tuesday.
“Amir, my love, my dear!” cried his mother, struggling to cross the crowded courtyard of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, where several bodies lay in white plastic shrouds.
According to the civil defense agency, at least nine people were killed on Tuesday in the southern Gaza Strip as Israeli forces carried out military operations, more than 20 months into the war triggered by Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel.
Contacted by AFP, the military did not respond to a request for comment about Amir Abu Shalouf’s death.
At the hospital, a man carried the boy’s body in his arms through a crowd of dozens of mourners.
“I swear, I can’t take it,” his teenage brother, Ahmad Abu Shalouf, said, his face covered in tears.
“What wrong did he do?” said another brother, Mohammad Abu Shalouf. “An innocent little boy, sitting inside his tent, and a bullet struck him in the back.”
Mohammad said he had “found him shot in the back” as he returned to the tent that has become the family’s home in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area near Khan Yunis that is now a massive encampment for displaced Palestinians.
The devastating war has created dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza, where the United Nations has warned that the entire population is at risk of famine.
The grieving mother, comforted by relatives, said her young son had been begging for food in recent days and dreaming of a piece of meat.
“There is no food, no water, no clothing,” said Amal, who has eight children to take care of.
Amal said she too was injured in the pre-dawn incident that killed her son.
“I heard something fall next to my foot while I was sitting and baking, and suddenly felt something hit me. I started screaming,” she said.
Outside the tent at the time, she said she tried crawling and reaching for other family members.
“Then I heard my daughter screaming from inside the tent...  found them holding my son, his abdomen and back covered in blood.”
A group of men formed lines to recite a prayer for the dead, their words almost drowned out by the noise of Israeli drones flying overhead.
In the second row, Ahmad Abu Shalouf held his hands over his stomach in prayer, unable to hold back a stream of tears.
Similar scenes played out at the hospital courtyard again and again over several hours, as the day’s dead were mourned.
At one point, an emaciated man collapsed in front of the shrouded bodies.
One mourner pressed his head against one of the bodies, carried on a stretcher at the start of a funeral procession, before being helped up by others.
At a distance, a group of women supported Umm Mohammad Shahwan, a grieving mother, with all of them in tears.
“We need the war to end,” said Amal Abu Shalouf.
In Gaza, she lamented, “there’s no hope or peace.”


Syria rescuers say two killed in drone strikes on northwest

Updated 11 June 2025
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Syria rescuers say two killed in drone strikes on northwest

  • During a meeting in Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump called on his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa to help Washington prevent a resurgence by Daesh

DAMASCUS: Two people were killed in separate drone strikes Tuesday on a car and a motorcycle in the northwestern bastion of the Islamist former rebels who now head the Syrian government, rescuers said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the twin drone strikes in the Idlib region but a US-led coalition in Syria has carried out past strikes on terrorists in the area.
Earlier this year, the United States said it killed several commanders of Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Hurras Al-Din in the area.
The group had recently announced it was breaking up on the orders of the interim government set up by the rebels after their overthrow of Bashar Assad in December.
US troops are deployed in Syria as part of a US-led coalition to fight the Daesh group.
When contacted by AFP, a US defense official said they were aware of the reports but had “nothing to provide” at the time.
During a meeting in Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump called on his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa to help Washington prevent a resurgence by Daesh.
 

 


Gaza-bound activist convoy enters Libya from Tunisia

Updated 11 June 2025
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Gaza-bound activist convoy enters Libya from Tunisia

  • Convoy members were heard chanting “Resistance, resistance” and “To Gaza we go by the millions” in a video posted on the organizing group’s official Facebook page

BEN GUERDANE, Tunisia: Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists taking part in a convoy crossed the Tunisian border on Tuesday into Libya, aiming to keep heading eastwards until they break Israel’s blockade on the Palestinian territory, organizers said.
This comes after Israel intercepted an aid ship attempting to breach its blockade on Gaza, which was carrying 12 people, including campaigner Greta Thunberg and European parliament member Franco-Palestinian Rima Hassan.
The “Soumoud” convoy, meaning “steadfastness” in Arabic, set off from Tunis on Monday morning, spokesman Ghassen Henchiri told Tunisian radio station Mosaique FM.
He said it includes 14 buses and around 100 other vehicles, carrying hundreds of people.
Convoy members were heard chanting “Resistance, resistance” and “To Gaza we go by the millions” in a video posted on the organizing group’s official Facebook page.
Henchiri also told Jawhara FM radio channel the convoy plans to remain in Libya for “three or four days at most” before crossing into Egypt and continuing on to Rafah.
Organizers have said Egyptian authorities have not yet provided passage to enter the country, but Henchiri said the convoy received “reassuring” information.
Organizers said the convoy was not bringing aid into Gaza, but rather aimed at carrying out a “symbolic act” by breaking the blockade on the territory described by the United Nations as “the hungriest place on Earth.”
Algerian, Mauritanian, Moroccan and Libyan activists were also among the group, which is set to travel along the Libyan coast.
After 21 months of war, Israel is facing mounting international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza to alleviate widespread shortages of food and basic supplies.
The Madleen aid boat, which set sail for Gaza from Italy on June 1, was halted by Israeli forces on Monday and towed to the port of Ashdod.
The 12 people on board were then transferred to Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the foreign ministry said, adding that Thunberg had been deported.
Five French activists were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily.
 

 


Algeria man’s self-immolation investigated as ‘terrorism’

A general view shows the Justice Ministry in the Algerian capital, Algiers. (AFP file photo)
Updated 11 June 2025
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Algeria man’s self-immolation investigated as ‘terrorism’

  • The charges include “endangering the lives and physical safety of others” and “publishing and promoting false and malicious news”

ALGIERS: Algerian authorities have launched a counterterrorism investigation after a man had set himself on fire, an act investigators suspect was part of coordinated plot with links abroad, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Faouzi Zegout was injured as a result of the self-immolation on June 1 outside the justice ministry to protest a case he was involved in.
A video of the incident in the capital Algiers circulated on social media, showing Zegout saying he had done it “because of a judge... who arbitrarily threatened me with a 10-year prison sentence.”
At an Algiers court on Tuesday, a prosecutor said that five people had been detained in the case, without specifying whether Zegout was one of them.
One of the five has been released under judicial supervision, and the case has been transferred to a counterterrorism division, the court heard.
According to the prosecutor, investigators had found that the act was orchestrated by an “organized criminal group” with suspected ties abroad.
The prosecutor said the group had allegedly plotted the act and assigned roles, including filming and publishing the self-immolation online, to “disturb public order and disrupt institutions.”
The charges include “endangering the lives and physical safety of others” and “publishing and promoting false and malicious news.”
The person who filmed the incident had “communicated with people abroad,” had “multiple bank accounts” and “received money transfers from people,” the prosecutor said, without specifying when the alleged transfers had occurred or who made them.
Zegout has said that he recently appeared in court for launching a fundraiser without official authorization to help cover medical costs for sick people.
A court in Frenda, his hometown about 340 kilometers (200 miles) west of Algiers, was scheduled to deliver its decision the same day he set himself on fire.