Palestine’s Manicured Drag Racers

posted on: May 7, 2015

These five Palestinian women want to win so many car races that they’ll have a ‘Fast & Furious’ franchise of their own. They’re already well on their way.
Behind the wheel of her car, with her long red nails snaking around the steering wheel and a racing helmet obscuring a perfect sheath of blonde hair, Betty Saadeh is just another Palestinian race car driver. But that doesn’t mean she’s willing to sacrifice her glamour.

“I’m in this sport that’s for men,” Betty explains while a manicurist arranges rhinestones in a heart shape on her fingernails. “It’s very important for me to show I’m not a tomboy.” Betty and four other female Palestinian racers are the subject of a new documentary following the dust left by a group of lightning-fast drivers who must navigate the sometimes invisible obstacles of a male sport in a homeland under occupation.

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Filmmaker Amber Fares had been working in development in Palestine for a few years when she was invited to watch a race at former President Yasser Arafat’s helicopter landing pad in Bethlehem. In the middle of a thousand screaming fans, she spotted Betty, along with two other female racers, getting her pre-race tune ups. “What the hell, there are women here?” she remembers thinking. It was 2009, and by the next year, Speed Sisters—the Middle East’s first all-female racing team—officially formed.

For four years, Amber and her film crew followed the women through the world of high-speed racing. It was akin, she says, to trailing a group of rockstars. “In the street, people would come up and say, ‘You’re the racers!’”

Those training sessions, races, donuts, skid outs, and trophies are chronicled in a new documentary, Speed Sisters, which made its North American premiere at Hot Docs in Toronto last week. After the screening, the teammates were approached by a Canadian female driver. “In Canada, we are only two racers,” she said, according to Marah, one of the racers touring with the film. “It’s amazing to see you have five. How do you recruit more girls?”

The day after showing the documentary in Canada, two of the racers, 24-year-old Noor Daoud and 23-year-old Marah Zahalqa, juggled what sounded like a vicious racing battle on a Fast and Furious phone app and a conversation with The Daily Beast.

Their chosen hobby has an unlikely setting. In the ad-hoc race tracks of the Palestinian territories, hundreds of spectators stack into bleachers and squeeze against the sidelines to cheer on drivers, including all five women, as they skid through an obstacle course lined with orange cones. Kids on the sidelines film with their phones and wave green and red flags. After the race, they rush to take pictures with their favorite victors.

There’s Noor Daoud, a big-haired, outspoken sportswoman who is not only an award-winning drift racer, but also a boxer, weightlifter, and Olympic swimmer. In 2012, she became the first Palestinian to race in an Israeli race—much less win. (She did that, too.) Betty Saadeh, a local celebrity who’s at ease both in front of the cameras and the starting line. Marah Zahalqa, a serious competitor focused on victory. Mona Ennab, the track pioneer who started racing back in 2005. And there’s team leader Maysoon Jayyusi, who’s an expert mediator when intra-team troubles arise.

In a sport where rounds are won by seconds, there’s no attempt to hide the deeply competitive spirit that emerges. Marah and Betty have a particularly intense rivalry, which lends a nice realism to a movie that doesn’t overdose on the feel-good love of sisterhood. “I hope she hits a cone,” Marah mutters as Betty navigates the course in the film.

“You think because you’re blonde and pretty they’re not going to shoot you?” she asks. “They shot you in the ass.”
On the racetrack, the women put up a unified front, occasionally getting into yelling matches with the commissioner of the Palestinian Racing Federation to ensure they’re treated fairly. “The problem is that men are afraid of strong women. They are afraid they will take over,” Mayhoon says in the film. But for the most part, the male racers are in awe of their competition. “You ask any of them and they’re like, ‘These girls are good—they’re no joke,’” Amber says about the men’s team.

The heroics of these trailblazing ladies on the track almost pale in comparison to the endearing figure cut by Marah’s father, who is so invested in his daughter’s untraditional hobby that he forgoes building his dream house to buy her a new car— a BMW, no less.

At the races, he’s on the sidelines jumping and hugging the other team members while Marah slips through the orange cones. “Two-forty-one horse!” he yells as she zooms by.

Source: www.thedailybeast.com