Published On 6/5/2026
The disability in the hands of the young Lebanese woman Haneen Farouk (36 years old), born in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, was only the beginning of a long story of rejection and resistance.
From a school door that was closed in her face, to bullying that caused her to lose her seat, to her daily movement in the streets of Tripoli, which she crossed back and forth while driving a tuk-tuk and filming with a camera, Haneen charted a path that no one had planned for her.
Haneen began her education in a private Islamic school in Tripoli, where she was embraced by an environment that never made her feel different. However, her family’s inability to pay the escalating tuition fees forced her to leave, as she explained to Al Jazeera. When her father tried to enroll her in an “official” school, the principal shocked them with an explicit, unjustified refusal. This barrier was not broken except with the mediation intervention of the Ministry of Education.
Haneen told Al Jazeera that her move to public school was a real shock that still carries its effects, because the principal refused to register her under the pretext that she had special needs. She added that her registration was only achieved after strenuous family effort and mediation that temporarily saved her academic future.
As soon as Haneen found her seat at school, she faced a challenge more severe than administrative rejection, as she painfully remembers how her classmates would scream and run away when they passed by her, in stark contrast to the warmth of her first school, in which she felt that “everyone is family and brothers.”
Camera and Tok Tok
As for her professional career, Haneen chose an unusual path after leaving education, as she became involved in working with the Boy Scouts, then developed the talent for photography that she inherited from her father, describing it as a spiritual legacy.
On the other hand, Haneen did not stop at the camera, but rather went a step further by entering the profession of driving a tuk-tuk in the field of delivering orders to women, a profession that women rarely dare to practice in Lebanon, let alone a woman with special needs.
Haneen describes the looks of passers-by when they see her driving a tuk-tuk as “slaughtering her,” stressing that the real battle was not with physical disability, but rather with a society that has not yet learned how to look at others who are different from them.
At the end of her speech, she sent a message to every woman standing before a wall of doubt and challenge: “Be strong.”
