The Story of Zahra takes place prior to and in the early years of the Lebanese Civil War, which took place from 1975 to 1990. Lebanon in the 1970s was ethnically and religiously diverse, with Christians and Sunni Muslims along the coast, Druze (an ethnoreligious group that follows the Abrahamic Druze faith) and Christians in the mountains, and Shia Muslims in the south. Prior to the eruption of conflict, militias representing a variety of causes grew in power as the Lebanese state began to deteriorate. The Lebanese Front was led by the Phalangists, a right-wing Maronite Christian political party aligned with much of the social elite in Lebanon and eventually with Israel. Factions in opposition to both the Lebanese Front and the Lebanese state included the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), a group of mostly secular leftists and Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims comprising the Amal, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, representing Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee population, which garnered support from factions like the LNM.

Whether the war’s complicated origins were principally political or religious continues to be debated; The Story of Zahra explores this very question through characters like Ahmad and Ibrahim. Regardless of its primary cause, the roots of the conflict stretched at least as far back as Fuad Chehab’s presidency—the president against whom

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