GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Talking to Majd Mashharawi in Amman’s Books@Cafe, it is clear that she is used to making difficult decisions. She explains that when she was 18, her father gave her a choice: Either get married or go to a university. She chose to study civil engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza where the male-female ratio was 6-to-1. She was told that such a decision would lead nowhere.
Two years after her graduation, she had already claimed international attention by finding a way to use ashes and rubble to make concrete building blocks that were cheaper, more environmentally friendly and more readily available for the community in which she lives.