Just about every month Rama Duwaji, the coy artist wife of mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, makes a list of the things that “make me want to make art.”
On October 9, as her husband continued with his frenetic campaign for office, those inspirations included “the relief work on the facade of the Grand Central Terminal” and the patterns of a Jacquard loom,” an 1805 weaving machine.
A few days later, Duwaji, 28 — who was born in Texas but identifies as Syrian — included a post in her Instagram stories which may have shocked some of her followers, for it was in stark contrast to her usual reveries on the nature of art.
Duwaji posted four broken heart emojis along with a photo of notorious terrorist propagandist Saleh Al-Jafarawi, known as Mr. FAFO, on October 12 after he was killed by an anti-Hamas militia in southern Gaza City.
“Beloved Jafarawi,” fawned the post from Duwaji, who is poised to become the youngest first lady in the history of New York when Mamdani takes his oath of office in January.
In addition to her sympathies for Al-Jafarawi — who praised the October 7 2023 attacks that left 1,200 Israelis dead — a closer look at Duwaji’s illustrations show she frequently targets “American imperialism” and is sharply critical of the US’s support for Israel.
One image, posted in 2024, shows enormous stacks of US bills labeled “Israeli war crimes.” Mamdani himself commented next to the illustration writing “New York charities send over $60 million every year to fund Israeli war crimes, and that number is only growing.” He urged his followers to contact their elected officials to end the funding.
In another illustration from 2020 that shows two women and children standing in front of a plume of smoke released from a distant airplane, the caption reads in part, “Presidents come and go, but American imperialism never changes.”
An animation from May shows a Palestinian girl holding a large empty pot with the words “Not a hunger crisis” written across it, before showing more people holding similarly empty bowls. The accompanying text reads: “It is deliberate starvation.”
Duwaji has remained largely in the shadows during her husband’s campaign but is not shy about airing her pro-Palestinian and anti-American views even though she was born in Houston, grew up partly in a modest townhouse in Passaic County, NJ, according to public records, and attended college in the US.
Duwaji’s mother, Bariah Dardari, studied medicine in the US and worked as a pediatrician at hospitals in Hackensack, New Jersey, “she provided specialized care for premature and high-risk infants,” according to an online bio.
She married Marwan Duwaji, a software engineer, in April 1997, a few months before their daughter was born in June of that year, according to public records.
It was a second marriage for Marwan, who had married first wife Felice Mari Osborne in Harris County, Texas in 1991 when he was in his early twenties. The couple divorced three years later, records show.
The family bought a house in Wayne, New Jersey in 2004, but the family moved two years later when Dardari accepted a prestigious post at the American Hospital in Dubai.
Dardari, 53, went on to lead pediatric teams at various hospitals in the United Arab Emirates and still lives in the country. She also led humanitarian missions to war-torn Syria and Gaza, sponsored by the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), a non-profit that provides emergency medical care in conflict zones.
It is unclear if Dardari and Marwan are still married and neither could be reached for comment by The Post.
Dardari attempted to contribute to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign from Dubai, but the $500 she sent was returned by the campaign, most likely because she was not eligible to contribute.
After spending her teenage years in Dubai, Duwaji attended Virginia Commonwealth University’s campus in Qatar before transferring to the main campus in Richmond, Virginia, after her freshman year.
Duwaji only moved to New York City in 2021 to study illustration at the School of Visual Arts. Despite her US roots, she prefers to describe herself as an animator and illustrator from Damascus on her Instagram profile, a nod to her parents’ Syrian-American roots.
In New York, Duwaji lived in Williamsburg, and not long after getting to the city she met Mamdani on dating app Hinge. The couple married in a civil ceremony at City Hall this February, with additional celebrations in Dubai and later Uganda, where Mamdani’s parents own a compound in the hills above Kampala and his filmmaker mother, Mira Nair, runs a film school.
Despite her silence during the campaign, Duwaji has earned gushing profiles in Vogue and the New York Times, whose fashion critic recently noted that “she understands the craft of image-making and just how much visuals matter.”
Sparing no hyperbole, one friend called Duwaji “our modern-day Princess Diana,” while she has also been compared to a young Audrey Hepburn on social media, for her pixie-like bob and the knee-high black boots that have become her style signature.
During Mamdani’s victory speech at Brooklyn’s Paramount Theater Tuesday, Duwaji stood by his side in a chic black top by London-based Palestinian designer Zeid Hijazi and black velvet and lace skirt by New York City designer Ulla Johnson. Like Mamdani, Johnson attended Bronx Science high school.
“And to my incredible wife, Rama, hayati,” Mamdani said, using the Arabic word for “my life.”
“There is no one I would rather have by my side in this moment, and in every moment,” he added.
Although she rarely speaks publicly, behind the scenes Duwaji is said to have been heavily involved in helping construct Democratic Socialist Mamdani’s brand and social media strategy.
“Rama isn’t just my wife; she’s an incredible artist who deserves to be known on her own terms,” Mamdani wrote in a social media post in May.
Duwaji’s edgy drawings have appeared in numerous outlets, including the New Yorker, the BBC and London’s Tate Modern art gallery.
“These days, I focus on making art about my experiences and the things I care about, and the community that forms from conversations about my work, ” she said in an April interview with Yung, an online magazine about art in the Middle East and Africa.
“My art stays being a reflection of what’s happening around me, but right now what feels even more useful than my role as an artist, is my role as a US citizen.
“With so many people being pushed out and silenced by fear, all I can do is use my voice to speak out about what’s happening in the US and Palestine and Syria as much as I can.”
