BEIRUT — Joyce Azzam reached the top of Mount Everest May 23, making her the first Lebanese woman to complete the Seven Summit Challenge, braving frigid temperatures and killer oxygen levels to climb the tallest mountain on every continent. A week later, Azzam was back home in the blistering Beirut heat, a short walk from the beach and breathing easy.

“I come from Beirut's northern suburb Dekwaneh. I don’t come from a very well-known family and I am not rich,” Azzam told Al-Monitor, “Where I come from, the expectation for a girl is to get an education, then a job, some money, a family and have children. This is also what was expected from me.”

Azzam had no interest in that life, but had few opportunities in her childhood to freely explore the outdoors, as she grew up during the Lebanese Civil War. She said, “I had a dream, but where I come from, it was not valuable.”

“The first six years of my life was during the civil war, [my family and I] were fleeing from one city to another. I have really horrible memories of that time,” Azzam explained. “I saw people dying at a really young age.”