Janet Lee Stevens ( December 1 , 1951 – April 18 , 1983 ) was an American journalist , human rights advocate , translator , and scholar of popular Arabic theater . She lived in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War and chronicled the experiences of Palestinian refugees before and after the Sabra and Shatila Massacre of September 16 – 18 , 1982 . Stevens died in the April 18 , 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut , Lebanon , for which a local Iranian-backed Shia militia claimed responsibility . In 2003 , the family of Stevens and other American victims filed a lawsuit against the Iranian government , and in 2005 , a U.S. Federal District Court found Iran guilty of orchestrating the embassy bombing and ordered it to pay damages to the plaintiffs , including $ 13,449,000 to relatives of Janet Lee Stevens . Iran did not respond or pay . Called " the little drummer girl " by Palestinians who knew her , Stevens inspired the writer John le Carré , who befriended her in Beirut , to write the novel The Little Drummer Girl , which was later made into a film . Today , at the University of Pennsylvania , the Janet Lee Stevens Memorial Fund – whose early recipients in the 1980s included the literary critic Edward Said , continues to give grants to scholars whose work promotes Arab-American understanding . Janet Lee Stevens was born in Saginaw , Michigan , on December 1 , 1951 , and grew up in Atlanta , Georgia . She graduated from Northside High School . She attended Stetson University and earned a bachelor 's degree in International Studies in 1972 . She moved to Philadelphia to study Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania , and started the PhD program in 1973 in the department of Oriental Studies ( known from 1984 as the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and from 2005 as the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations ) . She won a fellowship to study Arabic at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad ( CASA ) at the American University in Cairo in the 1974-75 academic year . Around this time she also held a Fulbright scholarship
Sabra and Shatila Massacre
Sabra and Shatila massacre
Janet Lee Stevens