Through the efforts of progressive teachers at Unity High School, Zahir's academic promise reached the attention of relatives of
Stewart Symes, Sudan's colonial
governor-general. They graduated together in 1952, sharing the distinction of becoming Sudan's first woman physicians. Zahir completed postgraduate studies in the
United Kingdom and
Slovakia, specializing in
paediatrics.
Student activism Soon after enrolling, Sarkissian and Zahir became active in
student politics. They participated in the university's first demonstration in favour of Sudanese independence from foreign rule. Zahir was the most active of the two in political spheres, beginning with her participation in the school's
students' union. The society's true objectives included hosting lectures on
women's liberation, providing literacy classes for women, and establishing a kindergarten that later became a primary school in 1970. She was arrested, thus becoming the first woman in modern Sudanese history to be arrested on political grounds. After beginning to participate in the activities of the
Sudanese Communist Party in the late 1940s, Zahir became the first Sudanese woman to join a political party in 1949. In 1952, Zahir, Fatima Talib, and
Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim founded the
Sudanese Women's Union to promote the rights of women to work and
vote. Ibrahim, who went on to become Sudan's first female member of parliament in 1965, considered Zahir to be a mentor. ==Career and later politics==