topics: |  lit | arab | fiction | gender |

Excerpt

Muslim Women in the Market

A British feminist visited me in Cairo in 1982. She was writing a book about Muslim feminists in the Middle East. I told her that I am not a Muslim feminist; [and that] I live in Egypt, and not the Middle East.

Then I asked her where she lived. To which she responded, ‘London — England is my country.’ I asked, ‘So you are from the Middle West?’ She laughed. It was funny to abolish the name England and replace it with Middle West, but to abolish Egypt and refer to the Middle East was and is a serious reality.

Then she asked, if I am not a Muslim feminist, how I would describe myself. To which I replied by asking her please to describe herself first. She told me she was a Christian feminist who holds a different interpretation of the Bible. ‘Eve was not a sinner and Christ was a Black lesbian woman’, she explained.

So, I wanted to know why she called herself a Christian. She explained that it was only a matter of culture: ‘I mean my cultural identity, my authentic identity.’

More than twenty years passed and I was walking into the Guezira Club in Cairo when a veiled woman stopped me. I did not recognize her. She was the Christian feminist, converted to Islam after marrying an Egyptian doctor. p.115

Publishers

The original title of The Hidden Face of Eve in Arabic translates as The Naked Face of Arab Women. This title was changed by publishers and featured a veiled woman on the cover. All my publishers in different countries are small and radical, feminist or socialist, but most of them compromise to survive in the so-called free market, which amounts to the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weaker.

Dissident writers from different fields and countries cannot be in the mainstream. They are never published by big publishers and they are always ignored by big media. They cannot be part of the free market. They cannot receive big global or national prizes, nor big reviews, nor big money or positions. This is just part of the price they pay to speak their mind. The conception of virginity is embedded in Judaism and Christianity, and is not limited to Arab or Islamic culture. For example, the Virgin Mary is the ideal mother, and nuns were traditionally veiled.

Mutiliation of the Mind

The deception of cultural relativism has been going on for three
decades. Deception is a form of violence against the mind. Mutilation of
the mind is no less a crime than female or male genital mutilation; it is
even more dangerous. It is used to mutilate the body and the soul, to
justify violence against women and the poor. In some backward opinions
women’s rights are considered a direct attack on God’s law, moral values,
and sacred words. p.120

A large part of the profit of the free market comes from selling arms —
weapons which kill individuals or lay waste to nations; weapons of mass
destruction, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and other postmodern
killing tools.

Another source of profit is women’s bodies — nakedness or
veiling; cosmetics and make-up; advertisements trading in women’s
bodies for patriarchal sexual gratification. The eye, the gaze of the
free market, is mainly on women, like the gaze of religious fundamentalist
men. If there were no war and no women both patriarchy
and the free market would collapse: that is, the God of the free
market and the God of the religious fundamentalist groups. They
are twins. They serve each other in spite of superficial differences
and temporary conflicts, when their economic interests clash.

History and maps

The history of this world is written, shaped, mapped and remapped
by the brutal ruling groups who win the wars, who colonize,
recolonize and neocolonize under such beautiful words as democracy,
civilization, modernism and humanitarianism.  153

On the old map there was a country called Palestine. Now it is called
Israel. The Palestinian nation was killed; those who survived the massacres
after 1948 became refugees, immigrants, dispersed all over the world. The
Palestinian Holocaust and sufferings are ignored by those who write history
and map or remap the world.  History glorifies the Jewish Holocaust and
suffering at the hands of the Nazis. History is not real history. The history
of our world has been ignoring the struggles of the colonized people (not
only the Palestinians) since the beginning of the slave patriarchal class
system, some thousand years ago.

[
1989: Berlin Wall falls
2001: Israel Wall starts]

Obama is a creative actor on stage...  He is well-trained in being
spontaneous.

Charisma

The Germans passionately applauded Hitler; the Russians loved Stalin; the
Americans elected G.W. more than once; and Sadat in Egypt won all elections
with no less than 95 per cent of votes. The most dangerous political leaders
are the most charismatic... You sacrifice your blood for them.

Poem : A half-man

My friend is married to a man married also to another.
He divides his life fairly and squarely between them,
one half for my friend and the second half for the other woman.
A married man once came to me and said ‘I love you.’
I asked him what he wanted.
He said a lawful wife in accordance with God’s precepts.
I said being a whole woman I could not accept half a man.
He went livid and accused me of heresy.
Pointing his gun at my head, he said,
‘Death to the woman who does not know God.’
So I pointed my gun at his head saying,
‘Death to the half men.’
So he retracted and went back to his wife.

bio

Writer, doctor (psychiatrist) and militant, Nawal el Saadawi has had a
major influence on the lives of women and men globally. Author of many
books, both fiction and non-fiction, which challenge our thinking about the
politics of sex, Third World development, the Arab world and writing
itself, she has been a constant thorn in the side of the class and
patriarchal systems.