“Not Middle East, please“
“No, not Middle East, just a second”
“The minute I hear Middle East I become upset, because this is a colonial language. It’s like third world, like post-colonial language. Middle East, Middle what, middle to whom? We were named the Middle East because we were a British colony so Egypt was ‘middle east’ relative to London and India was ‘far east’ relative to London because India was also a colony.”
If you’ve been within anti-capitalist algorithms, you probably came across Nawal El Saadawi’s highly-reposted clip. It was excerpted from a March 23, 2015 discussion talk when during the Q&A segment, a Palestianian inquirer was invited to the table by Nawal herself to have a discussion. Immediately, when the Palestinian mentioned ‘Middle East’ — a remnant lingo of colonialism and British geopolitical interests, she cut her off, resulting in this infamous clip of a geopolitical lesson mixed with her insistence that we learn history. Already, less than half-a-minute with the Palestinian, spoke of the habituation of decolonizing the mind.
Nawal’s figural relevance, in the 2000s, wasn’t quite palpable. But she was indeed mired in controversies in 1980s Egypt due to her critiques against Anwar Sadaat, his regime, and policies. This led to her incarceration in the 1980s where too, she began writing her Memoirs from the Women’s Prison. For much of my anticapitalist studies, I only became aware of her from this viral clip. She’s an audacious persona, a doctor, a government ministress, hardened perhaps by her dire prison conditions. She’s uncanonized in the feminist academia. She wasn’t of the same intellectual recognition as Betty Friedan or Simone de Beauvoir. Though you will encounter her in your ‘Middle Eastern’ feminist or postcolonial studies.
In a 2010 The Guardian interview, she reminded me of Miriam Defensor Santiago — a veteran Philippine senator, who spoke in similar style and cut-to-the-chase language. She talked about the procedural violence of Female Genitalia Mutilation (FGM) that herself and millions more of other girls in Arabia underwent. Nawal spoke about the unhygienic clitoral & hymenal mutilations, esp. practiced in poorer communities, who’d reuse razor blades. Excessive bleeding, failed & surgical accidents took millions of girls’ lives in FGM. Millions too, were humiliated early in their lives but oftentimes forgotten due to childhood amnesia. Many suffered from gynecologic and sexual complications later in life, then only will they remember that event. Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities across-the-board shunned her, even escalating to threats to her life for her outspokenness against religious customs.
“It used to be unconscious, now conscious” as el Sadaat has said.
When she suddenly remembered of her experience of FGM when she was six. She only remembered by going into medical school in Cairo.
Her bravery in advocacy is underappreciated, knowing that speaking against Islam and its Qur’an might lead to her execution. Her ‘lack of whiteness’ meant standpoint advantage with talking about distinct Arabian female experiences. Lastly, the Muslim migration crisis onto Europe floats her — having lived under Sharia — to relevance. Which is exactly why we should talk about her. And that’s why I wrote this short biographical portrait of Nawal el Sadaat, her works, and influence.
‘I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die’ (REUTERS)
Nawal was born in Kafr Tahla, Egypt in the 27th of October, 1931. Born to both liberal-minded parents, she developed her progressive politics early in life. Her father was a state official in the Education Ministry, who had campaigned against the British occupation of Egypt. This resulted in his exile to a small town in the Nile Delta, stagnant to his post for a decade. Despite her parents’ relative progressive thought, they still tried to marry her off by the time she was 10. Her mother, Zaynab, supported her resistance to being married early. She was always told to not be afraid in using her voice. Both of her parents died at a young age, leaving Saadawi alone in performing both roles for her siblings. As a child, she showed antipatriarchal thoughts like what her mother said, “a boy is worth 15 girls at least.” — she reacted angrily.
Saadawi graduated as a medical doctor in 1955 from Cairo University. She married a fellow medical student, Ahmed Helmi. They begat Mona Helmi. The marriage ended after two years. Her second husband was a colleague, Rashad Bey. Then her last husband lasting for 43 years, Sherif Hatata, she divorced by 2010. Throughout her marital developments with Hatata, she was harassed by court cases in an attempt to divorce her from Hatata and peel off her Egyptian nationality.
Being the outspoken maverick she was, she tested Anwar Sadaat’s ‘facade’ of democracy and free speech by criticizing him. She found out the truth pretty soon; the facade faltered. But she didn’t let that crush her activist spirits and hopes. While incarcerated, she formed the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association — the first legal feminist organization in Egypt. And inside, she wrote and recorded her thoughts using a makeshift pencil and tattered toilet paper. She was released later that year, one month after the President’s assassination. In the years that followed, she received death threats from religious fundamentalists, was taken to court, and eventually went into exile in the US. There she continued to level attacks against religion, colonialism and Western hypocrisy. She railed against the Muslim veil but also make-up and revealing clothes — upsetting even fellow feminists.
Nawal may not be canonized in Western academia but she’s remembered and further more immortalized through online revisits of her. A pioneer advocate of Arabian Feminism, and a self-proclaimed socialist-feminist herself, she remains undoubtably, an unforgettable figure in global postcolonial feminist thought.
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References:
Sly, E. (2021, March 23). Nawal El Saadawi: Trailblazing Egyptian feminist writer dies, aged 89. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nawal-el-saadawi-death-egypt-b1820710.html
Smith, S. A. (2021, March 22). Nawal El Saadawi obituary. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/22/nawal-el-saadawi-obituary
Amin, O. (2021, April). An Egyptian woman who dared: the Nawal El Saadawi I knew. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/an-egyptian-woman-who-dared-the-nawal-el-saadawi-i-knew-158135
Jazeera, A. (2021, March 21). Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian author and women’s rights icon, dies. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/21/nawal-el-saadawi-egyptian-author-women-rights-icon-dies