Nawal al Saadawi and the sky over Egypt

by ANNAR CASSAM

Egyptian author Nawal El Saadawi PHOTO/Nawal El Saadawi/Sherif Hetata

There are some metaphors that are so striking and so unusual that they instantly transform one’s way of thinking about the subject matter. Consider, for example, this saying from China: The women of the world hold up half the sky.

This sentence conveys a unique picture of the human female condition, one that is miles away from the legend of Adam’s spare rib or from the Freudian cry of exasperation and impatience : ‘What do women really want?’. In China itself, the saying would have made no sense in traditional, pre-revolutionary times when foot-binding was imposed for purely aesthetic reasons on women of a certain class, making it virtually impossible for them to walk.

The metaphor does not question or suggest; it merely tells the whole story about where and what a woman is. It places her not in the male’s shadow but in the world; it refers to her status in the universe, not in the home or the kitchen or the field. Above all, it does not define women by their body or their biological functions but shows them expressing their purpose on Earth, which is to use their strength to hold up half the sky…which otherwise could come crashing down on all below.

The questions then follow: Who holds up the other half of the sky? Is it held up at all? If so, is it held up by the men of the world? If so, is it the same sky that both women and men are holding up, over the same planet , for the same purpose , the same dharma?

Nawal al Saadawi, Egyptian writer, doctor, psychiatrist, political analyst and fighter for the human rights of women, was born in rural Egypt in 1931. At the age of 6, she underwent an experience which most women readers of this article will never know but which was – and still is – commonplace in Egypt, namely, the ritual genital mutilation of little girls.

This is how she described the experience in a Guardian interview: ‘The daya (midwife) came along holding a razor, pulled out my clitoris from between my thighs and cut it off. She said it was the will of God and she had done his will’. The ordeal left its mark; apart from the bleeding and the unimaginable pain, she was left wondering, at the age of 6, ‘what other parts of my body there were that might need to be cut off in the same way’ (Guardian interview with Homa Khaleeli, 15/04/2010).

This happened to Nawal in 1937. According to Unicef’s Global Data figures for 2008, female genital mutilation (FGM) was performed on 95% of girls in rural Egypt and this despite the introductionin 2007 of laws against the practice. The World Health Organisation has also found that legislation in itself has made no impact; what is needed is a nationwide campaign specially designed to negate the cultural and psychological legitimacy that this form of violence and abuse has obtained in Egyptian society since time immemorial. The practice is a pre-Islamic ritual and is nowhere mentioned in the Koran.

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