Arts
Islam’s Bluntest Critic
Nawal El Saadawi on the orgasm of writing, death threats, and hating God.
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Egyptian writer and dissident Nawal El Saadawi elicits strong feelings in her readers. While El Saadawi may not be a household name in the United States, she is famous in Egypt, for her bluntness and for her uncompromising stance on women’s rights. This stance includes warning against not just the veil but also the dangers of make-up and revealing clothes. One critic recently argued that she uses language more as a “bludgeon” than a “scalpel.” Her willingness to speak up when many would remain silent is undeniable. Trained as a doctor, El Saadawi became Director of Public Health in Egypt, only to lose her job when she published a book of essays criticizing the practice of female circumcision in Islamic countries. Since then, she has published numerous books; among the best known are the novels God Dies By the Nile and Woman at Point Zero, and the essay collection The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World.
In person, El Saadawi is penetrating, charming, and, yes,direct. When I interviewed her the other week during her visit to New York to deliver the keynote speech at the PEN World Voices Festival, she encouraged me to let my tea steep longer, and then told me that, at the PEN gala party, she had been shocked by how much cleavage her friends were showing. In an interview with Double X, the Egyptian writer talks about her cultural relativism, cleavage, equality, and more.
Your work has been controversial. You were imprisoned by President Anwar al-Sadat in the 1981. And more recently you received death threats. So, tell me, why do you write? Why is writing your medium of choice?
El Saadawi: I write for the pleasure of writing. My life is threatened because I write, you know. So what literally keeps me writing? It is the pleasure of creativity. It’s more than sex. It’s more than sex, more than food, more than love, more than anything. I can sacrifice love, sex, marriage, husband, children, everything—as long as I can write what I want. It’s not altruistic. It’s not a message, a social or political message. Not at all. It is this pleasure. The orgasm of writing. The social-political message is embedded in the writing.
Do you remember the first time you felt that way?
El Saadawi: All my life. Since I was a child. I had a diary, a secret diary under my pillow since I was seven, eight, nine. Because, you know, I could not believe in an unjust god. But this was a childhood secret. My mother and father were very progressive. Still, they cannot accept that I say God is unjust. I could not believe in God because he loved my brother more than me. Common sense; the common sense of childhood. So I wrote Him a letter.
I used to write against the injustice of God, against my parents when I was angry with them, against my relatives, against my teachers, against anybody who oppressed me. Writing is a very powerful weapon in your hand. Even if you do not publish. Of course, when I publish and people read, it’s a different pleasure. A social pleasure.
Tell me about how you wrote your first book.
Meghan O'Rourke is a founding editor of Double X and the author of Halflife, a book of poems.
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