Nawal El Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawiis an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist. She has written many books on the subject of women in Islam, paying particular attention to the practice of female genital mutilation in her society. She has been described as "the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World"...
NationalityEgyptian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth27 October 1931
CountryEgypt
dream sleep loss
Something I tried to hold onto, to touch if only for a moment, but it slipped away from me like the air, like an illusion, or a dream that floats away and is lost. I wept in my sleep as though it was something I was losing now; a loss I was experiencing for the first time, and not something I had lost a long time ago.
makeup high-heels heels
I am very much against makeup and high heels and all that we inherit as 'beauty.'
memories writing missing
Memory is never complete. There are always parts of it that time has amputated. Writing is a way of retrieving them, of bringing the missing parts back to it, of making it more holistic.
thinking names people
Many people come here and they think my apartment is a poor relative to my name. But you cannot be radical and have money, it’s impossible.
lying living-a-lie feels
But I feel that you, in particular, are a person who cannot live without love." "Yet I am living without love." "Then you are either living a lie or not living at all.
independent savages truth-is
They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.
sex stories neutrality
Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.
sex issues religion
The trilogy composed of politics, religion and sex is the most sensitive of all issues in any society.
religious military egypt
Women are suffering because they are being excluded. The high military council excluded women from the committee to change the constitution [of Egypt]. We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.
mean men disease-and-death
Prostitution means sexual intercourse between a man and a woman aimed at satisfying the man's sexual and the woman's economic needs. It is obvious that sexual needs, even in a male dominated system, are not as urgent and important as economic needs which, if not satisfied, lead to disease and death. Yet society considers the woman's economic need as less vital than the man's sexual one.
life-and-death desire desire-to-live
I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die.
hurt pain years
Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.
men passive decided
Man ... put himself in a tight corner when he decided that woman was innately passive.
motivational honesty lying
Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.