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Walking through Fire: The Later Years of Nawal El Saadawi, In Her Own Words
In A Daughter of Isis , Nawal El Saadawi painted a beautifully textured portrait of the childhood that moulded her into a novelist and fearless campaigner for freedom and the rights of women. Walking through Fire takes up the story of her extraordinary life.
Famous for her novels, short stories and writings on women, Saadawi is known as the first Arab woman to have written about sex and its relation to economics and politics. Imprisoned under Sadat for her opinions, she has continued to fight against all forms of discrimination based on class, gender, nationality, race or religion.
This autobiography shows the passion for justice that has shaped her life and her writing. We read about her as a rural doctor, trying to help a young girl escape from a terrible fate imposed on her by a brutal male tyranny. We follow her attempts to set up women's organizations and to publish magazines later banned by the authorities or endangered by fundamentalist threats. We travel with her into exile after the publication of her name on a death list. We witness her first marriage to a freedom fighter hounded into drug addiction by a system that has no mercy. We share her struggle against her 'false self' and a second husband who offers her financial security and comfort - provided she stops writing. We live the beautiful moments of her third marriage with a man released after fourteen years of imprisonment and hard labour - their love, companionship and shared struggle.
Nawal El Saadawi has carved a place for herself in the universal struggle against oppression. 'Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives', she says. 'They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.'
Famous for her novels, short stories and writings on women, Saadawi is known as the first Arab woman to have written about sex and its relation to economics and politics. Imprisoned under Sadat for her opinions, she has continued to fight against all forms of discrimination based on class, gender, nationality, race or religion.
This autobiography shows the passion for justice that has shaped her life and her writing. We read about her as a rural doctor, trying to help a young girl escape from a terrible fate imposed on her by a brutal male tyranny. We follow her attempts to set up women's organizations and to publish magazines later banned by the authorities or endangered by fundamentalist threats. We travel with her into exile after the publication of her name on a death list. We witness her first marriage to a freedom fighter hounded into drug addiction by a system that has no mercy. We share her struggle against her 'false self' and a second husband who offers her financial security and comfort - provided she stops writing. We live the beautiful moments of her third marriage with a man released after fourteen years of imprisonment and hard labour - their love, companionship and shared struggle.
Nawal El Saadawi has carved a place for herself in the universal struggle against oppression. 'Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives', she says. 'They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.'
256 pages, Paperback
First published July 5, 2002
17 people are currently reading
770 people want to read
About the author
Nawal El Saadawi
115 books3,543 followersNawal El Saadawi (Arabic: نوال السعداوي) was born in 1931, in a small village outside Cairo. Unusually, she and her brothers and sisters were educated together, and she graduated from the University of Cairo Medical School in 1955, specializing in psychiatry. For two years, she practiced as a medical doctor, both at the university and in her native Tahla.
From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked as Director General for Public Health Education for the Egyptian government. During this time, she also studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master of Public Health degree in 1966. Her first novel Memoirs of a Woman Doctor was published in Cairo in 1958. In 1972, however, she lost her job in the Egyptian government as a result of political pressure. The magazine, Health, which she had founded and edited for more than three years, was closed down.
From 1973 to 1978 Saadawi worked at the High Institute of Literature and Science. It was at this time that she began to write, in works of fiction and non-fiction, the books on the oppression of Arab women for which she has become famous. Her most famous novel, Woman at Point Zero was published in Beirut in 1973. It was followed in 1976 by God Dies by the Nile and in 1977 by The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World.
In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. She was released one month after his assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. When, in 1988, her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, she and her second husband, Sherif Hetata, fled to the USA, where she taught at Duke University and Washington State University. She returned to Egypt in 1996.
In 2004 she presented herself as a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, with a platform of human rights, democracy and greater freedom for women. In July 2005, however, she was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of ongoing government persecution.
Nawal El Saadawi has achieved widespread international recognition for her work. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso. Her many prizes and awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize, awarded by the American Biographical Institute in 2003, the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe and the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2004. Her books have been translated into over 28 languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world.
She now works as a writer, psychiatrist and activist. Her most recent novel, entitled Al Riwaya was published in Cairo in 2004.
From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked as Director General for Public Health Education for the Egyptian government. During this time, she also studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master of Public Health degree in 1966. Her first novel Memoirs of a Woman Doctor was published in Cairo in 1958. In 1972, however, she lost her job in the Egyptian government as a result of political pressure. The magazine, Health, which she had founded and edited for more than three years, was closed down.
From 1973 to 1978 Saadawi worked at the High Institute of Literature and Science. It was at this time that she began to write, in works of fiction and non-fiction, the books on the oppression of Arab women for which she has become famous. Her most famous novel, Woman at Point Zero was published in Beirut in 1973. It was followed in 1976 by God Dies by the Nile and in 1977 by The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World.
In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. She was released one month after his assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. When, in 1988, her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, she and her second husband, Sherif Hetata, fled to the USA, where she taught at Duke University and Washington State University. She returned to Egypt in 1996.
In 2004 she presented herself as a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, with a platform of human rights, democracy and greater freedom for women. In July 2005, however, she was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of ongoing government persecution.
Nawal El Saadawi has achieved widespread international recognition for her work. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso. Her many prizes and awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize, awarded by the American Biographical Institute in 2003, the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe and the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2004. Her books have been translated into over 28 languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world.
She now works as a writer, psychiatrist and activist. Her most recent novel, entitled Al Riwaya was published in Cairo in 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 29, 2024
Another Nawal El Saadawi read, another long review. Let’s set the tone. This book made me:
- tear up four times on a 2 hour train ride
- reach out to the publishers to thank them for publishing this book
- buy 3 more of her works immediately after finishing it
- want to take up Arabic lessons (seriously looking into this one)
The reason her works get long reviews is because I have to find a way to 1) digest for myself the multitude of fascinating themes that are touch upon by El Saadawi and that have occupied my mind during and after reading it and 2) to then also just save it somewhere so that I can look back on it.
Where to even start. Perhaps by saying that I enjoyed it even more than A Daughter of Isis: The Early Life of Nawal El Saadawi, the first part of her autobiography. The continuity is still there though. El Saadawi’s political engagement, which was already so central to the first part of the autobiography, is still a running thread:
When I was still a child I used to scream at night, ‘Down with the King!’ ‘Down with the British!’ When I grew up and became a young woman, I heard young people shouting ‘Down with the President!’ ‘Down with America!’ So I began to shout the same slogans but added to them a slogan of my own which was ‘Down with husbands!’
Especially interesting in this regard is how her medical training influenced her political activism. I’m obsessed with the anecdote she tells about attending a government conference during which Egypt’s leaders were debating who was or wasn’t considered to be a peasant, since it was determined by Al Nasser’s Socialist Decrees that 50% of parliament had to be made up of peasants.
At one point I raised my hand and said ‘A peasant is a man or a woman whose urine is red.’ The faces of the men on the platform froze. But I had simply expressed what was common knowledge, namely that 99 percent of the peasants in rural areas suffered from bilharziasis and bled into their urinary passages.
Nothing short of iconic. She truly never shies away from speaking her mind and speaking the truth. And not in the clichéd Trump manner, but only or especially when she knows it serves people's best interest. In this vein she also tells us how, as a doctor in a rural area of Egypt, she formed a team which went into villagers’ homes and informed them about the dangers of holding superstitious beliefs about devils, evil spirits and the likes.
In the village, people believed in the existence of spirits and devils as firmly as they believed in God. (...) My grandmother kept repeating to me when I was a child ‘There are no such things as devils, the human being is the only devil that exists'.
The importance of this work becomes clear when we learn about the story of Masouda, a girl rumored by the entire village to be possessed by the devil. When El Saadawi medically intervenes because of her suspicion that it was probably not the devil who was causing Masouda so much trouble, it turns out that Masouda had been anally raped every single night during prayer since she was married off to her ‘husband’ at age 12.
These kinds of stories are the stories El Saadawi and all women in Egypt grew up with and were surrounded by every single day. I cannot imagine the deep, deep anger this must cause. As a reader, even while only having been exposed to a fragment of those stories, it is impossible not to strongly empathize with El Saadawi when she calls marriage “a symbol of slavery” or shouts “Down with all husbands!”.
Her long-standing aversion to the institution of marriage makes it even more tragic that she herself wound up in two marriages that made her deeply unhappy, to the point where, when she had an unwanted pregnancy during her second one, she “began to dream of a blood-stained sheet, yearned for it night and day, willed for it with all my being” and “wished that death would snatch me away and save me from my plight”.
The passages about the cruel behavior of El Saadawi’s two husbands really reminded me of some passages about Maya Angelou's husband in the fourth installment of her autobiography, The Heart of a Woman. It’s truly frightening to realize that nobody, not even these two extraordinarily intelligent and resilient women, is spared from the abhorrent abusive behavior of men.
But, as El Saadawi's mother used to say: You can throw Nawal into the fire, she will come out unscathed.
She got out of both marriages, opened her own health clinic in Cairo, and was later able to make a profession out of her one true love: writing - despite being hunted down, imprisoned, and forced into exile by the state.
(Review written on 01.09.2019)
- tear up four times on a 2 hour train ride
- reach out to the publishers to thank them for publishing this book
- buy 3 more of her works immediately after finishing it
- want to take up Arabic lessons (seriously looking into this one)
The reason her works get long reviews is because I have to find a way to 1) digest for myself the multitude of fascinating themes that are touch upon by El Saadawi and that have occupied my mind during and after reading it and 2) to then also just save it somewhere so that I can look back on it.
Where to even start. Perhaps by saying that I enjoyed it even more than A Daughter of Isis: The Early Life of Nawal El Saadawi, the first part of her autobiography. The continuity is still there though. El Saadawi’s political engagement, which was already so central to the first part of the autobiography, is still a running thread:
When I was still a child I used to scream at night, ‘Down with the King!’ ‘Down with the British!’ When I grew up and became a young woman, I heard young people shouting ‘Down with the President!’ ‘Down with America!’ So I began to shout the same slogans but added to them a slogan of my own which was ‘Down with husbands!’
Especially interesting in this regard is how her medical training influenced her political activism. I’m obsessed with the anecdote she tells about attending a government conference during which Egypt’s leaders were debating who was or wasn’t considered to be a peasant, since it was determined by Al Nasser’s Socialist Decrees that 50% of parliament had to be made up of peasants.
At one point I raised my hand and said ‘A peasant is a man or a woman whose urine is red.’ The faces of the men on the platform froze. But I had simply expressed what was common knowledge, namely that 99 percent of the peasants in rural areas suffered from bilharziasis and bled into their urinary passages.
Nothing short of iconic. She truly never shies away from speaking her mind and speaking the truth. And not in the clichéd Trump manner, but only or especially when she knows it serves people's best interest. In this vein she also tells us how, as a doctor in a rural area of Egypt, she formed a team which went into villagers’ homes and informed them about the dangers of holding superstitious beliefs about devils, evil spirits and the likes.
In the village, people believed in the existence of spirits and devils as firmly as they believed in God. (...) My grandmother kept repeating to me when I was a child ‘There are no such things as devils, the human being is the only devil that exists'.
The importance of this work becomes clear when we learn about the story of Masouda, a girl rumored by the entire village to be possessed by the devil. When El Saadawi medically intervenes because of her suspicion that it was probably not the devil who was causing Masouda so much trouble, it turns out that Masouda had been anally raped every single night during prayer since she was married off to her ‘husband’ at age 12.
These kinds of stories are the stories El Saadawi and all women in Egypt grew up with and were surrounded by every single day. I cannot imagine the deep, deep anger this must cause. As a reader, even while only having been exposed to a fragment of those stories, it is impossible not to strongly empathize with El Saadawi when she calls marriage “a symbol of slavery” or shouts “Down with all husbands!”.
Her long-standing aversion to the institution of marriage makes it even more tragic that she herself wound up in two marriages that made her deeply unhappy, to the point where, when she had an unwanted pregnancy during her second one, she “began to dream of a blood-stained sheet, yearned for it night and day, willed for it with all my being” and “wished that death would snatch me away and save me from my plight”.
The passages about the cruel behavior of El Saadawi’s two husbands really reminded me of some passages about Maya Angelou's husband in the fourth installment of her autobiography, The Heart of a Woman. It’s truly frightening to realize that nobody, not even these two extraordinarily intelligent and resilient women, is spared from the abhorrent abusive behavior of men.
But, as El Saadawi's mother used to say: You can throw Nawal into the fire, she will come out unscathed.
She got out of both marriages, opened her own health clinic in Cairo, and was later able to make a profession out of her one true love: writing - despite being hunted down, imprisoned, and forced into exile by the state.
(Review written on 01.09.2019)
September 19, 2025
I needed to read this right at this current moment. Nawal's work is still as shocking and revolutionary as it was when it was written.
November 7, 2021
Walking Through Fire is the second volume of Nawal El-Saadawi's autobiography (the first volume, Daughter of Isis, was about her childhood; unfortunately it is not available from Open Library). It has a complex chronological structure and is written in a sophisticated literary style which is reminiscent of her fiction. It opens in 1993, in Durham, North Carolina, where she and her husband Sherif (the English translator of the book) are teaching at Duke University. This first chapter is entitled "The Threat", and it soon returns to Cairo to narrate the immediately previous period of her life, how she was put on a death-list and eventually decided she had to go into exile. The actual autobiography begins in the next two chapters, starting about 1950 in the last days of British rule when she was a medical student and political activist for independence. She falls in love with a fida'iyeen, Ahmed Helmi, a guerilla fighter against the British occupation, and they get married. He goes to the front, and returns defeated and broken in spirit, betrayed by the government. Then follows the Revolution of 1951 and the rise of Gamal Abd el-Nasser. Throughout the book, the political events play a major role, as one would expect from a political figure such as Saadawi.
The fourth chapter skips to 1957; she is recently divorced, with a baby daughter, Mona. After rejecting an offer of marriage from another doctor, as soon as she completes her internship she convinces the government, which is expanding medical services in rural areas, to send her to her natal village of Khafr Tahla as the local doctor, despite their reluctance to assign women. The chronicle of her experiences as a rural doctor are quite interesting. The following chapter is on the war which breaks out over the Suez Canal, and the invasion by England, France and Israel. She takes military training, but the orders never come for the local recruits to go to the front. She points out that even with the country being invaded, the government of Nasser (undoubtedly the most anti-imperialist leader in the Arab world, apart from the Palestinian resistance) never dared to arm the people, though he demagogically promised to. Despite its claims to be "socialist" and a fairly extensive land reform, Nasser's revolution was top-down and limited to essentially bourgeois tasks; he feared the rise of a real revolution among the peasantry and the working class. After the war, she tries unsuccessfully to save a young girl in a forced marriage who is being abused by her elderly husband; the girl is returned to her husband by the police and commits suicide. Saadawi is reported by her time-serving superior for "inciting women against the divine laws of Islam" -- which would be the accusation against her throughout her working life -- and is transferred to a hospital for tuberculosis patients in Cairo. The book then describes her life in Cairo and the death of her mother and father.
Halfway through the book, chapter eight opens with her sitting before a blank sheet of paper and suffering from "writer's block." We are then plunged immediately and without warning into a surrealist nightmare resembling some of her later novels. When she comes back to the world, we find that it is the first day of 2000, the present time of the book, which she is writing. Then there is a memory flashback to the end of her first marriage, which explains some of the nightmare. The next chapter again begins in 2000 and again passes immediately into a flashback, this time to 1960, and her second marriage. It seems as if she is going to resume the chronological story, but instead the narrative for the rest of the book moves back and forth to various episodes of her life from the forties to the present, according to a logic of image association rather than chronology, just as in her experimental novels. The book ends with her on the plane to return to Cairo from her seven years in exile.
This is a very interesting book about a brilliant and committed woman. She died in March, 2021, at the age of ninety.
The fourth chapter skips to 1957; she is recently divorced, with a baby daughter, Mona. After rejecting an offer of marriage from another doctor, as soon as she completes her internship she convinces the government, which is expanding medical services in rural areas, to send her to her natal village of Khafr Tahla as the local doctor, despite their reluctance to assign women. The chronicle of her experiences as a rural doctor are quite interesting. The following chapter is on the war which breaks out over the Suez Canal, and the invasion by England, France and Israel. She takes military training, but the orders never come for the local recruits to go to the front. She points out that even with the country being invaded, the government of Nasser (undoubtedly the most anti-imperialist leader in the Arab world, apart from the Palestinian resistance) never dared to arm the people, though he demagogically promised to. Despite its claims to be "socialist" and a fairly extensive land reform, Nasser's revolution was top-down and limited to essentially bourgeois tasks; he feared the rise of a real revolution among the peasantry and the working class. After the war, she tries unsuccessfully to save a young girl in a forced marriage who is being abused by her elderly husband; the girl is returned to her husband by the police and commits suicide. Saadawi is reported by her time-serving superior for "inciting women against the divine laws of Islam" -- which would be the accusation against her throughout her working life -- and is transferred to a hospital for tuberculosis patients in Cairo. The book then describes her life in Cairo and the death of her mother and father.
Halfway through the book, chapter eight opens with her sitting before a blank sheet of paper and suffering from "writer's block." We are then plunged immediately and without warning into a surrealist nightmare resembling some of her later novels. When she comes back to the world, we find that it is the first day of 2000, the present time of the book, which she is writing. Then there is a memory flashback to the end of her first marriage, which explains some of the nightmare. The next chapter again begins in 2000 and again passes immediately into a flashback, this time to 1960, and her second marriage. It seems as if she is going to resume the chronological story, but instead the narrative for the rest of the book moves back and forth to various episodes of her life from the forties to the present, according to a logic of image association rather than chronology, just as in her experimental novels. The book ends with her on the plane to return to Cairo from her seven years in exile.
This is a very interesting book about a brilliant and committed woman. She died in March, 2021, at the age of ninety.
April 5, 2023
“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.”~Nawal El Saadawi
“Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.”~Nawal El Saadawi
I really enjoyed this memoir by the late Nawal El Saadawi. She was a fierce and incredible woman who strived to help better the world for the lives of women either through her medical practice as a nurse then doctor or through the power of her words. Some bits were really difficult to read regarding sexual assault, female genital mutilation (which she campaigned against her entire life while facing death threats, imprisonment, etc.), or being on the side of the battlefields of the Egyptian revolution, 1967 war, etc. giving medical aid to the injured freedom fighters. I wish, though, that Nawal would have written more about her imprisonment and other struggles against the governments she faced that led her to exile. She led a very full life which probably would have required a series of multiple memoirs to be written to begin to fully grasp her entire 89 years.
“Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.”~Nawal El Saadawi
I really enjoyed this memoir by the late Nawal El Saadawi. She was a fierce and incredible woman who strived to help better the world for the lives of women either through her medical practice as a nurse then doctor or through the power of her words. Some bits were really difficult to read regarding sexual assault, female genital mutilation (which she campaigned against her entire life while facing death threats, imprisonment, etc.), or being on the side of the battlefields of the Egyptian revolution, 1967 war, etc. giving medical aid to the injured freedom fighters. I wish, though, that Nawal would have written more about her imprisonment and other struggles against the governments she faced that led her to exile. She led a very full life which probably would have required a series of multiple memoirs to be written to begin to fully grasp her entire 89 years.
February 3, 2020
This book has been a surprise. I was into unknown territory as this was a Rakhi gift (Thanks Drashya!). However, the author's life amazes me. She has such a strong backbone. This read has been captivating in that this extraordinary woman exemplifies the very act of being alive in a society where she isn't paid her dues. But, she does not give up. And this had made for an incredible journey! I would definitely recommend reading this book :)
June 6, 2024
THE SECOND PART OF THE EGYPTIAN ACTIVIST’S LIFE STORY
Egyptian author, physician, and activist Nawal El Saadawi wrote in the first chapter of this 2002 book, “My memoirs… keep piling up on my desk. After leaving Egypt I started write. The threat of death seemed to give my life a new importance, made it worth writing about. I felt that the closer I moved towards death, the greater became the value of my life. Nothing can defeat death like writing… Is that why writing was forbidden to women and slaves?” (Pg. 3)
She notes, “Five years ago I had to leave Egypt. It was the need to escape death, the legitimate desire to defend my life. They came to my home on June 9, 1992, just before the grey streaks of dawn started to creep across the night.” (Pg. 9)
She observes, “In my life writing has remained my sole refuge. Nothing can replace the words I write on paper, can compensate me for them. For me it is like breathing. Through writing my self breathes, expresses itself. My pen breaks down the wall of isolation between my body and the world… Writing has been the antithesis of death and yet, paradoxically, the reason why in June 1992 I was put on a death-list. The death-list is a new term that invaded our literary life in recent years. Names of men and women whose lives have been linked to literary production began to figure on these lists… At one time the enemy was visible, we would see him wearing a uniform, carrying a gun, occupying our land… But this hidden force, unknown to us, without a name, how could one fight against it?” (Pg. 16)
She recalls, “I was receiving telephone calls at all hours of the day and night; hearing the voices of strange men insulting me in classical Arabic, in colloquial Egyptian or in words… of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or even Algeria. In the mail came threatening letters, one of them said: ‘You are a heretic, an enemy of Islam… Through your Association you spread poisonous ideas… The slogan of your immoral association, ‘unveiling of the mind,’ is heresy... The veil is sacred and you are inciting women to disobey Allah. Women like you deserve only death.’” (Pg. 19)
She recounts that her husband Sherif told her that she must leave the country: “But where could I go? My previous travels had all been for a purpose: to attend a conference, to give a lecture, to launch one of my books. But now it was the threat hanging over my head which was forcing me to think of leaving the country. Was exile going to be my future, my fate? I had been… in prison, had lost my job, my books had been censored or banned, my reputation sullied. Now I would no longer live in my own country and I had no idea what exile would be like.” (Pg. 21) So in 1993, on the recommendation of a student, she was invited to travel to Duke University.
She remembers, “At the age of twenty something very important happened to me. I was given a room of my own, with my own little library and my own desk… The small desk had been bought for my by my father… Every day I walked from home to the School of Medicine … Often I walked back at the end of the day… When I bought shoes I made sure their leather was strong, their heels low… I did not like make-up, did not paint my face, or put lipstick on, or varnish my nails. I wore dresses… with a high bodice so that my breasts would not show. My body was mine and I did not need to exhibit it to people’s eyes. Sometimes I wore man’s shirts or jackets, for to me masculinity and femininity enhanced one another, made each other more beautiful… Deep down inside me I could feel the full vigor of my femininity, ascetic, struggling not to show itself. The more it flamed, the more ascetic it became… refusing to reveal itself except rarely in a look a sudden glitter of the eyes.” (Pg. 26-27)
She states, “The word obedience had an ugly ring to it. To me it sounded like an insult, a characteristic of slaves. People kept saying that obedience was a virtue, but to me it seemed the opposite, for it required that I abolish my reason and my will, do what other people told me to do. It would lead me to lose my quality as a human being, to become what was called a ‘female,’ like obedient wives or domesticate animals who live behind closed walls and dare not disobey their masters.” (Pg. 62)
She points out, “I did not need a husband to provide for me. I was a medical doctor. I had become a different being, neither male nor female. I examined men and women, rose above the distinctions imposed by gender, overrode laws that governed the life of women, was no longer subject to what was called the ‘personal law.’ Under the personal law an independent woman was reduced to dependency, could no longer decide for herself, was like a child below the age of full citizenship, or a mental case requiring supervision.” (Pg. 63)
She states, “Since my daughter was born I had begun to ask myself whether she had not become the most important thing in my life, whether she was not the only justification for my having fallen in love, married and then divorced. Nothing apart from this small being seemed to have any significance in my life, not even her father. It was as though he had never existed, as though there was no need for his existence, like the drone which dies off once it has fertilized the queen bee.” (Pg. 69)
She says, “‘Inciting women to rebel against the divine laws of Islam.’ This became the accusation that was levelled against me whenever I wrote or did anything to defend the rights of women against the injustices widespread in society… It was only years later that I began to realize that the men and women who posed as the defenders of Islamic morality and values were most often the ones who were undermining the real ethics and moral principles of society.” (Pg. 113)
She acknowledges, “My mind has always been a source of trouble in my life… By the time I reached the age of adolescence I … became an obedient, submissive girl who did not argue about anything… At night and often during the day I dreamt of love, of something physical that I could touch, of a body embracing me as I lay in bed. My mother used to give me … silent warnings which meant that I should stop these dreams of love, but my body refused to give up the flashes of hot desire that went through it. My body became the source of trouble in my life. When I reached adolescence I kept trying to rid myself of it… I became a girl without a body, an idealistic mature well-behaved young woman, then an obedient wife who obeyed her husband at home and her boss at work, sacrificed her personal life for the family, but was ready to sacrifice her family fighting in a war to defend her country.” (Pg. 158-159)
Of her divorce from her second husband, she notes, “I had to face this man of law alone with no support or help from anyone… Courts in Egypt do not give women their rights. They are male-oriented. The result is that women are exploited by lawyers, are the victims of unjust law, and spend years of their lives running from one court to another without obtaining a divorce...I stepped towards him slowly… As I moved close I saw him retreat step by step until his back was to the wall… I just said, ‘I repudiate you.’” (Pg. 191-192)
Of the Israel/Palestine conflict, she argues, “Negotiations would … be used to impose the solution favored by the ruling circles in the USA, Israel and Europe… But the Palestinians are still struggling to retrieve the remaining 22 percent of their land, much of it arid, all of it surrounded by Israeli armed colonies and military bases. Palestinian children… are still throwing stones, and are still being shot in the head, or the belly, or the heart by Israeli bullets.” (Pg. 231)
This book will be of great interest to those studying the contemporary Middle East, feminism, and social activism.
Egyptian author, physician, and activist Nawal El Saadawi wrote in the first chapter of this 2002 book, “My memoirs… keep piling up on my desk. After leaving Egypt I started write. The threat of death seemed to give my life a new importance, made it worth writing about. I felt that the closer I moved towards death, the greater became the value of my life. Nothing can defeat death like writing… Is that why writing was forbidden to women and slaves?” (Pg. 3)
She notes, “Five years ago I had to leave Egypt. It was the need to escape death, the legitimate desire to defend my life. They came to my home on June 9, 1992, just before the grey streaks of dawn started to creep across the night.” (Pg. 9)
She observes, “In my life writing has remained my sole refuge. Nothing can replace the words I write on paper, can compensate me for them. For me it is like breathing. Through writing my self breathes, expresses itself. My pen breaks down the wall of isolation between my body and the world… Writing has been the antithesis of death and yet, paradoxically, the reason why in June 1992 I was put on a death-list. The death-list is a new term that invaded our literary life in recent years. Names of men and women whose lives have been linked to literary production began to figure on these lists… At one time the enemy was visible, we would see him wearing a uniform, carrying a gun, occupying our land… But this hidden force, unknown to us, without a name, how could one fight against it?” (Pg. 16)
She recalls, “I was receiving telephone calls at all hours of the day and night; hearing the voices of strange men insulting me in classical Arabic, in colloquial Egyptian or in words… of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or even Algeria. In the mail came threatening letters, one of them said: ‘You are a heretic, an enemy of Islam… Through your Association you spread poisonous ideas… The slogan of your immoral association, ‘unveiling of the mind,’ is heresy... The veil is sacred and you are inciting women to disobey Allah. Women like you deserve only death.’” (Pg. 19)
She recounts that her husband Sherif told her that she must leave the country: “But where could I go? My previous travels had all been for a purpose: to attend a conference, to give a lecture, to launch one of my books. But now it was the threat hanging over my head which was forcing me to think of leaving the country. Was exile going to be my future, my fate? I had been… in prison, had lost my job, my books had been censored or banned, my reputation sullied. Now I would no longer live in my own country and I had no idea what exile would be like.” (Pg. 21) So in 1993, on the recommendation of a student, she was invited to travel to Duke University.
She remembers, “At the age of twenty something very important happened to me. I was given a room of my own, with my own little library and my own desk… The small desk had been bought for my by my father… Every day I walked from home to the School of Medicine … Often I walked back at the end of the day… When I bought shoes I made sure their leather was strong, their heels low… I did not like make-up, did not paint my face, or put lipstick on, or varnish my nails. I wore dresses… with a high bodice so that my breasts would not show. My body was mine and I did not need to exhibit it to people’s eyes. Sometimes I wore man’s shirts or jackets, for to me masculinity and femininity enhanced one another, made each other more beautiful… Deep down inside me I could feel the full vigor of my femininity, ascetic, struggling not to show itself. The more it flamed, the more ascetic it became… refusing to reveal itself except rarely in a look a sudden glitter of the eyes.” (Pg. 26-27)
She states, “The word obedience had an ugly ring to it. To me it sounded like an insult, a characteristic of slaves. People kept saying that obedience was a virtue, but to me it seemed the opposite, for it required that I abolish my reason and my will, do what other people told me to do. It would lead me to lose my quality as a human being, to become what was called a ‘female,’ like obedient wives or domesticate animals who live behind closed walls and dare not disobey their masters.” (Pg. 62)
She points out, “I did not need a husband to provide for me. I was a medical doctor. I had become a different being, neither male nor female. I examined men and women, rose above the distinctions imposed by gender, overrode laws that governed the life of women, was no longer subject to what was called the ‘personal law.’ Under the personal law an independent woman was reduced to dependency, could no longer decide for herself, was like a child below the age of full citizenship, or a mental case requiring supervision.” (Pg. 63)
She states, “Since my daughter was born I had begun to ask myself whether she had not become the most important thing in my life, whether she was not the only justification for my having fallen in love, married and then divorced. Nothing apart from this small being seemed to have any significance in my life, not even her father. It was as though he had never existed, as though there was no need for his existence, like the drone which dies off once it has fertilized the queen bee.” (Pg. 69)
She says, “‘Inciting women to rebel against the divine laws of Islam.’ This became the accusation that was levelled against me whenever I wrote or did anything to defend the rights of women against the injustices widespread in society… It was only years later that I began to realize that the men and women who posed as the defenders of Islamic morality and values were most often the ones who were undermining the real ethics and moral principles of society.” (Pg. 113)
She acknowledges, “My mind has always been a source of trouble in my life… By the time I reached the age of adolescence I … became an obedient, submissive girl who did not argue about anything… At night and often during the day I dreamt of love, of something physical that I could touch, of a body embracing me as I lay in bed. My mother used to give me … silent warnings which meant that I should stop these dreams of love, but my body refused to give up the flashes of hot desire that went through it. My body became the source of trouble in my life. When I reached adolescence I kept trying to rid myself of it… I became a girl without a body, an idealistic mature well-behaved young woman, then an obedient wife who obeyed her husband at home and her boss at work, sacrificed her personal life for the family, but was ready to sacrifice her family fighting in a war to defend her country.” (Pg. 158-159)
Of her divorce from her second husband, she notes, “I had to face this man of law alone with no support or help from anyone… Courts in Egypt do not give women their rights. They are male-oriented. The result is that women are exploited by lawyers, are the victims of unjust law, and spend years of their lives running from one court to another without obtaining a divorce...I stepped towards him slowly… As I moved close I saw him retreat step by step until his back was to the wall… I just said, ‘I repudiate you.’” (Pg. 191-192)
Of the Israel/Palestine conflict, she argues, “Negotiations would … be used to impose the solution favored by the ruling circles in the USA, Israel and Europe… But the Palestinians are still struggling to retrieve the remaining 22 percent of their land, much of it arid, all of it surrounded by Israeli armed colonies and military bases. Palestinian children… are still throwing stones, and are still being shot in the head, or the belly, or the heart by Israeli bullets.” (Pg. 231)
This book will be of great interest to those studying the contemporary Middle East, feminism, and social activism.
January 1, 2021
My favourite book of Nawal al Saadawi, what a fascinating woman. The full context of her famous quote (below), is heartbreaking. There are many Masouda's, whose stories will never be heard, understood or believed. I cannot imagine the hurt Nawal went through because she was unable to save her.
‘Inciting women to rebel against the divine laws of Islam.’ This became the accusation that was levelled against me whenever I wrote or did anything to defend the rights of women against the injustices widespread in society. It followed me wherever I went, step by step, moved through the corridors of government administrations year after year, irrespective of who came to power, or of the regime that presided over the destinies of our people. It was only years later that I began to realize that the men and women who posed as the defenders of Islamic morality and values were most often the ones who were undermining the real ethics and moral principles of society."
‘Inciting women to rebel against the divine laws of Islam.’ This became the accusation that was levelled against me whenever I wrote or did anything to defend the rights of women against the injustices widespread in society. It followed me wherever I went, step by step, moved through the corridors of government administrations year after year, irrespective of who came to power, or of the regime that presided over the destinies of our people. It was only years later that I began to realize that the men and women who posed as the defenders of Islamic morality and values were most often the ones who were undermining the real ethics and moral principles of society."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 7, 2017
This book was written for Egyptians, who would know the history that forms its backdrop. Without that, I was a bit disoriented at times. As with most historical books, though, that disorientation is a prompt to learn a history.
The narration is non-linear, more thematic. So times are revisited and we move in and out of stages of marriage and divorce,of being a doctor and leaving medicine for writing. Sometimes it is hard to know where we are chronologically. It is the sort of book that re-reading the beginning after knowing the ending sometimes clarifies.
The writing is poetic, the people vivid. It is a book I feel like reading again. It is also a book where one has to attend to what is not said--about prison, about her first marriages, about exile.
The narration is non-linear, more thematic. So times are revisited and we move in and out of stages of marriage and divorce,of being a doctor and leaving medicine for writing. Sometimes it is hard to know where we are chronologically. It is the sort of book that re-reading the beginning after knowing the ending sometimes clarifies.
The writing is poetic, the people vivid. It is a book I feel like reading again. It is also a book where one has to attend to what is not said--about prison, about her first marriages, about exile.
March 9, 2013
this book is translated into English from Arabic and as such is a little frustrating with many many phrases being repeated over and over in the book. however, the life of this woman is an amazing tribute to women's struggles in her part of the world, Egypt. she has certainly led a full life and one which is much frowned upon in many parts of the world.
February 24, 2007
some people throw themselves off of balconies for their writing.
April 18, 2021
A quote I relate to this Egyptian/American memoir is, "The nail that sticks out is the one that gets hammered." While reading about the early childhood of Nawal El Sadaawi, (1931-2021) a curious girl whose bleak grandmother insisted her granddaughter parody her confined role, I thought of the millions of other children whose minds are likewise co-opted from the get-go. In our world, the innocent brains of little boys and girls continue to be steeped in a harmful marinade so early in life that only the brave can escape. I understand this. I too lived it in my childhood as a misled young Roman Catholic girl. I too was soaked in a brine of morbid falsehood. Still, I'd often slip into goody-two-shoes obedience because I needed the approval of my elders. If you braid habitual conformity with a child's need for love and belongingness, very soon you'll have an undiscriminating new member of your religious tribe parroting their learned lines.
This is the memoir of an Egyptian feminist who defied the prescripted conventional life. Her failure to conform resulted in jail times in Egypt, the distancing of family members, two divorces, refugee status, and exhaustive anxiety. Voicing dissent meant beatings and much worse.
Many times this brave woman walked alone, without the validation that would have made her life so much happier. A physician, psychiatrist, and novelist, Nawal lived a back and forth, 'two steps forward one step back' dynamic, but always wrote openly about her desire for equality between men and women and her disdain for patriarchal religions that promote hierarchy rather than equality. When ready, she moved forward. She stood her ground regardless of many death threats by a conservative governing authority. Autonomy is indeed an expensive construct in a misogynistic society. It's costly to become a self-honoring individual.
El Saadawi's memoir shares her successful emergence from the toxic slush of a frightened patriarchal society, where the lives of both women and men are woefully diminished.
Eleanor Cowan, Author of A History of a Pedophile's Wife: Memoir of a Canadian Teacher and Writer
This is the memoir of an Egyptian feminist who defied the prescripted conventional life. Her failure to conform resulted in jail times in Egypt, the distancing of family members, two divorces, refugee status, and exhaustive anxiety. Voicing dissent meant beatings and much worse.
Many times this brave woman walked alone, without the validation that would have made her life so much happier. A physician, psychiatrist, and novelist, Nawal lived a back and forth, 'two steps forward one step back' dynamic, but always wrote openly about her desire for equality between men and women and her disdain for patriarchal religions that promote hierarchy rather than equality. When ready, she moved forward. She stood her ground regardless of many death threats by a conservative governing authority. Autonomy is indeed an expensive construct in a misogynistic society. It's costly to become a self-honoring individual.
El Saadawi's memoir shares her successful emergence from the toxic slush of a frightened patriarchal society, where the lives of both women and men are woefully diminished.
Eleanor Cowan, Author of A History of a Pedophile's Wife: Memoir of a Canadian Teacher and Writer
December 19, 2023
“Memory moves back and forth in time in a very strange way. Half a century can drop out of my life in less than a second or a moment stretches out in front of me to infinity. Past and present fuse into a single moment.”
“Ever since I was a child I used to hear my father say: ‘If the price we pay for freedom is high, we pay a much higher price if we accept to be slaves.”
Genom sitt författarskap har Nawal El Saadawi utforskat ämnen såsom kvinnors rättigheter, könsroller, politik och socioekonomiska utmaningar både i det egyptiska samhället och på en global nivå. I sina memoarer blir det tydligt att de mer fiktiva verken har varit starkt präglade av erfarenheter från den personligt upplevda verkligheten. I »Walking through Fire« rör sig El Saadawi genom några av de mest formativa tidpunkterna av hennes liv. Hon tar oss till det tumulta femtiotalets Egypten, där revolutioner och statskupper kom att mynna ut i ett avskaffande av såväl monarkin som västvärldens ockupation av landet. Vidare får vi ta del av hennes tid som läkare på landsbygden och alla de möten som kom att fortsätta att forma henne som individ, samt mer djupgående reflektioner kring äktenskap och kärlek. Hennes författarskap har ständigt utmanat makthavare och religiösa grupper på grund av dess frispråkighet, vilket har resulterat i såväl kortare fängelsevistelser, perioder av exil som censurering av hennes verk. Men trots dessa konfrontationer har hon ständigt fortsatt att uttrycka sig, och människor har gång på gång funnit nya sätt att ta till sig hennes verk. Hennes aktivism återspeglas genomgående i memoaren, och integreras som en väsentlig tråd som väver samman de personliga, professionella och politiska erfarenheterna. Nawal El Saadawi har en alldeles säregen förmåga att kombinera det personliga med det allmängiltiga, och hennes mångdimensionella verk gör henne till en kraftfull röst både inom litteraturen och diverse samhällsdebatter än idag. Älskar henne 🤍
“Ever since I was a child I used to hear my father say: ‘If the price we pay for freedom is high, we pay a much higher price if we accept to be slaves.”
Genom sitt författarskap har Nawal El Saadawi utforskat ämnen såsom kvinnors rättigheter, könsroller, politik och socioekonomiska utmaningar både i det egyptiska samhället och på en global nivå. I sina memoarer blir det tydligt att de mer fiktiva verken har varit starkt präglade av erfarenheter från den personligt upplevda verkligheten. I »Walking through Fire« rör sig El Saadawi genom några av de mest formativa tidpunkterna av hennes liv. Hon tar oss till det tumulta femtiotalets Egypten, där revolutioner och statskupper kom att mynna ut i ett avskaffande av såväl monarkin som västvärldens ockupation av landet. Vidare får vi ta del av hennes tid som läkare på landsbygden och alla de möten som kom att fortsätta att forma henne som individ, samt mer djupgående reflektioner kring äktenskap och kärlek. Hennes författarskap har ständigt utmanat makthavare och religiösa grupper på grund av dess frispråkighet, vilket har resulterat i såväl kortare fängelsevistelser, perioder av exil som censurering av hennes verk. Men trots dessa konfrontationer har hon ständigt fortsatt att uttrycka sig, och människor har gång på gång funnit nya sätt att ta till sig hennes verk. Hennes aktivism återspeglas genomgående i memoaren, och integreras som en väsentlig tråd som väver samman de personliga, professionella och politiska erfarenheterna. Nawal El Saadawi har en alldeles säregen förmåga att kombinera det personliga med det allmängiltiga, och hennes mångdimensionella verk gör henne till en kraftfull röst både inom litteraturen och diverse samhällsdebatter än idag. Älskar henne 🤍
March 8, 2021
Loved this book. It was tough to read at some parts due to her references/implications of traumatic experiences, so I took a lot of breaks to let the feelings digest. Regardless, I felt empowered and deeply connected to Arab women's revolutionary history and this has stayed with me a year later.
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