One evening in Cairo, Nawal El Saadawi, one of Egypt’s foremost feminist activists, sat with her long, white braid in the middle of a modest apartment, surrounded by fellow activists, and told me that the Mubarak regime in fact sidelined, banned, and harassed feminist NGOs. “They really fragmented the feminist movement,” she said. The mandate of the National Council for Women—Suzanne’s organization—was to be the only representative of Egyptian women.
