Cultural Criticism in Egyptian Women's Writing 9780815650829, 9780815632863

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Cultural Criticism in EGYPTIAN Women’s Writing

Contemporary Issues in the Middle East

Other titles in Contemporary Issues in the Middle East American Writers in Istanbul: Melville, Twain, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Bowles, Algren, Baldwin, and Settle Kim Fortuny The Druze and Their Faith in Tawhid Anis Obeid Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn Amira El-Zein The Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development Wadie Jwaideh One Family’s Response to Terrorism: A Daughter’s Memoir Susan Kerr van de Ven Painting the Middle East Ann Zwicker Kerr Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gülen Movement M. Hakan Yavuz and John L. Esposito, eds. Veiled Employment: Islamism and the Political Economy of Women’s Employment in Iran Roksana Bahramitash and Hadi Salehi Esfahani, eds. Writing Off the Beaten Track: Reflections on the Meaning of Travel and Culture in the Middle East Judith Caesar

Cultural Criticism in

EGYPTIAN

Women’s Writing C a r ol i ne S ey mou r - Jor n

Sy r acuse U ni v ersit y Pr ess

Copyright © 2011 by Syracuse University Press Syracuse, New York 13244-5290 All Rights Reserved First Edition 2011 11 12 13 14 15 16

6 5 4 3 2 1

Portions of the introduction and chapter 6 are reprinted here with permission of Indiana University Press from “Etidal Osman: Egyptian Women’s Writing and Creativity,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 2, no. 1 (2006). Thanks to AUC Press for allowing the reprint of quotes from Nancy Robert’s translation of The Man from Bashmour. A revised portion of chapter 2 is reprinted with permission from “New Language: Salwa Bakr on Depicting Egyptian Women’s Worlds,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 11, no. 2 (2002), 151–76. A revised portion of chapter 4 is reprinted with permission from “View from the Margin: Writer Ni‘mat el-Bihiri on Gender Issues in Egypt,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 13, no. 1 (2004), 77–95. A revised portion of chapter 5 is reprinted with permission from “Teaching Arabic Women’s Literature: Radwa Ashour’s Gharnata,” Al-‘arabiyya 38–39 (2005–6), 137–62. ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. For a listing of books published and distributed by Syracuse University Press, visit our Web site at SyracuseUniversityPress.syr.edu. ISBN: 978-0-8156-3286-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Seymour-Jorn, Caroline. Cultural criticism in Egyptian women’s writing / Caroline Seymour-Jorn. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Contemporary issues in the Middle East) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8156-3286-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Arabic fiction—Egypt—History and criticism. 2. Arabic fiction—Women authors—History and criticism. 3. Arabic fiction— 20th century—History and criticism. 4. Women authors, Egyptian—20th century—Political and social views. 5. Literature and society—Egypt. 6. Women in literature. 7. Sex role in literature. 8. Social problems in literature. 9. Social conflict in literature. I. Title. PJ8212.S42 2012 892.7'3099287—dc23 2011034598 Manufactured in the United States of America

To Michael, Eva, and Leah and to the spirit of Nemat el-Behairy

Caroline Seymour-Jorn is associate professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Her articles have been published in Critique: Journal for Critical Studies of the Middle East, Al-‘arabiyya: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic, the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, and in edited volumes.

Contents

List of I llust r at ions Ack now ledgmen ts

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ix

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T r a nsli t er at ed T er ms

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Au t hor’s Not e I n t roduc t ion

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1. The 1970s Writers in Context

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1

2. Salwa Bakr: The Poetics of Marginalization

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17

3. Ibtihal Salem: Journeys into Memory and Experience 4. Nemat el-Behairy: Writing Transgression

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84

5. Radwa Ashour: Fiction Writing as a History of the Subjective

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6. Etidal Osman: Egyptian Women’s Writing and Creativity 7. Conclusion R ef er ences Index

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149

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157

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Illustrations

Salwa Bakr | 17 Ibtihal Salem | 56 Nemat el-Behairy | 84 Etidal Osman | 130

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Acknowledgments

I w ish to t h a n k the authors who are the subject of this book. They each gave generously of their time in helping me to complete this project. I am grateful to Jean Comaroff, Paul Friedrich, and Farouk Abdel Wahab for setting me on the anthropological and literary journey of studying women writers in Egypt. I also wish to thank my peers in the 2007–8 cohort at the Center for Twenty-first Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM) for their helpful comments on the manuscript. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Michelle Bolduc, who read and commented upon the entire manuscript. I thank Ahmed Kraima of the UWM libraries for his invaluable help in obtaining reference materials and for help with translating some of the Arabic texts. In addition, I wish to thank Nell Seymour and Amy and Craig Loomis for friendship and practical help over the years during which I completed this book. A special thanks to Mary Selden Evans of Syracuse University Press for her encouragement and support of this project. Initial stages of research for this book were completed with the support of a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship. Additional support came from the Graduate School and the Center for International Studies at UWM. Finally, I thank my husband, Michael Jorn, for his enduring care and patient tolerance of long hours spent in the research and writing of this study.

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Transliterated Terms

Al-‘ammiya: Colloquial as opposed to standard written Arabic. It is the language used in everyday speaking contexts. Al-‘ammiya al-fasiha: A colloquialized fusha, a medium ground between the poles of Modern Standard Arabic and colloquial Arabic. Écriture féminine: A type of feminine writing defined by French author Hélène Cixous. It is writing that resists reliance on conventions and binary logic so as to better express the experience of the “other.” It also has the potential to stimulate social and political change that may ultimately subvert patriarchal and capitalist structures. Al-fusha: Standard written Arabic, as opposed to colloquial Arabic. Fusha is also the spoken form used in television and other broadcasting, and it is used in education in every Arab country. Fusha, also referred to as Modern Standard Arabic, is the modern descendant of classical Arabic. Al-infitah: The policy of economic opening instituted by Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat in the 1970s. The Open Door Policy embraced Western capitalist enterprise and sought to attract private investment from abroad as a means to improve the Egyptian economy. However, the policy has led to increased levels of inflation, consumerism, and pollution in the country. Jinni, jinn; ginni, ginn: A type of spirit mentioned in the Qur’an that is also the subject of popular belief and folktales. Lugha jadida: A new or experimental form of writing. Muhajjaba; muhaggaba: A Muslim woman who wears a scarf that covers her hair and neck. xiii

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Mulukhiyya: A traditional Egyptian soup made out of greens. Nadwa adabiyya: Literary circle or meeting. Al-nahda al-nisa’iyya: The women’s awakening or movement in Egyptian and Arab society toward accepting expanded opportunities and roles for women. Naksa: Debacle, or the defeat of the allied Arab forces by Israel in 1967. Niqab: A form of modest dress worn by conservative Muslim women. It covers the entire face, or the face below the eyes. Sahra: An evening party or gathering.

Author’s Note

T h e r esea rc h a nd w r i t i ng of this book were conducted before the tumultuous events of the January 25, 2011, revolution. However, the fiction and essays discussed in this book—while they were also written prior to the revolution—deal with many of the issues and concerns that brought about that revolution. These writings explore the results of widespread poverty, the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, inflation, un- and underemployment, and the housing crisis. The stories, novels, and essays discussed here also tackle subjects such as the lack of personal and political freedoms and the inadequacy of educational, social, and work opportunities for Egyptian youth. Some also reference the inefficacy of the Mubarak government and of previous regimes and corruption in the government and in other sectors of society. Perhaps most significant in my mind is that these works also portray the strength and resilience of Egyptian girls and women as they pursue family and work life in a challenging social, economic, and political context. Egyptian writers, journalists, and other intellectuals are participating in the current dialogue about the future of their country, and they are watching with both hope and concern for the developments of a new era in Egypt.

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T h is book ex plor es the dynamic cultural critique and literary experimentalism of five prominent Egyptian women writers whose work began to appear in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They are Radwa Ashour (b. 1946), Salwa Bakr (b. 1949), Nemat el-Behairy (1953–2008), Etidal Osman (b. 1942), and Ibtihal Salem (b. 1949).1 These women have been a significant presence on the Cairene and wider Arab literary scenes. They are particularly significant because they came of age at a time when women’s writing was attracting increased critical attention and had more venues for publication, particularly in private-sector publishing houses. These two factors have contributed to a broader readership both in Egypt and abroad and have enabled these writers to develop and mature as cultural critics. The 1970s writers have achieved—to a greater extent than either their predecessors or the generation of the 1990s—what Ferial Ghazoul (1994) calls “magical dualism” in writing: the successful fusion of politically or socially committed literature with artistically innovative literary techniques.2

1. A note on transliteration is in order here. I have adopted a simplified version of the transliteration system used in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. I have omitted the symbols to indicate long vowels, the voiceless ha’, and pharyngeal letters. Where important to indicate colloquial pronunciation, I used doubled vowels. I have spelled writers’ names as they themselves spell them in English or according to the way that they are commonly rendered by scholars writing in English. The Library of Congress spelling of the 1970s authors’ names is as follows: Radwâ ‘Âshûr, Salwâ Bakr, Ni‘mât al-Bihîrî, I‘tidâl ‘Ûthmân, and Ibtihâl Sâlim. 2. I refer to this group of writers as the 1970s writers because of the Egyptian convention that generally groups writers by the decade in which they began to publish, rather than by

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In recent years, scholars of Middle East women’s studies have been calling for careful analyses of educated women’s discourse, not only as a response to a reductive model of identity that labels Arab and Muslim women as passive victims of a male-dominated society but also as a response to the post-9/11 environment that sparked a new wave of stereotypical and racist attitudes toward Arabs, both male and female. In the case of Arab women’s literary production, it is crucial to examine both the social and political critique embedded in women’s literature as well as their achievements in literary style and artistry. This book merges anthropological and literary perspectives to explore the creative and cultural critical achievements of Egyptian women writers as they experiment with language and narrative technique, adapting aspects of the Arabic literary heritage to explore contemporary concerns. The women writers explored in this book bring a broad spectrum of experience to the analysis of their society. Some of these writers come from middle-class families. Others have their roots in the lower middle class, but because they reached college age after the Nasser regime abolished fees at the university level in 1962, they were able to gain a college education and subsequently an increased socioeconomic status. As teenagers and young adults, these writers lived in a tumultuous period in modern Egyptian history. They experienced firsthand the social, economic, and political transformations that characterized the late 1950s through the early 1970s, Nasser’s socialist and nationalist agenda, significant migration of rural Egyptians into the cities, and the naksa (debacle) of 1967. They witnessed Egyptians’ anger at Nasser’s style of rule, which ultimately failed to allow the populace a share in government and used repressive measures to control its detractors (Marsot 1990, 107–31). Some of the 1970s writers were on the university campuses or were recent university graduates in 1968 when students, disillusioned by the gap between

age, and also sometimes by their political orientations (Hutchins 1987). One member of this group, Nemat el-Behairy, did not begin publishing until the early 1980s, but critics generally regard her as a member of the 1970s generation partly because, like other writers of this cohort, she experiments with language and narrative strategies to deliver a social critique.

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the goals and the accomplishments of the Nasser revolution, angrily protested against the regime. They witnessed the arrests of colleagues who submitted demands to Parliament for a more representative political system and who protested government inefficacy. Other writers of this generation were on university campuses in January 1972 when students demonstrated against Sadat’s domestic and foreign policies, and they witnessed his attempt to crush these uprisings through the use of his Central Security Forces (Abdalla 1985, 107, 149–92). The 1970s writers also have been witness to the economic deterioration experienced by Egypt since the late 1960s as a result of the wars with Israel and the Open Door economic policy instituted by Sadat in the early 1970s (Booth 1991). The latter policy benefited the wealthy but also triggered inflation and consumerism that created additional economic hardship for the lower classes. Their stories and novels respond to the multiple ramifications of the troubled economy along with a host of other issues, the increasing influence of Islamic conservatism, the challenge to women’s authority posed by work outside the home, the struggle of working-class people to find appropriate housing, and the economic and public policy– driven dislocation of people from one part of the city or country to another.3 These authors write of the “dailiness” of poverty and social and political oppression in much the same way that miriam cooke describes the “Beirut decentrists” writing about the “dailiness of war.” Like the Lebanese writers, these Egyptian authors write from the (political) margins of society, yet this marginal perspective gives them holistic insight into their society and its problems. It allows them, in cooke’s words, “discursively to undermine and restructure society around the image of a new center” (1988, 3), in this case, that of the perceptive and sometimes subversive woman. This study is motivated by several questions about how these experimentalist writers function, both individually and as a group, as intellectuals and as social critics. Is there a constellation of topics and concerns that they all address and that they see as fundamental to their social critique?

3. For ethnographic accounts of these issues and their impact on women, see Ghannam 2002, MacLeod 1991, and Singerman and Hoodfar 1996.

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How do they contribute to discursive formations extant in Cairene society, and are they generating new ways of thinking and talking about women, society, and social change? How do they conceive of their role as authors, and particularly as female authors? How do they refigure the Arabic language to accommodate gender concerns and to detail aspects of women’s lives and experience? To what extent does writing bring women into the public sphere, an arena in which women have had more limited access to positions of authority and power? I address these questions through presentation and analysis of the works of five major authors of the 1970s generation and through description of the relationship between the writers’ lives and their art. Primary ethnographic aims of the book are to show how these sensitive and articulate Egyptians think about their own experience and those of other women in their society and how they use language to challenge traditional social categories and structures of domination. However, I also aim to describe how these authors fit into the larger highly active literary environment of Cairo. As Pierre Bourdieu has noted, the study of writers and their creative production requires an approach that considers an array of factors. These elements include the social origins and education of writers and artists, the prevailing cultural aesthetic that defines the quality of art, and the views of those critics and publishers who help to produce the meaning and value of the work. Understanding the social conditions that define art as art is a complex process and a significant facet of describing a wider cultural milieu (Bourdieu 1993, 37). I do not presume to give an exhaustive description of the Egyptian “field of cultural production,” a task admirably tackled by Richard Jacquemond (2008). Rather, I aim to provide a portrait of the 1970s generation’s collective works, the topics that they give textual prominence, some of the conditions that have given rise to their creative production, and the ways that their work has been received by critics and other readers. I am influenced by Nadje al-Ali’s (1994) framework for thinking about writers and writing contexts, but have expanded it to explore more fully authorial experiments with language and narrative technique and the formal critical response to these writing strategies. Further, I make some assertions about the contributions of the author at the level of social discourse

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and how her work gives insight into the motivations of a unique artistintellectual, literary standards, the nature of cultural criticism in Egypt, and the issues targeted by these critics. The purpose of drawing connections between text, context, and writer is not to consign these women’s writings to the realm of the autobiographical, a problem historically faced by women writers. It is, rather, to elucidate how the social commitment of the author constitutes one aspect of the meaning of the text, revealing how women writers develop as active creators of public discourse. Anthropologists studying Egypt have documented the diversity and fluidity of the milieu inhabited by Cairo’s educated, intellectual, and cultural elite. Al-Ali (2000) has shown that women in activist groups in Cairo hold considerably varied political orientations and views on nationalism, class struggle, feminism, Islamism, and secularism. Al-Ali has also pointed to flux in these political positionings, as former liberal secularist writers have adopted some positions of political Islam. Her work mirrors historical studies that have demonstrated that there have always been important nuances and diversity in the ideas and social reformist goals of feminists and other Egyptian women writers (Booth 2001; Badran 1995). Lila Abu-Lughod, who has studied the secular progressive-oriented intellectuals who produce television in Egypt, has pointed to the complex position of liberal intellectuals in Egypt as they stake out their positions on modernism, nationalism, Islam, and feminism. Abu-Lughod argues that while many television writers define their projects as modernist and see themselves as nationalist, their views on feminism are, in some cases, as dismissive as the assessments of certain Islamists (1993, 1998).4 Fiction

4. I use Islamist and secularist, recognizing the essentialist aspects of these terms. I adopt these terms without any accompanying assumptions about their relative attachment to concepts of modernity or enlightened thought. Rather, I simply use the word Islamist to denote those individuals who wish to see a version of Islam govern social, political, and legal structures. I recognize that there is diversity of belief and practice within what we may call the Islamist trend and that by no means must Islamists necessarily be equated with the desire to use violence against individuals or the Egyptian or foreign governments. The term secularists, on the other hand, identifies those persons who oppose the adoption of religion as the guiding principle for government, law, and public morality.

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writer Salwa Bakr, who commented that she sometimes feels that male members of the literary establishment do not take her perspectives as a writer seriously because she is a woman, expressed a similar point to me. Yet Bakr is one of many women who are critiquing and exploring Egyptian gender dynamics in fiction published by a wide array of journals, newspapers, and publishing houses. There is also considerable diversity in the topics and approaches pursued by both male and female authors actively writing and publishing in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Cairo. Many of these writers are experimenting with literary texts in terms of narrative strategies and exploring the divide between the colloquial and standard levels of Arabic and with cross-genre writing. Some have produced what Samia Mehrez has called “narratives on history.” Authors like Gamal al-Ghitani tap characters, images, landmarks, and literatures of particular historical periods to craft texts that “question and subvert the official, exclusionary versions of history” (1994, 61) and provide alternative, often unsettling discourses on history. In Gharnata (Granada) (1994a, 2003a), Radwa Ashour also critiques the nature of official histories by “rewriting” accounts that are inclusive of female points of view, the perspectives of children, and other less empowered social actors. Like al-Ghitani, she forces the reader to question not only official histories but also the very nature of the “real” and the circumstances of the present.5 Other Egyptian authors craft narratives that blur the line between history and fiction by incorporating documents into fictional texts (Ibrahim 1992) and by crafting polyphonic texts marked by fantasy (Bakr 1986a, 1991a, 2004a). These narratives challenge the reader to question “truths” about male and female natures, the historical past, and the social and political circumstances of the present. As Marilyn Booth has noted, many among Egypt’s literary avantgarde are moving toward what writer and critic Edwar al-Kharrat has

5. There are also parallels between Salwa Bakr’s Golden Chariot (1995) and al-Ghitani’s Waqa’i‘ harat al-za‘farani (Incidents in Za‘farani Alley) (1986) in the use of digression and the intersection of reality and illusion to critique the human condition, social norms, and the nature of relationships in the Egyptian metropolis.

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called “writing across genres”—a form of writing that hovers between narrative prose and the more compact and suggestive language of poetry (Booth 2002; al-Kharrat 1990, 1994a). Some of the writings by Ibtihal Salem, Sahar Tawfiq, and Etidal Osman fall into this category, and their writings converge in interesting ways even as they each bear distinctive characteristics. Sahar Tawfiq employs a sparse prose and interior monologue and draws upon myth and folklore to explore women’s consciousness and feelings of hopelessness and alienation from society. Ibtihal Salem sets some of her stories in the Mediterranean city of Port Said, where she explores the effects of increasing consumerism, capitalism, and war upon women. Use of the colloquial and of the proverbs that distinguish women’s speech figures prominently in her fiction. Etidal Osman also evokes images of the sea and experiments with representing women’s speech, but her fiction is also richly marked by images and vocabulary of Sufi texts. That language itself is the site of experimentation is significant. As Mushira Eid asserts, women’s language in the Arab world has a stronger association with the colloquial (2002, 204). Clearly, many authors privileging women’s experience wish to evoke this language at some level. The 1970s writers are mindful of the fact that the colloquial language has less cultural prestige than the standard language, which has roots in an illustrious religious and literary tradition. Yet at the same time, they recognize that highlighting this everyday language offers a way to challenge the male hierarchy that is buttressed by the standard language. They attempt to deal with this dilemma in various ways, including incorporating colloquial Arabic directly into their text and exploring the lexical and grammatical links between the colloquial and standard. This experimentation allows them “to distance themselves from the predominant, accepted traditional (male) discourse,” a discourse that relies on the sociolinguistic institution of diglossia to promote the linguistic authority of the male establishment (ibid., 205).6 However, their writing suggests not only the

6. Although used here for lack of a better term, the term diglossia fails to adequately describe the several levels of Arabic and their uses. Badawi and Hinds (1986) identify two levels of formal Arabic in the Egyptian context, one based on Qur’anic Arabic and one used as

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possibility of rupturing the dominance of the standard language but also the possible rapprochement between levels of language and the social actors that use that language. Clearly, the 1970s writers craft alternative narratives on women and other oppressed groups in Egyptian and Arab society. These narratives explore the silencing and marginalization not only of women and girls but of all subjects within what Mehrez describes as “the more general and pressing context of dependency and closure in the Arab world at large” (1994, 11). They have received considerable critical attention for their innovative approaches from both Cairo’s literary critics and intelligentsia and in Europe and the United States (for example, al-Ali 1994; Booth 1996, 2002; Draz 1994; al-Kharrat 1990, 1994a, 1994b; Mehrez 1994; Saliba 2003; and al-Zayyat 1992b). Anthropology, Creativity, and Literature My theoretical approach to the 1970s writers explores the critical middle ground between certain approaches to literature as reflections of the author’s psychosocial self and the postmodern position that assumes the “death of the author” (Barthes 1977; al-Ali 1994, 114). This approach is motivated by my long-standing interest in the richness and diversity of Arabic literature, and it is also informed by my training as an anthropologist. The latter focused my awareness of the complexity and importance of gaining detailed and nuanced understandings of women’s desires and ambitions and of their views of themselves and their positions in family, society, Islam, and history. Although my own anthropological interests had begun in the field of women’s nonorthodox spiritual practice, I became aware of the theoretical and methodological difficulties that obtain in

the vehicle of contemporary writing and culture. They identify three levels of Egyptian colloquial Arabic, which vary depending on the educational level of the speaker. Also, as Armbrust (1996) points out, speakers may move between the levels of the language or use colloquial or formal Arabic strategically to establish authority, a point of view, or rapport with an audience. I continue to use the term diglossia here because Bakr explores the links between the two poles of Arabic, al-fusha (standard written language) and al-‘ammiya (colloquial dialect).

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trying to infer women’s voices and counterhegemonic discourses from ritual practices, and also of the relative dearth of anthropological work on the self-reflexive writing of educated women in the Middle East. In the 1990s, influenced by feminist and discourse theory and critiques of Western scholarly discourse on the Middle East (Said 1979; Asad 1986; AbuLughod 1989), a new scholarship began to grow up focusing on women’s creative writing, journalism, and social criticism (al-Ali 1994; Arebi 1994; Badran and cooke 1990; Baron 1994; Milani 1992; Nelson 1996). Inspired by this trajectory, and part of a group of dissertation writers at the University of Chicago exploring the developing field of literary anthropology, I decided to focus my own efforts in the field of Egyptian women’s literature as a form of social discourse. A central aim of my approach has been to weave together a portrait of writers’ experience, motivations, obstacles, and triumphs as they set about the task of describing and critiquing their social worlds. Of course, presenting an analysis of literature in terms of the personal, social, and historical context of its author runs the risk of being labeled as an attempt to read the fictional text as sociological reality. I argue that context and author-based criticism need not limit the reading of the text in this way. Rather, it allows us to acknowledge the “worldliness of the text,” as Said (1983) would have it, and to consider the pertinent social issues that have occasioned the writing—the issues to which the writer feels she must respond. I concur with Said that analysis of literary texts cannot be isolated from the events and circumstances that made them possible—or from the historical moments in which they are interpreted by local readers. Presenting the text in the context of its production allows the reader insight into the social world in which it was created and into the specificities of the authorial approach to that world. This approach can be very important in the context of Egypt—and other Arab countries—where literature is commonly used to express a veiled critique of social ideologies, political realities, and economic policies. Intellectuals and artists serve, in Jacquemond’s (2008) terms, as the “conscience of the nation,” generating much of the public discourse about Egypt’s internal issues and external relations in both fiction and nonfiction pieces that are published in widely circulated newspapers and journals and that appear on state television.

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These texts may also be regarded as events, which are interpreted in terms of, and may impact upon, particular social and political debates and sometimes upon the life of the writer her- or himself. Egypt has been the site of a series of attacks by Islamists against intellectuals, including the 1992 assassination of press commentator Farag Fouda, the 1994 assassination attempt on writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and threats against the life of feminist writer and activist Nawal el-Saadawi. These events have certainly inspired fear but have not silenced the writers discussed in this study, or many of their colleagues. In order to achieve contextualization of 1970s writers’ creative production, I combine literary analysis with ethnographic insights to explore the way in which they portray a wide range of female emotional, intellectual, family, and professional experience and challenge dominant gender, religious, and political ideologies in Egypt. An examination of the dynamic between writing and writing contexts in the social critique and literary experimentation of women authors extends beyond the field of anthropology and is situated between literary and anthropological studies. Scholars of literature often do not pay enough attention to the anthropological context of writing or to the wide variety of social and political factors that impact upon writing and publishing. Likewise, with notable exceptions (Abu-Lughod 1997, 2005; al-Ali 1994; Arebi 1994), anthropologists of the Middle East have not paid adequate attention to the social discourse of educated women actors. I situate this study in both fields so as to render it more accessible to scholars and students with various disciplinary backgrounds. Scholars in the emerging field of anthropology of literature have argued that literature can be a significant source of ethnographic understanding, not because it reflects society in some simple sense but because it is a social and intellectual activity “integral to the social process, as both historical precipitant and product” (Phillips 1987, 3). In his study of Thai writers and intellectuals, Phillips argues that literary texts are particularly unique sources of cultural knowledge because they are the result of the writer’s social position and personal experience and not the result of ethnographic eliciting techniques. Phillips presents a selection of short stories, essays, and poems in translation with a minimal amount

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of ethnographic interpretation to provide the non-Thai reader with access to Thai symbolism, values, and cultural expectations. He argues that his effort is geared toward illuminating the noetic and not the aesthetic; that is, he explores literary selections as illuminating meaning for creators and readers with little attention to artistic processes, innovation, or style. The ethnographic value of texts also derives from their intracultural nature: authors direct their work toward readers within their cultural system, readers who share certain literary standards and views about the artistic, social, and political value of creative writing. Phillips argues that this intracultural nature renders writing a rich source of indigenous meanings and assumptions, with the caveat that the processes of translation and interpretation can never render these meanings complete with all their attendant nuances and cultural references. I take from Phillips the sense that literature is an important source of ethnographic understanding. In Egypt, as in Thailand and many other places, literature provides insights into the ways that writers think about staggering social and political changes. As Phillips insists, writers are not sociologists, but what they lack in sociological literalness, or breadth, they compensate for by the “angle, depth, subtlety and imaginativeness of their literary perspectives” (ibid., 54). It is precisely this element of literary production upon which I focus. I argue that examining authorial use of literary style itself—and particularly the way that women writers mold Arabic to suit their topic matter—gives us insight into the ways they use aesthetic processes to critique and comment upon society. My study also draws upon anthropological approaches that seek to illuminate the role of the creative impulse in social and political life and in various forms of artistic expression. Anthropologists of written literature, like those scholars who have explored oral creative production, have been inspired by Michel Foucault, Raymond Williams, Jacques Derrida, and Antonio Gramsci, among others, to explore those narratives that are normally overpowered by hegemonic ones (Daniel and Peck 1996). In the ethnography of the Middle East, for example, Saddeka Arebi (1994) employs the Foucauldian notion of discourse to explore how Saudi Arabian women writers understand their position within larger contexts of power and how they see their work as creative or journalistic writers as a means

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to disturb the “verbal machinery” in charge of theorizing women’s roles and behavior. She details the various stylistic approaches used by Saudi women prose writers as they seek to establish a dialectic between opposition to certain aspects of society and affirmation of major cultural values and institutions. Arebi argues that appreciation of these approaches is key to understanding how Saudi female writers gain access to the field of cultural politics and submit their own interpretations of Islam, the relationship between men and women, and women’s potential roles in society. Elsewhere, I have argued that Salwa Bakr emphasizes the richness of the popular language of poor, uneducated women and the complexity of their personal and social positions by drawing upon classic frameworks of Arabic oral and written literature and by crafting a colloquialized form of al-fusha. Bakr’s use of narrative strategies from the Arabic heritage, such as the Arabesque and her skillful linking of standard, colloquial, and Qur’anic Arabic, allows her to demonstrate a competent literary voice. This literary voice helps to authorize both her treatment of the lives of women at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and her damning critique of the impact of social norms on the lives and psyches of these women. Nemat el-Behairy, who also focuses on women and other marginalized social actors, has made strategic use of the divide between standard and colloquial Arabic and the rich body of proverbs relating to women’s lives, in order to draw out the details and implications of women’s personal desire and aspirations (Seymour-Jorn 2002, 2004). Anthropologists working on written literature struggle to balance the degree to which they can treat literature as reflecting core cultural values of a particular time and place and the degree to which artistic production should be viewed as a unique and individual interpretation. Paul Friedrich (1996) argues that because all artistic representation is ensconced in society, culture, and history, a thorough and nuanced understanding of key poetic texts can provide a window into a culture’s innermost symbolic values. However, he also emphasizes the importance of understanding the dynamic and creative ways in which individuals relate to their language and literary and cultural traditions—the “poetic indeterminacy” of individuals who think through and beyond these traditions (1986). For Friedrich, poetic language—that unpredictable, dynamic zone of human

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expression—is the locus of some of the most interesting differences between languages and cultures, suggesting the importance of studying the imagination and poetic production of the creative individual. The writer’s creative production allows us some insight into his imagination and the ways in which an artist integrates knowledge, perceptions, and emotions in a creative way and generates new ways of thinking about his milieu (ibid.). Similarly, in his ethnographic biography of the Cretan novelist Andreas Nenedakis, Michael Herzfeld suggests that focus on fiction writing allows insight into the subjectivity of a member, however idiosyncratic, of a given society, and therefore into “refractions of collective representations” of that society (1997, 26). At the same time, Herzfeld argues that examining how a novelist depicts motivation and desire in a way that is socially plausible can illuminate local understandings of psychology and cultural values. Further, it can suggest the conventional assumptions that a knowledgeable reader within that ethnographic context would bring to the reading of fiction and, perhaps by extension, to issues dealt with in that fiction (ibid., 1–27). Herzfeld’s problematic of defining the anthropological value of teasing out the fiction writer’s approach to depicting motive and desire is particularly intriguing. What does the manner in which an Egyptian woman writer portrays her subject’s motivations tell us about Egyptian understandings of the “the way people act” and typical repercussions for conformist or nonconformist behavior? What does it tell us about how a nonconformist individual, particularly a woman, may be viewed, what might motivate her actions, how she might succeed or fail in changing dynamics in her family, or in whatever immediate community she inhabits? How does the writer steer her reader through an exploration of unusual subject matter, whether it be the mind of a murderess in prison (Bakr 1991a) or the mind of a child who is gaining his first insights into political injustice (Osman 1987, 55–59)? What does the author’s mode of characterization tell us about the sort of knowledge and potential understanding the author expects from her audience? Clearly, there are real limits to the extent one can draw sociological insights from any one author’s approach to characterization or imagery.

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However, it is useful to examine a writer’s topics and writing strategies in terms of current prevailing artistic trends so as to understand each author’s particular approach to making her personal vision available to readers. The authors addressed in this book write in a dynamic literary milieu and are part of an avant-garde experimenting with subject matter, narrative structure, cross-genre writing, and a literary bricolage that draws extensively upon the Arabic literary and scholarly traditions, ancient Egyptian cosmology, and popular language and beliefs. I examine each writer’s particular practice of these trends and other techniques to appeal to the reader on a wide range of themes: from the potentially mundane everyday world of the housewife to the experiential intensity of childhood experiences that provoke the young person’s consciousness to widen and mature and to a divorced woman’s experience with breast cancer in twenty-first-century Cairo. Finally, I should note that while my analysis of Egyptian women writers is influenced by Western feminist criticism, it resists the assumption that analyses of gender in the United States and Europe can be simply transposed onto the Egyptian social scene. Rather, these feminist works contribute to a gender-conscious analysis that is vital, as Fedwa MaltiDouglas argues, “when the culture in question uses gender as a major organizing principle, in social organization, in mentalités, or, as is most usual, in both” (1991, 6). I adopt Elaine Showalter’s strategy (1977) of viewing women writers as a literary subculture. The 1970s writers share with their male colleagues a certain political experience and awareness, but as women, they analyze Egyptian history and society through the lens of female experience, which includes experience of unequal treatment at the hands of parents, teachers, literary critics, and other figures of authority. I also draw on the work of Hélène Cixous (1983, 1994) to elucidate the ways in which the 1970s writers bring to the fore women’s personal, physical (sometimes sexual), and emotional experiences rather than allowing them to be obliterated by a masculine logic that privileges male experience. They participate in what Cixous calls “recovering the female self” by describing and valorizing the details of women’s lives as wives, mothers, workers, and above all human beings with real intellectual, emotional, and physical needs. As Marilyn Booth (1996) notes, more authors are

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“writing the body” in response to increasing inroads by religious conservatives who are trying to stem the changes in gender roles and are rejecting more inclusive understandings of Egyptianness. An author such as Nemat el-Behairy engages in precisely the sort of creative work that Cixous defines as écriture féminine in the sense that her writing opens doors for exploration of women’s physical experience, including sexual desire and the physical and emotional pain linked to disease of the female body. As Booth notes, this type of writing clearly serves as a literary response to the censorship of the street that shuts down those discourses that might be viewed as a challenge to Islamist understandings of morality. As a group, the authors of el-Behairy’s generation furthermore expand the limits of what it means to be female by highlighting the deep, although often unrecognized, involvement of women in many aspects of social, political, and economic life. Writing an Anthropology of Egyptian Women Writers Scholars in the field of Middle East women’s studies are increasingly calling for more nuanced analyses of how women express themselves through, and react to, cultural forms. Lila Abu-Lughod (1997) argues that thick description of the personal stories and daily lives of individual television viewers and of their responses to programs can reveal the complex structures and systems of meaning that inform their lives. She also calls for increased ethnographic attention to the women who write and produce these programs as a means to understand their social position, ideological orientations, and motivations. Other scholars have pointed to the importance of developing more nuanced approaches toward understanding women’s expression in literature. Samah Selim (2000) argues that analysis of Arab women’s writing tends to reduce it to certain categories and does not consider the complex ways in which women use language to express their experience. She claims that Arab and Western critics analyze Arab women’s writing primarily as politically committed narrative practice, as an act of resistance to oppressive social structures and political institutions. Selim states that critics have typically analyzed this writing either from a feminist perspective, which privileges the recuperation of female personal histories, or from a nationalist perspective, which

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focuses upon the enmeshment of the female story with larger social and political issues. Selim argues that the tendency to associate Arab women’s writing with one of these two perspectives is problematic. This critical approach, she suggests, obscures the subtle, multilayered ways in which women writers use language both as they explore the web of social, political, and economic structures that shape women’s experience and as they describe how women are implied in the madness and violence around them. Saddeka Arebi (1994) also points to the limitations of categorizing Saudi Arabian women’s writing as a form of resistance. She asserts that a better approach involves teasing out the different ideological positions and varied stylistic approaches that female authors use to establish a dialectical relationship between opposition to certain aspects of society and affirmation of major cultural values and institutions. For example, Arebi explores Fowziyya Abu-Khalid’s use of historical symbols and motifs and an intimate vocabulary of the female body to reinterpret past history and write the current history of women and society. My own approach to looking at women’s writing is multidimensional, involving a three-pronged approach to examine the connections between the author as artist, as individual, and as social critic. As I explore each author’s individual approaches to literary art, I highlight her unique set of literary strategies and approaches to social subjects, while drawing connections between her writing and the work of others in her cohort. As a group, the 1970s writers deal with the social, economic, and political status of women in Egyptian society and the struggles women have in their relationships with parents, husbands, coworkers, and neighbors. Many address the intimate psychological worlds of women—their desires, frustrations, and hopes. Some of these authors, including Radwa Ashour and Salwa Bakr, build upon the sort of historical narratives provided by the legacy of their literary mothers, such as Latifa al-Zayyat’s Al-bab al-maftuh (1989; translated as The Open Door [2000]), and further explore the history of Egyptian women’s political and social interventions and experiences. Several of these writers participate in the vogue for cross-genre writing that fuses the narrative function of prose with the evocative nature of poetry. Ibtihal Salem employs a dense poetic prose to explore the increasing consumerism and capitalism in the Egyptian city and relates these

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trends to the emotional alienation of its female inhabitants (1989). She uses this same sparse style, and elliptical references to woman-focused Egyptian proverbs, to explore the psychological effects of social pressures to bear children and of unhappy marriages (1992, 17–24). Etidal Osman also experiments with a poetic prose, but her texts incorporate elements from the Arabic folklore tradition, and some are richly marked by images and vocabulary of the Sufi text (1987, 1992). Focusing upon the ways in which women use language itself also helps us understand how they deal with what Joseph Zeidan has described as two linguistic obstacles that obtain when women write in Arabic. First, Arabic literature has been subject to an ideology that holds the classical Arabic language to be sacred and inhibits changes in the formal language. Second, Arabic (like many languages) is a patriarchal language, and therefore women must change this language significantly in order to find their voices (1995, 2). Obviously, both male and female writers struggle to innovate in a way that does not disregard literary standards. Yet women writing in Arabic and attempting to express a female perspective on everyday life, emotional or spiritual or intellectual experience, or even children’s experience must creatively engage with this language in a way that both reflects women’s knowledge and modes of expression and passes muster with critics and other readers. In the following chapters, I tease out some examples of how authors use style to express social critiques, political points of view, and more general philosophical positions. The language strategies and styles that they adopt represent not so much “a female language” (the existence of which has been much debated in Arab literary journals in recent years) but a set of styles that intimately reflect women’s experience, modes of communication, and domestic cultures. The second aspect of my examination of authors is informed by the traditional anthropological concepts of the personal history and the “key informant.” Part of my research involved detailed interviews with writers to explore their personal experiences of growing up female in Egypt and their experiences with parents and educational systems and with the process of developing their artistic and intellectual careers. I use this interview material to explore what motivates these cultural creators to embark upon the project of writing and the manner in which they engage

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with their literary tradition. I explore how the author, as a sensitive and educated individual, reflects on her environment, how she thinks about her own childhood and other aspects of her experience that helped her to develop as a young person, and later as a mature member of society and an artist. Many of these authors reflect sentiments similar to the ones voiced by their colleague Sonallah Ibrahim (al-Ali 1994, 91–92): that writing becomes a way of dealing with the schizophrenic quality of life in Egypt, where people are not adequately educated or socialized in a way that might help them deal with contemporary work and social and personal relationships. The 1970s writers also concern themselves with the fact that while the majority of the population face an increasingly difficult everyday life, this reality is neither recognized nor adequately addressed by the government or experienced by the wealthier classes of Egyptians. I argue that having this sort of personal insight into the artist as intellectual adds a crucial element to our understanding of Egyptian society. It allows us access into the ways in which a group of highly perceptive women, who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and who have had varied life experiences, reflect on what it means to be a woman and a person in turn-of-the-century Egypt. This perspective serves not to “shatter the stereotype of the passive Middle Eastern woman,” which has surely been achieved by so many previous scholarly accounts of women (Badran 1995; Badran and cooke 1990; Early 1993; Fernea and Bezirgan 1977; MacLeod 1991; Mehta 2007; Nelson 1996; Singerman and Hoodfar 1996). It is also not intended to suggest that the problems of poverty and political and gender oppression that the 1970s writers address are in any way unique to Egyptian and Arab society. Rather, this consideration of women’s creative and courageous responses to these issues adds detail and nuance to our understanding of female social and cultural activity from the point of view of writers who have made it their business to write about women in society. My aim of linking authors’ writing with their personal histories and with issues of authorship and writing contexts is also related to an Egyptian cultural attitude toward writing that accepts the coexistence of aesthetic quality and social function in fiction. Al-Ali has argued that Egyptian authors appear to be more comfortable than some of

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their Western counterparts with acknowledging that literature can have an explicitly social function (1994, 113–14). Indeed, Jacquemond (2008) defines the Egyptian literary doxa as based on the postulates of realism and commitment and the primacy of realist writing in which the author intervenes in the major issues of the day. My own interviews confirm that authors feel that writing can and sometimes should serve a social function, and as long as the writing is skillful, this aim does not detract from its artistic value. As al-Ali notes, literary work and the realities of everyday life are even more entangled for women than they are for men, which makes it suggestive to look at this relationship. Women’s writing often involves a bold critique of male-dominated social structures, and sometimes of men’s behavior itself, which may make it a risky endeavor, requiring different authorial and personal strategies. Female writers often have a very different relationship with the literary establishment, the literary critics whose approval they need in order to be published, and the publishers and censors that must evaluate and ultimately produce and market their texts. Women writers have had to struggle to gain acceptance in the literary world, and understanding this experience itself can be instructive. The third element of my study consists of examining how each author’s social critique—as expressed in fiction and in some cases also in critical writing—has been received in the Egyptian and Arab critical world. Clearly, any study that seeks to examine literature as a form of cultural critique must take into account how writing is received by critics, the arbiters of literary taste and value. This point is particularly important for avant-garde writers and those, like the 1970s writers, who present a clear critique of prevailing standards of morality, gender relations, and political and economic trends. The extent to which critics deem their writing aesthetically credible and intellectually appealing ultimately determines its public circulation in books, journals, and newspapers. The degree of circulation in turn impacts the extent to which texts are treated in literary meetings, in the university setting, and in other discussion contexts. Some of the 1970s writers have also published quite widely in criticism, and most have at least published “testimonials” that discuss their own views on writing. I argue that for writers such as Ashour, Osman, and Bakr,

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their active participation in literary criticism helps to lend weight to their cultural critique embodied in fictional form.

. . .

Some notes on methodology are in order. I began research for this book in 1991, reading the fiction of the 1970s and other Egyptian writers along with critical materials. Fieldwork for this study was conducted during five research periods in Cairo, during 1991–92 and shorter stays in 1996, 2004, 2007, and 2010. During these visits I conducted interviews with the writers themselves and with literary critics, editors, and publishers. I also attended many literary circles. Some circles I attended almost every week during the initial phase of fieldwork; others I visited more infrequently. I also visited bookstores, newspapers, and publishing houses that publish and distribute the 1970s generation’s literary output. Back in the United States, I continued to keep in touch with the Cairene literary world through published books and literary journals that I receive from Cairo and through personal contacts. During the initial phase of fieldwork, I completed a series of detailed interviews with more than twenty Cairene writers, some from the 1970s generation and some from both the previous and the subsequent literary cohorts. As my research progressed, I limited my focus to the five women featured in this book, because they were among the best-known members of their generation. However, I do not consider my selection comprehensive of all the 1970s writers who are currently active on the literary scene. One prominent member, Sahar Tawfiq, was not residing in Cairo during most of the period of my field research and therefore was not available for interviews. I approached each interview with a set of structured questions that addressed the author’s personal history: her family upbringing, her education, the literary and intellectual figures who influenced her, and her early development as a writer. Questions explored how each writer thinks about her social role as a writer and her relationship with her audience, her critics, and other members of her literary cohort. I asked authors about their view of their own literary style and whether they regarded themselves as generating a specifically “female literary language.” Finally, some interviews were devoted to discussing specific texts. Many authors

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generously provided me with books that had gone out of print, photocopied story and novel drafts, critical articles from journals and newspapers, and handwritten manuscripts. Although I began interviews with a structured format, each inevitably took on a shape of its own, as each author steered the conversation in the direction of issues she felt were important for my understanding of her literary production and career. Many of these authors had completed advanced degrees, were well published, and were established in careers such as teaching, journalism, editing, publishing, and theater production. Several writers had conducted more interviews than I had, all were better read than I in the Arabic literary canon, and they helped me to develop my research by raising new issues and suggesting readings to explore. This process was naturally humbling for me as a Western researcher in the field of Arab arts, but also opened up a world of questions for further exploration. Some authors were interested in my project of relating personal, social, and intellectual contexts to creative production, and they spoke at length about their childhoods, education, and personal and professional lives. Others clearly wished to focus the discussion on their literary work, and their reluctance to dwell on the personal may well have been owing to the fact that women’s writing has so often been dismissed as “simply biographical.” Many interviews became lively discussions on literary and social issues as authors solicited my candid opinion of their own work and the work of their Egyptian colleagues and other writers. Some of the interviews were conducted in the space of a few hours in an office or in a café after a literary meeting. Most of the authors gave generously of their time, inviting me into their homes, where interviews were conducted over the course of several hours or even a few days, interrupted by snacks, meals, walks, and conversations with husbands, children, other relatives, and friends. By way of introduction to the following chapters I would note that Cultural Criticism in Egyptian Women’s Writing is organized to provide some background on the historical and contemporary circumstances of women writers in Cairo for the nonspecialist. Chapter 1 provides a brief history of women’s writing and the women’s press in Egypt, including women’s writing on education and the changing position of women in family and

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society. It furthermore examines aspects of the writing context, including a brief description of the educational system and the literary institution formed by writers, critics, literary circles, publishers, and bookstores. Descriptive lists of each author’s oeuvre are located in the footnotes for the chapter devoted to them, with full bibliographic information provided in the references. Chapter 2 is based on the reformist writing of Salwa Bakr, arguably the most prominent female member of her generation. In works such as Al-‘araba al-dhahabiyya la tas‘adu ila al-sama’ (1991a; translated as The Golden Chariot [1995]), Bakr experiments with an innovative female lexicon and with time-honored narrative strategies to explore the impact upon women of oppressive economic circumstances and restrictive gender ideologies. Bakr’s writing exhibits a distinctly postmodern concern for language itself, as she investigates how one version or register of language may be used to support the authority of those individuals who wield power in society. In The Golden Chariot, Bakr develops a “proper colloquial” language to get at the connections between standard and colloquial Arabic without using the colloquial directly in the text. In Al-bashmuri (2004a; translated as The Man from Bashmour [2007a]), Bakr moves beyond gender issues to explore religious and ethnic oppression in a historical context. Here she examines the links between the ancient Egyptian, Coptic, and Arabic languages, religions, and cultures. The next two chapters deal specifically with two writers whose work—like Bakr’s—explores the Arabic diglossia. However, unlike Bakr, Ibtihal Salem and Nemat el-Behairy incorporate the colloquial language directly into their texts, thereby using the shift between the two linguistic registers to depict women’s emotional experience and the linguistic, physical, and cultural milieus they inhabit. Chapter 3 examines stories from Salem’s collections Al-nawrus (The Seagull) (1989) and Dunya saghira (A Small World) (1992) and her novel Sunduq saghir fi-l-qalb (A Small Box in the Heart) (2004). Salem’s work has a distinctly telescopic quality. Her short stories are compact, often taking place within the space of a few hours or a day, and are crafted in a terse poetic prose that masterfully renders her protagonists’ moods, the atmosphere of their social worlds, and the sights, smells, and sounds of their physical environments. I characterize Salem as

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a writer who has intimately experienced work, family, and intellectual life in the context of two important but quite different Egyptian cities: Cairo and Port Said. Her stories explore how each environment impacts women’s opportunities in relationships and in work. Both her stories and her novel A Small Box are suggestive of women’s interior worlds as they deal with loss, sadness, alienation, and disillusionment about the shape their lives have taken. Salem’s poetic prose, her version of “cross-genre” writing, carries a powerful critique of the impact of gender ideologies, capitalism, and consumerism on the lives and psyches of Egyptian women. Chapter 4 discusses the fiction of Nemat el-Behairy in her story collections Nisf imra’a wa qisas ukhra (Half a Woman, and Other Stories) (1983) and Al-‘ashiqun (The Infatuated) (1989) and her autobiographical novel Yawmiyyat imra’a mushi‘‘a (Chronicles of a Radiating Woman) (2006b). ElBehairy’s fiction puts at the forefront the lives of women who are poor or otherwise marginalized. But her writing also delves into the issue of women’s aspirations and in that sense constitutes a sort of transgression, as it brings to the fore issues often excluded from or marginalized in public discourse. It also offers a specific challenge to a social organization that she characterizes (as do other writers of her generation) as ignoring the personal needs, emotional and physical longings, and intellectual or artistic potentials of women. The transgressive nature of her writing relates her to the work of an earlier generation of women writers such as Nawal el-Saadawi and Alifa Rifaat. However, I suggest that el-Behairy’s fiction differs from the work of her predecessors by strategic use of colloquial expressions, proverbs, and other aspects of women’s speech. The feminine discourse that she constructs highlights the ways in which women might think about the forces that limit them and how they might define their objectives in relation to these constraints. Chapter 5 addresses the work of Radwa Ashour. Ashour’s writing bears some comparison to the work of Salwa Bakr in that she delves into the psychological worlds of female characters, many of whom are variously eccentric, loners, and passionate about interests ranging from the natural environment to their literary and artistic heritages. However, Ashour’s experimentation is less concerned with issues of language and the Arabic diglossia than with the project of writing a history of the

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subjective. Ashour argues that the writer works in the space of history, generating an account of historical events or major cultural or political phenomena. At the same time, she suggests that the author works in the space of the individual consciousness, painting a portrait of the intimate situations and emotional states of people as they experience these events. In order to generate this history of the subjective, Ashour experiments with hybrid texts—merging the forms of play and story—and with the historical novel, as she records the circumstances of women’s lives and rewrites them, focusing on women’s agency, self-determination, and creativity. This chapter explores Ashour’s story collection Ra’aytu al-nakhl (I Saw the Date Palms) (1990) and her novels Hajar dafi’ (A Warm Stone) (1985) and Gharnata (1994a; translated as Granada [2003a]). Chapter 6 is based on a selection of Etidal Osman’s short stories and critical works to suggest how one “poetic imagination” works to analyze and synthesize her cultural tradition and to address her own artistic, intellectual, and social concerns. Much of Osman’s fiction focuses on the process of expanding consciousness—of children, of adults interacting with children, or of adults in new social or personal landscapes. I suggest that short stories from her collection Yunus al-bahr (Jonah of the Sea) (1987) and Washm al-shams (Sun Tattoo) (1992) draw on the space of the imagination— such as dreams or imaginings about supernatural creatures and figures from fairy tales—as a site for this expanding consciousness. Although she has not published as much fiction as the other authors treated in this study, I have included her because of the richness of her short story writing and because of her parallel role as a literary critic who has treated Egyptian and Arab women’s writing, among other things. Some of her critical essays also concern the imagination, addressing how women writers use the space of the imagination to evoke, question, and transform images from the popular tradition to suggest new ways of thinking about women’s psychology, intellect, and creative potential. Examining both her creative and her critical roles allows readers insight into the motivations and interpretations of this active Egyptian cultural critic. The 1970s writers regard themselves as socially committed individuals, and they write because they have a view to express and hope that it may make a difference. However, they are equally concerned with their

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identity as artists. They wish to be evaluated in terms of their literary vision and style, and not simply in terms of their identity as women writers or activists, a category that includes authors of a wide range of literary accomplishment. The works that I have chosen to discuss here represent the authors’ attempts to experiment with several aspects of writing, including subject matter, bridging the divide between formal and colloquial Arabic, cross-genre writing, and adapting narrative structures of the Arabic literary tradition to explore women’s worlds. Although it is impossible to represent the entire range of themes and literary techniques used by each author in the present work, I have tried to present what I find to be some of the more innovative and interesting examples of each author’s corpus. In some cases, my training as an ethnographer surely drew me to works with a depth of detail regarding the social and material milieus that women inhabit or to those writings that exhibit particularly unique cultural insights. Because I hope this work will also be of use to readers outside the field of Arabic studies, I have given references to both the original Arabic texts and to English translations where they are available. In order to appreciate the unique accomplishments of the five authors studied here, I turn now to a discussion of the historical and literary context. As we will see, contemporary women writers have both a long heritage to rely upon and draw from and, as a group, also faced immense challenges. They have pioneered new topics and forms, sometimes risking the disapproval of critics and other readers on both aesthetic and moral grounds.

Cultural Criticism in EGYPTIAN Women’s Writing

The 1970s Writers in Context

T h e au t hor s of the 1970s generation are heirs to a long and complex literary heritage, one to which women have long contributed. Contemporary women writers recognize that their literary foremothers lived and wrote in diverse locales across the Arab world but also that Egypt played a special role in the development of women’s writing and of Arab feminism. Women writing in Egypt from the late nineteenth century onward explored various aspects of women’s worlds and helped to pave the way for increased educational and professional opportunities for Egyptian women. They fought an uphill battle to earn acceptance of women’s writing both in critical circles and among the general public. As the history of Arab women’s writing has been discussed in detail elsewhere (Badran 1995; Badran and cooke 1990; Baron 1988, 1994; Booth 1991, 2001), I aim in this chapter to provide only a sketch of this history, with a specific focus on earlier generations of Egyptian women writers. In the second section of the chapter, I discuss certain aspects of the contemporary writing context in Egypt, including education, literacy, and the literary institution itself. Pearls from the Pens of Women: The History of Arab Women Writers The history of Arab women who have been recognized for their written and oral achievements extends back to pre-Islamic times. The earliest female Arab poets and writers were generally from elite families who were able to provide various forms of education for their daughters. In the pre-Islamic period, women demonstrated their poetic gifts primarily in the form of the elegy. Some of this poetry was anthologized and treated by 1

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early scholars (for example, in Ibn Nadim’s Al-fihrist and in al-Marzubani’s Ash‘ar al-nisa’), but much of this work has been lost (Zeidan 1995, 41). The early Islamic period saw the appearance of al-Khansa (AD 600–670), of the Madar tribe, who is counted among the masters of Arabic poetry (Fernea and Bezirgan 1977, 3–4; Badran and cooke 1990, xxvi). The eighth-century mystic Rabi‘a al-Adawiyya is known for her esoteric verse, and a section of the large Cairo suburb Nasr City is named after her. Ubaida al-Tamburiya and Sakina and Queen Zubaida were among the medieval Abbasid court poets in Baghdad (Badran and cooke 1990, xxvi). Later women writers would cite as literary foremothers women such as al-Khansa, or the nineteenth-century poet Aisha el-Taymuriyya, in order to justify their own writing and to suggest that they were continuing a respected practice of women’s writing rather than setting a precedent (Baron 1988, 96). Although a number of the writings of early Arab female authors were preserved in manuscript form, it was not until the late nineteenth century that significant numbers of women writers were able to see their own work appear in print. During this period women in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq founded literary societies and salons (Zeidan 1995, 45–91). However, it was in Egypt in particular that women’s journalism began to flourish and women’s writing began to emerge as a public phenomenon. Female intellectuals in Egypt pioneered a body of women’s journals in which they presented their stories, essays, and letters. Among these early magazines were Hind Nawfal’s Al-fatah (Young Woman) (1892–94), Louisa Habbalin’s Al-firdaus (Paradise) (1896), Alexandra Avierino’s Anis al-jalis (Intimate Companion) (1898–1908), and Esther Moyal’s Al-‘a’ila (Family) (1899–1904). Women of Lebanese and Syrian origin founded the journals in Egypt in the 1890s, but after 1900, Egyptian women also began to found and edit magazines. These journals became part of a new literary culture that profoundly affected both literate and illiterate sectors of society (Baron 1988, 13–14; 1994, 1–4; Badran 1995, 61). Women’s entrée to the literary stage was also linked to the development of the Arabic press in Egypt. The Egyptian Arabic press flourished from the late 1870s, in part because the government relinquished its monopoly on publishing and also eased its censorship activities beginning with the advent of the British occupation in 1882. The number of printing

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presses and printed texts increased as the middle and upper classes had more money to spend on reading, and journals and newspapers rapidly became important means of communication. From the early 1890s, the women’s press also began its course of development, in response to both a growing female audience and a developing public discourse about the role and nature of women in Egyptian, Muslim, and Western societies. The women’s journals published articles that focused on domestic themes, including family, household management, and health. However, they also provided a forum for debates concerning education, work, and other matters related to women’s increasing movement into the public sphere. The articles provided women with advice and information on practical matters, while at the same time serving as a context for the generation of transformative ideas and actions (Baron 1988, 17; 1994, 1–2). The journals that formed the backbone of the women’s press expressed a tremendous sense of enthusiasm about social progress that included new possibilities for women. The female intellectuals who pioneered and wrote for the press used the term al-nahda al-nisa’iyya (the women’s awakening) to describe the literary movement they were leading, but the term also came to refer to the general movement in society toward acceptance of new ideas about, and expanded opportunities for, women. The journals provided a means for new cadres of young literate women to express their views about issues relating to women in this era of rapid social change (Baron 1994, 2). The first women’s journal to be published in Egypt (and in the entire Arab world) was Al-fatah, founded by Hind Nawfal, a Syrian woman living in Cairo. Al-fatah was first published in 1892 and ran for two years. Subsequently, more than twenty-five Arabic women’s journals appeared in Egypt during the next three decades. Women who wrote for the journals came from various parts of the Arab world and had different religious and social backgrounds. However, their writing revolved around a common concern: the improvement of women’s capabilities and status in the home and in society. Like their male counterparts, women contributors to the press wrote primarily nonfiction and poetry. Many of these writers had privileged backgrounds and were educated either outside Egypt or in European institutions inside Egypt, but they clearly sought to

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find a non-Western approach to addressing the needs of Egyptian women. They were read largely by a middle-class audience (Baron 1988). Women writers’ discourse on women’s status in the home and in relation to their family constituted a substantial part of the querelle des femmes of late-nineteenth-century Egypt. While they advocated the improvement of women’s status, women writers did not generally call for economic and political equality or seek to dismantle the system of complementary gender roles in society. Rather, the magazines featured articles on education, marriage, divorce, veiling, and other topics. Women writers regarded education as crucial to the development of women’s status and roles and also to the nationalist struggle.1 Their discourse was part of a larger national debate on education that included a critique of the lack of funding for education provided by the British colonial government, its emphasis on instruction in English language and literature over Arabic, and also the focus in the missionary schools on foreign languages and literatures. Women writers, like their male counterparts, recognized the importance of language in the shaping of cultural identity and the development of the nascent national movement (Baron 1988, 1994). Although the women writers who wrote for the women’s press wrote mostly nonfiction, they also wrote poetry and expanded into new genres, including the short story and play. In the early years of the twentieth century, women began publishing their short fiction in the women’s press. Writers such Labiba Hashim, Zaynab Fawwaz, and Sarah al-Mihiyya drew upon both the Arab anecdote and the European-style short story to craft their own fiction (Baron 1994). Women writing in the early decades of the twentieth century were also among early experimenters with the novel. Critics have long cited Haykal’s Zaynab (1913) as the first authentic Arabic novel; however, this view has been challenged more recently by scholars who argue that works published before Zaynab could be considered novels, including some written by Syrians in Egypt and some

1. They shared this concern with male colleagues, including Qasim Amin, a Frencheducated judge, who published two books on the development of women: Tahrir al-mar’a (The Emancipation of Woman [1899]) and Al-mar’a al-jadida (The New Woman [1900]).

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written by women (Brugman 1984, 210–11; Baron 1994, 52). Baron argues that “Qalb al-rajul” (The Heart of Man), a piece written by Labiba Hashim, a Lebanese immigrant to Egypt, falls into this category. Originally published in Anis al-jalis in 1901, “The Heart of Man” explores the maturation of a young woman and her first experience with a man. The narration of this story is followed by a discussion of the prerequisites for a happy marital relationship, such as consideration and spiritual support and nourishment (Baron 1994, 52; Booth 1991, 3–4). While “The Heart of Man” could be best classified as a romance, other writers in the early twentieth century were experimenting with realism in their fiction, as they explored issues related to the rise of organized nationalism, the struggle against British colonialism, and the issue of women’s role in their rapidly changing society (Booth 1991, 3). Women published longer fiction in book form in addition to their contributions to the women’s press. From 1900 until 1925, thirty-one Arab women published at least sixty-two volumes of fiction, translations, or compilations. This work includes nine novels and novellas by seven writers and four translations of European fiction. However, women wrote significantly more short fiction than novels. According to Booth: The short story, easier to publish in periodicals and able to present discrete and concrete issues and to convey pithy messages, flourished in Egypt from the early 1920s on. Women writers tended to focus more on the short story as their men colleagues concentrated increasingly on the novel. This may be partly because short-story writing could more easily be fitted in with other demands made on women’s lives (contemporary women writers mention this factor!). And there was the attraction of the short story as a vehicle for social and political comment, addressing issues of women’s rights and needs among other subjects. (ibid., 4–5)

Although the number of women writing short stories increased steadily, it was not until 1935 that the first collection of short stories was published by an Egyptian woman. This collection, Ahadith jiddati (My Grandmother’s Tales), was published by Suhayr al-Qalamawi (b. 1911), the first woman to receive a master’s and PhD in Arabic literature from the Egyptian University. The collection consists of a series of tales told by a

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grandmother to her granddaughter. This narrative format makes use of a medieval Arabic structure that sets stories within the framework of a single narrator-auditor pair. By focusing upon the differences in perspective and opportunities of the two women, the book alludes to the rapid social change experienced by Egypt at the turn of the century and its profound effect on women’s lives (ibid., 5–6; Badran 1995, 151). Contemporaries of al-Qalamawi began publishing their own collections of short stories in the early 1940s. However, the number of women publishing short stories increased considerably in the early 1950s, with a generation of women who combined professional careers with their ventures into creative writing. Writers such as Gadhibiyyah Sidqi, Ihsan Kamal, Amina al-Sa‘id, Zaynab Sadiq, Asma’ Halim, Sufi ‘Abdallah, and Malik Abd al-‘Aziz wrote realist stories that dealt with the ways in which women’s needs and personal and professional desires are limited or crushed by rigid expectations about women’s roles within the family and society. They critiqued polygamy, male prerogative in divorce, and arranged marriages, as these customs were practiced among the middle and lower classes (Booth 1991). The stories written by women in the 1950s clearly express an awareness of the ways in which women’s lives are constrained by their gender. However, as Booth notes, it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that Egyptian women began to express a feminist agenda in their writing. Several authors writing in the 1960s began to define a sexual politics that explored how socially defined beliefs about women may lead to the neglect of women’s emotional and sexual needs or to emotional and physical abuse of women. Latifa al-Zayyat’s landmark Al-bab al-maftuh (1960; translated as The Open Door [2000]) deals with the struggles of a girl as she develops emotionally, sexually, and politically and how she confronts the rigid social barriers of her middle-class milieu. Nawal el-Saadawi explores the ways in which women are alienated from their society and condemned to suffer emotionally, physically, and economically as a result of cultural beliefs concerning female sexuality. Her novel Imra’a ‘inda nuqtat alsifr (1973; translated as Woman at Point Zero [1983]) describes the life of a woman who experiences the ultimate alienation, being driven to a life of prostitution and imprisonment by a history of neglect and abuse. Stories

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in Alifa Rifaat’s collection Distant View of a Minaret (1987) are considered radical for their time because of their exploration of women’s sexual and emotional desires and the frequent frustration of these desires in the context of married life. Like Rifaat, Iqbal Baraka explores the inability of women to fulfill their own desires in the marital context, in Hadithat ightisab (An Incident of Rape) (1993a). She critiques the social convention that encourages men to desire complete control over their wives while simultaneously suggesting that women are sometimes complicit in the own subordination, in “Ithnan fi ‘urd al-nahr” (Two in the Midst of the River) (1993b, 29–35). While the writers of the 1970s generation follow their literary mothers and grandmothers by exploring women’s place in and experience of their social world, their work is rendered unique by a number of features. They depart from the realist mode of depicting social experience that characterizes earlier Egyptian women’s fiction. Instead, they delve into women’s (and sometimes children’s) dreams, memories, stories, and fantasies, and they develop a focus on women’s subjectivity that emphasizes the complexities of individual psyches and the ambiguities of women’s emotional, interpersonal, and social experience. These authors have also ventured into a variety of experimental prose forms to privilege the female perspective. They have drawn upon the colloquial language to depict women’s linguistic milieu and have adapted aspects of the Arab narrative tradition to rewrite histories that include women’s experience. Some writers have also experimented with cross-genre writing as they explore the female consciousness. Aspects of the Writing Context The anthropological approach to literature assumes that one can look at the institutions of literacy and writing to make some general assumptions about the importance of writing in a culture. Knowledge and education are highly valued in Egyptian society, and public education has been expanding in the country since Britain declared Egyptian independence in 1922. Yet the evolution of public education has been slow and fraught with difficulties. During the 1950s Gamal Abdel Nasser offered free secular and religious education through the doctoral level for both

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Egyptian students and students from other Muslim countries. However, since this time the public education system has been plagued with troubles, including inadequate school buildings and teaching materials and poorly trained teachers (Cochran 1986).2 Thus, although access to public education is “free,” Egyptians complain that schools are in many cases quite inadequate, with shortened school days owing to the shift system needed to relieve overcrowding, some incompetent teachers, and a lack of educational materials. Underpayment of teachers and overcrowding have also led to the system of private lessons, in which teachers moonlight to make ends meet, and parents must pay in order to have their children pass their exams and progress through the system (AbuLughod 2005, 69–70). Nevertheless, social status in Egypt is enhanced by university degrees; thus, many Egyptians seek academic training and public-sector employment, despite the fact that they might be able to earn a better living by means of technical training and work in the private sector. Cochran has suggested that this desire for university education–based social status has hampered the development of technological training in Egypt (1986, 64–65). Educational opportunities for girls have grown more slowly than for boys. The development of girls’ education in religious, private, and state schools has been detailed elsewhere (Baron 1988, 1994). However, it should be noted that there were numerous social and political obstacles to developing (particularly postprimary) education for girls. These barriers included the lack of female teachers, parental apprehension about educating daughters, struggles over public moneys that might be spent on the education of males, the opposition of Muslim conservatives to female education, and the lack of support on the part of the British colonial government, which continued to control Egypt’s affairs for decades

2. Judith Cochran (1986) provides a detailed account of the development of the public and private educational systems in Egypt since the period of British occupation, taking into account the impact of wars and of socialist, Open Door–capitalist, and Islamic fundamentalist ideologies on Egyptian educational systems.

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after Egypt’s nominal independence in 1922 (ibid.). Women writers and activists were instrumental in pushing the British colonial government, and later the new Egyptian state, to establish more and better schools for girls. Women’s groups and feminists advocated for women’s right to a university education. University-level coeducation became well established in the 1940s when new universities were being established in Cairo and Alexandria. After the 1952 revolution and the rise of Arab socialism, women of all classes increased in number in both the universities and the higher institutes (Badran 1995, 160–64). Although Egyptians value education, public and private funds have been insufficient to achieve widespread literacy among all sectors of the population. Girls may find additional barriers of parental apprehension about female education. The year 2006 estimated literacy rates for adults (fifteen years and older) are 74.6 percent for males and 57.8 percent for females. The rates are higher for youth between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four (87.9 percent for males and 81.8 percent for females), suggesting more recent success in the educational system.3 However, the Arabic literary tradition has relevance for both educated and uneducated, if sometimes only in its oral form. Even uneducated people are aware of and often able to recite elements of the oral tradition in the form of poetry and renditions of stories, a feature upon which several of the 1970s authors comment (see, for example, Osman’s story “Sultana” in the collection Washm al-shams [1992]). Literate and illiterate individuals alike may be able to recite verses from the Qur’an, Hadith, or proverbs. Literate members of the public are served by a growing, if still inadequate, publishing industry and a multitude of newspaper and magazine stands and bookshops. Naturally, it is primarily to Egypt’s educated population that the 1970s generation directs their writing. However, given their frequent references to Qur’anic, proverbial, and popular elements of the literary tradition in their writing, Egyptian

3. http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer/document.aspx?ReportId=123&IF_ Language=eng&BR_Country=2200&BR_Region=40525.

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authors clearly assume that the intellectual apparatus of their readers includes elements of both the written tradition and the rich corpus of orally transmitted stories and sayings. The Literary Institution Cairo’s literary institution is composed of the community of writers, critics, and publishers and their interaction, much of which occurs in literary circles (nadwat adabiyya). This community, as I came to know it through spending many evenings in literary circles that are held throughout the city, is made up of a loosely knit group of intellectuals and artists. Cairene intellectuals pursue a variety of careers in the public and private sectors, and many view the circles as a central support for what they consider their “real work” of writing literature or criticism. The Cairo Atelier, located on a short dead-end street off the central Tala‘at Harb Square, is a central site for both informal gatherings and organized sessions. The latter may involve readings or even a theatrical performance followed by a panel discussion in which critics or professors present their evaluation of the piece in question and field questions from the audience. However, activity is brisk on Tuesday evenings at the Atelier even when there is no scheduled session. During the winter months, most of the attendees crowd into the small lounge of this threestory meeting place and art gallery where they sit on couches, smoke cigarettes, and drink Turkish coffee and sweet tea as they discuss recently published literature and criticism, recent events that have made the headlines, and practical matters concerning publication or exhibition. In the warmer months, the group abandons the smoky interior of the building and gathers around tables and chairs in the enclosed courtyard. The 1970s generation is often represented at Atelier gatherings, which are also attended by more senior writers and by students and other writers who are just setting out on their literary careers. The latter attend the gatherings to hear critical discussions and to present their own work to established writers and critics in hopes of receiving appraisal and exposure. The fact that students often attend the circles helps to bridge the elite world of writers and intellectuals with the broader world of the university. These circles also attract Arab and other intellectuals and

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writers from abroad and thus provide a context for the exchange of ideas and publications on an international basis. In addition to those meetings held at the Atelier, a great number of other circles are held throughout Cairo and its suburbs. Some, such as Nadwat suq al-hamidiyya (held Monday evenings in a café in the bustling Bab al-Luq Square), provide an informal context for intellectuals to gather. A description drawn from my early research notebooks gives a sense of the atmosphere of this nadwa and the social and intellectual interchange that occurs within. At 7:00 p.m. on a warm April night, the café Suq al-Hamidiyya in Bab al-Luq square is busy with its usual clientele. As is usual for this time of the evening, the square is bustling with people making their way back and forth from the small grocery shops, pharmacies, fruit stands and cafés located all around the square. Strong smells of freshly ground coffee and cardamom waft out from the shop that roasts and grinds coffee beans a block away. The group of writers and journalists that gather here weekly to drink coffee and discuss literature and current events have abandoned the gloomy interior of the café and dragged the plastic chairs and metal tables out onto the sidewalk to enjoy the fresh spring air. There they sit, in a cluster of about ten or fifteen people, sipping Turkish coffee and sweet, minted tea in glasses, while they discuss a few recently published novels. The group is headed by the respected critic and journalist Farouk ‘abd el-Qadir, who informally leads the discussion, while individual members of the group come and go, sometimes participating in the central discussion, and sometimes chatting in small groups. The members of this nadwa are writers and critics, most of whom work professionally as journalists. Indeed the proprietor of the café refers to the group as nadwat al-sahafiyyiin (the journalists’ circle). Throughout the course of the evening it becomes apparent that the nadwa, besides serving as a discussion group for writers, also provides a convenient social or professional meeting point for writers and intellectuals who know that this is one place they will almost certainly see each other during the course of their busy weeks. About an hour into the nadwa, the well-known novelist Sonallah Ibrahim stops by to give ‘Abd el-Qadir a copy of his novel Zaat, shyly greets the group, and hurries back

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off into the darkness of the street. Shortly afterwards Nemat el-Behairy arrives and joins the group. After greeting everybody, she engages ‘Abd el-Qadir in conversation about the recently published novel Bab al-Saha by Sahar Khalifeh, which she had borrowed from him and was returning. This is not the only reason for her visit to the nadwa this evening, however. After her brief but animated discussion with ‘Abd el-Qadir she gets up to run across the street to photocopy some of her recent stories, which she wants him to read and critique. When she returns, she gives her photocopied stories to ‘Abd el-Qadir and invites me to accompany her on some errands she has planned for that evening, and we talk along the way. (April 27, 1992)

Still other circles, such as the ones sponsored by Al-jam‘iya al-misriyya lil-naqd al-adabi (the Egyptian Association for Literary Criticism) and by the Evening Newspaper (Nadwat jaridat al-masa’), consist of formal readings of literary works followed by moderated discussions. Some of these circles, such as the one held at the Cairo Atelier, are long-standing institutions, whereas some smaller circles have a shorter life cycle, or are held more sporadically. Egyptian writers publish their novels and short story collections through the prestigious state-run publishing houses, the General Egyptian Book Organization (GEBO) and the more recently established General Organization of Cultural Palaces (GOCP), and through a growing number of private-sector publishing houses, including Dar Merit and Dar Sharqiyat. Some houses, such as Nour and Dar Sina, have had editors who actively encouraged the publication of women’s fiction or have published journals with a focus on feminisms, women’s issues, and creative production (for example, Nour and Hagar).4 Some writers also choose to self-publish, an option that, depending on the author and the quality of the writing, may be recognized as a legitimate means to distribute literature. Publishing in literary journals and the book market is a challenging business, as there is considerable competition from both established and

4. Dar Sina, which published a number of Salwa Bakr’s novels and story collections, closed its doors in 2000 (Tresilian 2006).

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new writers and difficult economic circumstances have led to the demise of even well-respected publishing houses. Writers also publish short stories and critical articles in literary journals and reviews such as the Cairo-based Al-qahira, Fusul, Alif, and Al-kitaba al-ukhra, and internationally published magazines such as Al-katiba and Al-sutur. Stories and serialized sections of novels are sometimes broadcast on radio programs for the arts, and novels are occasionally dramatized into television movies. Creative writers in Egypt (including members of the 1970s generation) have another important access to the world of public knowledge through their work as journalists, editors, or freelance journalists for major newspapers and magazines. These publications enjoy a considerable amount of prestige from having well-known writers on staff or as regular contributors of fiction and literary reviews for their literature and arts pages. Egyptian newspapers have historically been distinguished by the quality of their literary pages, although the major national dailies have gradually been publishing less fiction and poetry. As Jacquemond notes, among the major Egyptian dailies, only Al-ahram currently devotes the first page of its Friday supplement to short stories or novels in serial form (2008, 79–80). Egyptian writers are instead increasingly publishing their work in non-Egyptian Arab newspapers and literary journals. Women in Literary Cairo The situation of women writers in Egypt is complex. As members of an educated, professional class, they are privileged in a country plagued by an inadequate educational system and un- and underemployment for even its well-educated citizens. Most writers of this generation are part of a middle class that is struggling to maintain its foothold in a difficult economy. Although they do not face the struggles of the poor and uneducated, they are by no means entirely removed from basic economic challenges. During my 2007 research trip to Cairo, I learned that two of the writers I worked most closely with had given up their homes, one so that she could give her son’s struggling young family her apartment to live in and the other because she needed the money from the sale of her apartment to pay for cancer treatment. Both of these women had moved into rented apartments in working-class areas.

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Over the years, women writers have expressed to me that although they have received increased critical and public attention, they still do not feel comfortably settled in the literary landscape, nor do they necessarily feel fully accepted by society in general. Etidal Osman remarked that while the Egyptian female fiction writer can express her point of view, the extent to which her voice is heard is limited by the fact that women writers do not receive a great deal of public attention and also because of the problem of illiteracy. According to Osman, it is more accepted in Egypt for a woman to perform the role of journalist than literary writer, and for that reason, the female journalist may have a greater impact on public consciousness and easier access to public debates (author interview, Cairo, March 14, 1992). Several other prominent and emerging women writers in the 1990s said they did not feel that critics took them seriously or that their male colleagues easily engaged them on intellectual topics. For example, Salwa Bakr stated that although she has amicable relationships with male writers and critics, she feels that they do not initiate literary or intellectual discussions with her because she is a woman. She argued that even educated women like herself are marginalized in Egyptian society. They are limited in the ways that they can participate in and contribute to their society because they do not get the same job opportunities, because society expects a woman’s primary social role to be that of wife and mother, and because social conventions restrict the degree to which women may mix socially, thereby preventing them from developing the friendships and connections that might help them develop intellectually and professionally (author interview, Cairo, August 7, 1992). Nemat elBehairy also commented that the writers of her generation are marginalized on several levels. First, some are divorced, or never married at all, and therefore live outside the institution of marriage, which provides the most socially acceptable mode of life for Egyptian women. Second, many women writers are spatially marginalized, that is, they live on the edges of the new suburbs and cities outside overpopulated Cairo, where neighbors have less interaction with one another, and where they may feel less social pressure to conform, but these areas also require a more arduous trip into the city center to attend literary and intellectual events. Third, because they live on the margins of society, they tend to write about the

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people who reside there, including women who are living on their own: divorcees, widows, or women who have never married and are working to support themselves. According to el-Behairy, critics often do not look favorably on this subject matter (author interview, Cairo, December 25, 1996). Clearly, when both Bakr and el-Behairy speak about being marginalized, they emphasize the idea that the social limitations ascribed to their gender prohibit them from fully realizing their potential, both as intellectuals and as women. Writing in the mid-1990s, Egyptian literary critic Hoda Elsadda (1996) remarks that women writers in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world are not by any means fully accepted by a male-dominated critical establishment. She argues that this establishment does not recognize the specificities of a woman writer’s vision, nor does it readily accept literature that is written from a specifically female point of view, criticizes men, or focuses on the oppression of women in general. In an interview with me, the prominent critic Ibrahim Fathi criticized Salwa Bakr specifically for her focus on poor or mentally disturbed women, or both, individuals who are not part of the everyday Egyptian landscape. He suggests that her focus on marginalized women in her earlier work is part of a superficial social commentary that does not address more important issues such as the failing economy and lack of democracy in Egypt (author interview, Cairo, September 20, 1992). Women authors are conscious that their position as intellectuals and writers is not yet uncontested. I found that the 1970s authors did not want to be characterized either as feminists or as “women writers.” With the exception of Salwa Bakr, they did not speak about trying to generate a specifically “female language” in their fiction, though they all acknowledged that the woman writer’s point of view is different from the perspective of her male counterpart. Osman suggested that women’s writing in Egypt is distinguished not by a different use of literary technique, or alteration of grammar, but by a different vision and attitude toward society and also by a more indirect way of describing experience, which involves a more complex use of symbolism. For many of these writers, emphasizing the female orientation of their work risks dismissal by at least some important members of the literary establishment.

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As active members of the Cairene literary scene, the 1970s authors interpret the relationship between the structuring or limiting capacity of social norms, economic straits, and political positionings and the ability of individuals—especially women—to pursue practical goals, professional aspirations, and aesthetic and emotional fulfillment. I argue that these writers’ interpretations form a distinct cultural critical discourse within the larger literary discourse despite varied backgrounds, personal and social concerns, and literary styles. These writers are drawn into this common discourse by their shared concern for articulating both their sometimes vehement criticism of Egyptian and Arab society and a commitment to reaffirming their active membership in these cultural and historical heritages. Their views form a pattern that is only one among many in the totality of Egyptian culture; however, their fiction and testimonials about writing reveal a highly perceptive view of the wider Egyptian experience. The 1970s authors address a wide range of subjects, from the experience of a poor woman on the Cairene streets to a sixteenth-century herbalist who is tried for witchcraft. To a certain extent, these authors all address the issue of the Arabic diglossia as they detail women’s and men’s worlds and subjective experience. We now turn to Salwa Bakr, whose approach to the standard-colloquial divide is to generate a hybrid language to convey the everyday life of her eccentric and often rebellious characters.

Salwa Bakr The Poetics of Marginalization I did not just decide to write about women. I never said to myself, “I am going to write about women. I want to write about the women’s issue.” But this world was the one that I felt most intimate with because it was the world that I lived personally. . . . I saw the problems of these women: for example, the problems of the woman depending upon herself economically—the uneducated woman—and how she goes about facing life. My mother was one of these women. —Author interview with Salwa Bakr, Cairo, August 7, 1992

M y f ir st encou n t er with Salwa Bakr was on a chilly January evening at Cairo’s Atelier, a meeting spot for artists and intellectuals located on a short dead-end street off the central Tala‘at Harb Square. A journalist friend had told me that Bakr regularly attends the Tuesday-night gatherings at the Atelier, and upon my arrival, I found her sitting at a table in the courtyard, engaged in a discussion with several of Cairo’s prominent literary critics, a photographer, and a journalist. Then in her early forties, Bakr was a striking woman, with short-cropped hair and a mischievous smile. On this evening and others, she was noticeable in the crowd that 17

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filled the courtyard because of her dress, a midcalf-length smock dress, of a style more commonly worn by lower-class women in the village or city. This dress seemed out of place in the rarefied urban milieu of the Atelier, where women wear the Western styles adopted by many upper- and upper-middle-class Cairene women or, to a lesser extent, the new styles of modest dress that, since the mid-1970s, have become popular among university students and middle- and lower-class women.1 Bakr later told me that she wears these dresses because they are uniquely Egyptian, as opposed to both Western styles and the new Islamist-inspired muhaggaba (covered) styles. As I discovered during my interviews with her, these sometimes embroidered or beaded dresses are a part of her passion for what she regards to be the more artistic elements of Egyptian popular culture, a passion that is reflected in her evocation of colloquial language and proverbs in her fiction. That January evening, Bakr had joked that some of the critics sitting at her table were not interested in writing by Egyptian women. I knew that she and other women writers have not always received the attention or approval of Egyptian critics. However, it became clear to me during the early stages of my research that Bakr had established herself as a notable member of Cairo’s intellectual community. Bakr shares with other female members of her literary generation an interest in privileging women’s experience through experimentation with language and narrative strategies. From my point of view as an anthropologist, my interviews with Bakr were particularly striking because she was so explicit about the ways that she seeks to create a “new language” to bestir readers into a reevaluation of social values and institutions. With this new language, she aims to express her own consciousness and explore women’s experience as it is shaped by cultural attitudes and economic and political forces. Bakr is a writer with a clearly reformist intent. She says that she condemns prevailing Egyptian norms, social specifications, and cultural assumptions, as they are responsible for the unhappiness of women

1. For discussion of the complex set of factors that have led to the adoption of new forms of modest dress in Cairo since the 1970s, see Fernea and Gaunt 1982 and MacLeod 1991.

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(Elsadda 1996). Most of Bakr’s novels and stories focus upon the detail of everyday life as it is experienced by Egyptian women, and they express her discontent with the cultural attitudes, social institutions, and economic policies that shape women’s lives. While both her statements and her fiction express her anger about women’s position in Egyptian society, her writing also reflects affection for many aspects of the everyday life of poor or uneducated urban Egyptian women. Much of her fiction emphasizes the intrinsic beauty of women’s language, the artistic nature of their expressions, and the rhythm of their speech patterns. She explores the strength of women’s belief in God and other supernatural entities, while at the same time poking gentle fun at these beliefs. She valorizes women’s ingenuity as they cope with the vagaries of daily existence and attempt to get around the systems put in place by an ineffectual government. In her later fiction, Bakr casts a wider net to explore how a failing and unjust social system impacts all people in Egyptian society (Layl wa nahar [Night and Day] [1997]), and she also addresses issues of political repression on a larger scale in her historical novels (Al-bashmuri [The Man from Bashmour] [2004a; 2007a] and Kuku sudan kibashi [2004b]). In this chapter I explore Bakr’s experiments with and focus on language to forefront the experience and concerns of women and other marginalized social actors. As a background, I provide some personal history information and describe her stated motivations as an author and her views on the social role of the author and on the nature of Egyptian society. My presentation of biographical material here and throughout this book is based on an anthropological approach that seeks to understand what animates the cultural creator and how she distills elements of her personal, social, and political experience into her own creative production. This approach also seeks to illuminate how social structure, values, and the materials of culture are integral or contributory to the literary text (Friedrich 1986, 2003; Fernandez 1993). My exploration of Bakr’s writing begins with an examination of Bakr’s gender-based social concerns and a variety of writing strategies in her short story “Zinat fi janazat al-ra’is” (Zinat in the President’s Funeral Procession) (1986b); her novella, Maqam ‘atiyya (‘Atiyya’s Shrine) (1986a); and her novel Al-‘araba al-dhahabiyya la tas‘ad ila al-sama’ (The Golden Chariot Does Not Ascend to the Heavens)

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(1991a). Finally, I turn to her two-part novel, The Man from Bashmour, to demonstrate how Bakr uses her focus on language to investigate issues of ethnic and religious oppression. She furthermore explores the links between the ancient Egyptian, Coptic Christian, and Arab Muslim languages, cultures, and religions to suggest the liberating possibilities of a tolerant approach to the religion of “the other.”2 Growing Up Outside the Umbrella of Marriage When I interviewed Bakr about aspects of her life that influenced her writing, she spoke first about her childhood. Bakr was born in 1949 to a lowermiddle-class family in Matariyya, a largely lower-class urban extension to the northeast of Cairo. Her father had been a railway employee, but died before Bakr’s birth. Her mother was a Sa‘idiyya (a woman from upper Egypt) who had received a limited education in a local French-run school. Bakr’s mother sparked her interest in the worldview and speech styles of the poor or uneducated women who figure so prominently in her fiction. Bakr stated that her mother often told Sa‘idi stories and that her mother’s life was permeated by “the strange ritualistic climate” (al-munakh al-taqsi al-gharib) of female Sa‘idi culture, even down to the ritual actions and utterances she would perform after filling a water bucket or taking a bath. Certainly, women’s sayings, storytelling patterns, and rituals contribute to the ethnographic quality of description that pervades many of Bakr’s stories and novels. Bakr said that she was witness to the ironic situation of women like her mother whose family halted her formal education when she reached puberty in order to protect her reputation, leaving her with little knowledge or resources when she found herself widowed and alone later in life. Bakr related that as she grew up in Cairo, she came into contact with many women in similar situations because her widowed mother believed that married women would view her as a threat, a temptation to their husbands. Thus, she chose to circulate in a world outside the umbrella of

2. Al-bashmuri was originally published in two parts in 1998 and 2000, respectively. For an English translation, see The Man from Bashmour (2007a).

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marriage, a world populated by widowed, divorced, or unmarried women who had to rely entirely on their own wits and resources to get by in life. Unlike her mother, Bakr received an extensive education. She attended a public elementary school in al-Zaytun, a district in northeastern Cairo, and the preparatory and high schools in Saray al-Qubba, just to the southwest of al-Zaytun. She began to read at an early age, exploring works from the Arabic tradition, including the stories of Kalila wa dimna and Taha Husayn’s autobiographical Ayyam. She also read Western literature translated into Arabic. Bakr said that she always particularly enjoyed and excelled in her language and literature courses, but her mother did not encourage her in these endeavors, as she thought that the fine arts were “nothing but impoliteness and ridiculousness.” When she had completed her secondary studies, Bakr entered the College of Business at ‘Ayn Shams University. There she participated in the student movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was during this time that her disillusionment with the Egyptian Left began, because, she argued, as people concerned with the disenfranchised, leftists ought to have taken seriously the struggle for women’s rights and the improvement of women’s status in society. Rather, she says, they focused exclusively on class issues and ignored the needs and concerns of women. This experience and others later seem to have led to Bakr’s disillusionment with politics and her attitude that writing may be a more effective way to instigate social change. Bakr graduated from the College of Business in 1972. She then studied theater at the Higher Institute for the Dramatic Arts, from which she received a bachelor’s degree in 1976. Later, she pursued studies in history at ‘Ayn Shams University. Bakr’s early professional experience as a supplies inspector for the Ministry of Supply in Cairo from 1974 to 1980 also provided insight into the world of poor Cairene women, because it allowed her to witness the onset of the 1977 bread riots (Ragheb 1990, 88). She saw firsthand the economic difficulties of these women, but also their ability to take action against a government bureaucracy unwilling to, or unable to, explain and take responsibility for the rise in the cost of bread. Bakr has lived most of her adult life in Cairo, although she spent five years living in Lebanon and Cyprus where she worked as a theater, film, and literary critic. Bakr has published seven short story collections, eight

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novels, a novella, and a play. Two of her novels have been translated into English, as have many of her short stories, which have been included in four collections, two devoted exclusively to her work and two that include short stories by several Egyptian women. Her short stories have also been translated into German and published in two collections.3 She lives in a suburb of Cairo with her artist husband and two children. Inscribing the Mundane Much of Bakr’s writing belies her fascination with the practical problems faced by women like her mother: widows, divorcees, women who have never married, or women who are emotionally alienated from their husbands. However, her stories also focus on the emotional qualities of women’s lives, the things they desire and work for, the structure of their belief systems, and the ways that they internalize and respond to social norms and values. Bakr’s work details the difficulties women face as they struggle against a harsh economic reality and social norms that devalue their own needs and aspirations. However, she also presents a wry account of the

3. Salwa Bakr has published seven short story collections: Zinat fi janazat al-ra’is (Zinat in the President’s Funeral Procession) (1986b), ‘An al-ruh allati suriqat tadrijiyyan (About the Soul That Was Gradually Spirited Away) (1989), ‘Agin al-fallaha (The Peasant Woman Kneading) (1992a), Aranib wa qisas ukhra (Rabbits, and Other Stories) (1994a), Iqa‘at muta‘akisa (Discordant Rhythms) (1996), Shu‘ur al-aslaf (Ancestor’s Hair) (2003b), and Min khabar al-hana’ wa-l-shifa’ (From the Report on Happiness and Satisfaction) (2007b). In 1986, she also published a novella, Maqam ‘atiyya (‘Atiyya’s Shrine). Her novels are as follows: Al-‘araba al-dhahabiyya la tas‘adu ila al-sama’ (The Golden Chariot Does Not Ascend to the Heavens) (1991a), Wasf al-bulbul (Description of the Nightingale) (1993), Layl wa nahar (Night and Day) (1997), Al-bashmuri: Riwaya riwayat (The Man from Bashmour: A Novel of Novels) (1998), Al-bashmuri II (2000), Sawaqi al-waqt (Waterwheels of Time) (2003a), Kuku sudan kibashi (2004), and Admatyus al-almasi (2006). Her play is called Hulm al-sinin (Dream of the Years) (2002). Bakr is the most translated of the female members of her literary cohort. Translations of Bakr’s work into English and German include the following: Such a Beautiful Voice by Hoda Elsadda (1992c), The Wiles of Men, and Other Stories by Denys Johnson-Davies (1992d), The Golden Chariot by Dinah Manisty (1995), The Man from Bashmour by Nancy Roberts (2007a), Die einzige Blume in Sumpt: Geschichten aus Egypten (1994b), and Atijas schrein (1992b).

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ways in which women make use of their savvy and practical knowledge in order to eke out an existence on the margins of society. Bakr argues that the author should try to be the conscience of her era. She regards herself as witness to the contradictions and conflicts of Egyptian society, particularly as they impact the lives of women. Bakr says that among the social phenomena that negatively affect women is the fact that Egyptians, including some intellectuals, think about women largely in terms of their social role, as, for example, wives, mothers, religious women, or prostitutes. Her concern resonates with the work of Western feminists who have written about the ways in which society categorizes women and holds them to certain standards of beauty and behavior and, in so doing, limits them (Ellmann 1968; Gilbert and Gubar 1979). Perhaps most striking are elements of Bakr’s work that recall what Hélène Cixous (1994) describes as écriture féminine. Like Cixous, Bakr is interested in calling attention to language itself. She wishes to highlight typical ways of describing women and alters them, thereby disrupting what Cixous calls “patriarchal binary thought.” Bakr’s poor woman on the street or inmate in the women’s prison becomes noble in her fierce determination to survive and to carve out a way of living in a thoroughly inhospitable social and economic environment.4 Bakr represents the language used by poor or uneducated women to explore closely the very turns of phrase that they use for self-comfort or to explain the world to themselves. Bakr’s project also reflects a Cixousian concern with inscribing precisely those details of female experience that are generally overlooked or regarded as unimportant. She explores the details of how women experience their everyday mundane worlds along with their relationships with each other, their children, their husbands, and other men. Bakr’s work encourages readers to go beyond categorizing women and to try to understand how they think, what they accomplish, and how they express themselves. She states that her own project as a writer involves developing a new language to express her interpretation of the

4. Both Sabry Hafez (1995) and Hoda Elsadda (1996) have noted Bakr’s Cixousian rejection of patriarchal binary thought.

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issues that confront women: “I became aware that I wanted to try to create a new language [lugha jadida] in writing, a language to express myself, my consciousness, and my understandings, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a language to solve problems within the writing itself, as it relates to women” (author interview, Cairo, August 7, 1992). For Bakr, these problems have to do with the relationship between the standard and colloquial languages, with the use of narrative technique to describe the experiential aspect of women’s lives, and with the use of descriptives and literary clichés. It is also Bakr’s aim to use her lugha jadida to disrupt the status quo, to condemn the structure of relations, the concepts, values, and norms, that prevails in Egyptian society, because it is “the common, the familiar, the taken for-granted” that she holds responsible for the unhappiness of women (Elsadda 1996, 133). Below I explore Bakr’s approaches toward crafting texts that disrupt conventional, simplifying ways of thinking about women and forefront women’s personal, social, and economic experience. Rendering the Colloquial “Proper” The Arabic language has many problems. The woman writer must create a new lexicon, a women’s lexicon [qamus nisa’i]. Of course it will not be a completely new lexicon. It will be one that basically has arisen out of the coat of the old lexicon, but it will be such that when you open the text, you will feel that it was written by a woman and that it is a feminine text. —Author interview with Salwa Bakr, Cairo, August 7, 1992

For Bakr, creating a feminine text means expressing herself with the eye, spirit, and feeling of a woman. Her first approach to adapting the Arabic language to generate such a text is to fi nd specific vocabularies, conversational styles, and modes of expression that reflect the consciousness, educational level, and typical speech patterns of her female characters. Bakr makes use of the fact that there are several levels in the Arabic language. These levels include Qur’anic Arabic, al-fusha (the standard language used in texts and formal situations), and al-‘ammiya (the colloquial language used in everyday life). Although she frequently portrays the lives and speech of the uneducated, Bakr avoids directly representing

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the structures (syntax) of colloquial Arabic. In this way, her approach differs from the method of numerous Egyptian authors, including Yusuf Idris, Yahya Haqqi, Etidal Osman, and Ibtihal Salem, who have experimented with using colloquial Arabic to render everyday conversations. Bakr has stated that her ultimate goal is to develop a style that meets with the standards of fusha but at the same time conveys the ways in which women (particularly uneducated women) experience the world. To this end, Bakr employs a proper colloquial language (al-‘ammiya al-fasiha) (ibid.). As Mushira Eid points out, Bakr’s “silent weaving of colloquial into standard” includes the use of colloquial words in both dialogue and narrative (2002, 224). These elements include expressions that effectively evoke everyday activities and speech situations, such as yalla (come on) or winnabi (please, in the name of the Prophet).5 When she spoke to me about how she uses al-‘ammiya al-fasiha, Bakr stated that she uses colloquial words and phrases that can be traced to fusha roots or fusha words and phrases that are also close to the colloquial. When describing how a woman thinks or acts, she chooses the fusha words that most closely reflect words that a particular character might use to express herself. For example, in order to reflect the concerns or insecurities of an uneducated woman stating her opinion, Bakr uses the word azunn (I think or assume) and not a‘taqid (I firmly believe). According to Bakr, a poor or uneducated woman would be more likely to use the word azunn, which implies a lesser degree of certainty than a‘taqid. For Bakr, an uneducated woman does not possess the certainty (yaqin) that comes from education and a wide experience of the world, and thus her speech is likely to be somewhat tentative (author interview, Cairo, August 7, 1992). Similarly, she would use the verb tabuss (she looks) rather than tashuf (she sees or perceives), as the latter, according to Bakr, implies a greater sense of farsightedness or analytical ability that would not be well developed in

5. Eid (2002) notes that Bakr’s approach differs from the method of women writers such as Latifa al-Zayyat, Nemat el-Behairy, and Ibtihal Salem, who incorporate both colloquial words and syntax in dialogue. Bakr, on the other hand, avoids representing the grammatical structures (syntax) of colloquial Arabic in either narrative or dialogue.

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an uneducated woman. Although these statements could be read as elitist or oversimplified generalizations, they also clearly reveal Bakr’s concern with the vulnerability of women who do not have the benefit of education and the social and personal capital it provides. Bakr also evokes the popular language in her al-‘ammiya al-fasiha by reworking into fusha the proverbs and religious and metaphoric expressions that characterize Egyptian Arabic. This technique is evident in the story “Zinat in the President’s Funeral Procession,” a story that explores the ways in which women’s lives are impacted by diverse factors, including lack of education, economic policy, and government ineffectiveness in dealing with the poor. Set in the Nasser era, it describes the efforts of a poor, illiterate woman, ironically named Zinat (which means “adornments” or “finery”), as she attempts to support herself in the city. The story relates the tale of Zinat’s life: the loss of her father when she was a young child, the early death of her husband before they had consummated their marriage, and her failed attempt to live with her brother, with whose wife she frequently quarreled. Zinat is a woman who is alone in the world and whose alienation from society is indicated by the fact that her name is always mispronounced; formally Zinat, everybody, even her friend ‘Abduh, calls her “Z’nat” (Bakr 1986b, 75; Booth 1991, 24). The tale is told by an omniscient narrator, who sometimes appears to speak from the point of view of Zinat herself. The narrator describes Zinat’s attempts to contact the president of the republic in order to obtain a government pension that she is legally owed. Although she is uneducated and indeed illiterate, Zinat is an enterprising individual. Her enterprise is most clearly evident in the way that she convinces her more educated barber friend ‘Abduh to compose letters to the president requesting that her pension funds be sent to her. Bakr evokes conventional religious expressions that might be used by an uneducated woman as she describes Zinat’s clever management of her tiny pension and her ongoing relationship with ‘Abduh: And despite the fundamental changes that had overtaken Zinat’s life, and among them the fact that she had increased the volume of merchandise in which she dealt, and had introduced new articles, like pencils

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and erasers, even so, ‘Abduh the Barber, “may his hand be blessed with safety and may God protect the light of his eyes (salimat yaduhu wa hafiza Allah lahu nur ‘aynayh),” as Zinat, his true and sincere friend expressed it, was constantly urging her to resume the relationship with the President, and to persevere in sending letters to him. (1986b, 79; 1991b, 29)

Bakr’s use of the phrase salimat yaduhu wa hafiza Allah lahu nur ‘aynayh is notable because it represents one of the ways that she reworks colloquial expressions into fusha.6 This phrase is pure fusha, but it evokes commonly used popular sayings that express thanks or gratitude, such as tislam iidak (may your hand be blessed with safety) or Allah yihfazak (God preserve you). Bakr makes more complex use of another colloquial saying, iddunya gharura (deceptive world), toward the end of the story. Shattered by news of the death of the president, whom she reveres, Zinat begins to repeat to herself the phrase: “al-dunya gharura wa kadhaba wa ma damat li-ahad” (The world is deceptive and false and never lasts for anyone) (1986b, 83). Bakr adds the word kadhaba, which is both colloquial and fusha, to the colloquial saying iddunya gharura, along with a purely fusha sequence wa ma damat li-ahad, a phrase that evokes the Qur’anic phrase “wa ma al-hayat al-dunya illa mata‘ al-ghurur” (The life of this world is nothing but the stuff of deception) (al-Qur’an 57:20). Zinat continues to repeat the colloquial phrase dunya gharura wa kadhaba even after she performs her last act of devotion to the president at his funeral procession, during which she flings herself at his casket, only to be beaten back by the security guards. As she reworks and employs the colloquial expression “deceptive and false world,” Bakr combines the colloquial, standard, and Qur’anic registers to generate a distinctive style with which to portray the distress of this woman. Finally, in this work and others, Bakr crafts long, digressive sentences that rely on standard grammar but also mirror the type of narration (alsard al-sha‘bi) used in the folktales that women tell their children. This

6. I want to thank Farouk Abdel, Wahhab Ibn Rushd professorial lecturer in modern Arabic at the University of Chicago, for advice in analyzing Bakr’s uses of colloquial and standard Arabic.

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digressive style is also suggestive of women’s speech in the domestic context: speech that is continually interrupted by children and domestic chores, that moves in more than one direction at once, and then circles back to pick up a point and begin again. It should be noted that Bakr is not the first or only Egyptian writer to attempt to generate a language that emphasizes the links between the classical and the colloquial. As early as 1956, Tawfiq al-Hakim published a play in which he attempted to approximate the colloquial language by stretching the limits of classical syntax and fi nding commonalities between formal and colloquial expressions (Cachia 1990). The originality in Bakr’s work lies in the way she uses the links between the standard, colloquial, and Qur’anic Arabic to emphasize the richness of the popular language used by poor and uneducated women and thereby develops a compelling portrait of a character such as Zinat. As Eid suggests, Bakr’s hybrid language tears down social and cognitive barriers: those boundaries between mundane reality and the world of the intellect and imagination and the ones between the realms of the marginalized and those individuals who have education and power (2002, 213). This collapsing of linguistic difference brings the experience and subjectivity of the marginalized woman closer to the world of the reader. Society as Prison and Prison as Liberation In addition to her work at the lexical and syntactical levels, Bakr also experiments with narrative structure as she develops a new writing to explore women’s worlds. This point is evident in her novel The Golden Chariot that describes the lives of inmates in an Egyptian women’s prison between the 1950s and 1970s. The novel is, in part, a response to Bakr’s own imprisonment, during which she “was witness to the farce of the women’s prison” (author interview, Cairo, August 7, 1992). Bakr was arrested in August 1989 and spent two weeks in the Qanatir prison for women on charges of political conspiracy and pamphleteering. She says that the charges were trumped up and probably stemmed from the fact that she is on a government list of university students who demonstrated in the late 1960s (Ragheb 1990). In this novel, Bakr uses two forms of the narrative of digression: the Arabesque, or story-within-a-story technique,

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and the digressive sentence to explore the inmates’ personal histories, emotional lives, and developing relationships with each other. The frame story is the tale of ‘Aziza, who is serving a life sentence for murdering her stepfather who sexually and emotionally exploited and then abandoned her for another woman. ‘Aziza is considered insane by the prison authorities and spends most of her time thinking about a golden chariot that she believes will carry her, along with other inmates of her choosing, up into the heavens. Bakr uses ‘Aziza’s selection of companions as a way of generating a description of these women’s life stories that constantly refers back to ‘Aziza herself. That is, the narration depicts how ‘Aziza comes to meet the other prison inmates and then moves from the description of this encounter to a detailed account of each woman’s life and crime. Bakr brings each life history to a close by referring back to the relationship between that woman and ‘Aziza, or the other prison inmates, or to the commonality of their experience. Bakr draws the narration to a close with the death of ‘Aziza, who slips away, dreaming about the final preparations of the occupants for the flight and of the moment when the chariot’s horses begin to flap their golden wings. Through the narratives of the inmates’ lives, the reader becomes aware that these women’s fates are the result of a complex set of factors, including abuse at the hands of men, poverty, a rigid class structure, and political corruption. Within each life-story narrative, Bakr uses lengthy, digressive sentences to draw out details of women’s lives and to reveal the specific set of factors that led to their crimes and imprisonment. Some of the characters suffer mainly because of oppressive gender ideologies and the consequent sexist behaviors of both men and women. This situation is the case with ‘Azima, whose problems stem from two factors. The first is that her unusual height rendered her unattractive by conventional standards of beauty. According to the narrator, her height did “not conform to standards of femininity that have long required a correspondence between a woman’s height and her established position as the tool of male pleasure and the means of reproduction of the human race” (1991a, 68; 1995, 55). The second factor was her failure at school, which, as the narrator wryly observes, is due to the poor state of schools, but it frees her to pursue the training in domestic affairs that is considered a priority in Egyptian girls’ education.

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Although she was obsessed with marriage, ‘Azima’s unusual height entitled her not to courtship but to taunting and ridicule. She pursues a career in professional mourning and singing, which leads to her entanglement with an exploitative and faithless lover. She eventually finds herself in the women’s prison, after having hired a man to drug and castrate her lover. Because ‘Azima soothes one of the elderly and sick inmates with her voice, the “mad” ‘Aziza inverts conventional social categories and begins to think of ‘Azima as “‘Azima al-tawila, allati hiya anbal wa atwal imra’a” (‘Azima the Tall, who was the noblest and tallest woman) whom she came to know during her long imprisonment (1991a, 64–65; 1995, 52). Bakr uses the digressive technique to craft a complex portrait of the social and economic factors that limit women’s lives. One vignette explores the situation of Bahiga, a young woman from a poor family. Industrious and intelligent, Bahiga successfully completes medical school and hopes to obtain a faculty position at a university hospital, only to discover that social barriers would not permit a woman of her class status to obtain such a prestigious position. [Bahiga] discovered the fundamental truth that even though she had successfully completed the elementary, intermediate and secondary stages of her education, and even her university years, she would receive only a minute amount of the consideration that is given to those about to begin their working life, because of the tyrants of medicine who, during the Nasser years, still subscribed to their old motto of the three “C’s,” meaning a car, a country estate and a clinic. This motto was considered the ultimate goal of every successful doctor. They added on to this motto in amazing ways after that, during the time of the infitah, to aim at obtaining one of those large luxurious hospitals upon whose doorsteps any sick person unable to pay the unreal fees in advance would die. Those tyrants would never allow the likes of Bahiga ‘Abd al-Haqq, the daughter of a drug company guard, to participate in the holy of holies, and join them as a colleague in the teaching faculty. (1991a, 166; 1995, 145)

Here Bakr uses the narrative of digression to point to the ironies of a society that entitles this poor but industrious girl to a free university education but at the same time clings to a rigid system of social status that prevents her from finding an appropriate spouse or fairly paid work. She

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suggests that the Open Door policy instituted by Sadat in the 1970s was no help to the likes of Bahiga, who, moonlighting and exhausted from trying to make ends meet, inadvertently administers a fatal dose of anesthetic and is given a three-year prison sentence. Bakr’s portrait includes enough digressive detail to allow the reader to develop sympathy for Bahiga, while at the same time representing her personal weaknesses as she descends into a nervousness and hatred for life despite her relative privilege vis-à-vis the other inmates and her comparatively short jail sentence. Bakr’s use of digression permits her to elaborate the women’s lives in such detail that it allows her to go beyond painting a simplistic representation of them as victims and to construct a realistic and complicated portrait of the circumstances that led up to their imprisonment in the women’s jail. Bakr portrays ‘Aziza herself as both a victim and an agent in her own destiny, as a woman who has been taken advantage of by a senior male relative, yet also as an individual whose own decision to murder led to her life imprisonment. Bakr related to me that as she was writing The Golden Chariot, she found the Arabesque technique to be an effective way to deal with the problem of describing life in the prison, where activity is diminished to a minimum. Bakr says that this circular form of narration allowed her to portray the way in which a prisoner experiences time: as a series of repeated mundane acts that have little or no consequence. Bakr remarked that prisoners exist largely on their memories of their past lives and that the Arabesque technique allowed her to bring the inmates’ pasts into their present experience of the jail. She feels that when writing about Egyptian female prisoners, it is particularly important to be able to talk about their pasts, because the female inmate’s experience of a jail is more alienating than the experience of a male inmate. Bakr argues that this point is true because an Egyptian woman’s world normally centers on raising children and being a wife, and this aspect of her existence would be completely negated in the prison. A large part of an Egyptian man’s world, according to Bakr, is his social relations with male friends. Because a man could continue to develop friendships with other male prisoners, part of his social being could remain intact within the walls of the prison. This situation would not be the case for a woman, Bakr argues, because in normal circumstances, women are

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so involved in raising their families, running their households, and serving the needs of their husbands that they do not develop strong emotional attachments or have purely social relationships with other women. The relationships they have with other women are based on practical needs; that is, they are friendly with the woman who peddles eggs or the local seamstress, but they are not emotionally close, and they have no common social activities. For Bakr, an Egyptian woman would be completely alienated in the prison context, because she would be quite unaccustomed to relying upon social and emotional bonds with women who are not family members. She would essentially have to develop a new way of being, inside the walls of the prison (author interview, Cairo, August 7, 1992). Bakr’s remarks are notable in light of ethnographic studies of lowerand middle-class Cairene women that document the prevalence of strong female friendships, friendships that provide women with counsel and emotional support as well as practical help with personal, domestic, urban bureaucratic, and economic issues (Atiya 1982; Early 1993; MacLeod 1991; Rugh 1984). Bakr’s comments are also surprising given her own description of her childhood in a world of unmarried women, a world in which she must have observed at least some strong bonds between members of her mother’s social circle. In one of our interviews, Bakr remarked that one barrier to women having true friendships is their lack of independence. Bakr argues that women in Egyptian society are put in a position of use. As wives, mothers, and lovers, they are tools for fulfilling others’ needs. Because women are so rarely in a position to make independent decisions about their lives and activities, something of their selfhood is denied. For Bakr, such a nonindependent person cannot attain a human relation on the level of true friendship. Bakr also alludes to this issue in “Kull dhalika al-sawt al-jamil alladhi ya’ti min dakhiliha” (That Beautiful Voice That Came from Within Her) (see Bakr 1989). Here she describes her protagonist as a busy housewife and mother who has denied her own desires and needs for so long that she did not even realize for many years that she had no female friends in whom she could confide. Although Bakr’s statements about cultural hindrances to women’s ability to form friendships seem exaggerated, pieces such as “That Beautiful Voice,” “Ihda wa thalathun shajara jamila khadra’” (Thirty-one Beautiful Green Trees) (see Bakr

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1986a), and The Golden Chariot express an idea present in works by other members of her generation (for example, Nemat el-Behairy’s “Nisf imra’a” [Half a Woman] and Ibtihal Salem’s “Dunya saghira” [A Small World]): that cultural ideals, commonly held attitudes, and economic policies and circumstances all contribute to weakening women’s sense of self, even as they are expected to form the core of the family and community. Bakr uses digressive techniques to bring the detail of prisoners’ pasts into the present as a way of compensating for the poverty of relations and activities in the present lives of the inmates. However, Bakr’s use of circular narration to intertwine description of characters and events inside the prison with the lives of these characters outside the prison also works to suggest that women’s lives lived in regular society are in many ways as repetitive and restricted as the lives lived in jail. She said, “I think that time and narration in the novel have the nature of the Arabesque, entangled and intertwined, and this is very useful and functional because I want to show how connected the world inside the prison is to the world outside the prison. . . . There is no separation” (author interview, Cairo, November 1992). Indeed, Bakr suggests that in some respects, the female prisoners have the time and freedom to interact with their peers that are effectively denied to women in society. Bakr portrays the female prisoners ultimately developing warm, supportive relationships even in the face of social barriers of class, generation, and education. This depiction appears to fly in the face of Bakr’s comments about the nature of women’s relationships. However, her ironic point is that when women are jailed and forced to exist in a strictly female community, they are removed from the direct influence of men and patriarchal values. This restricted environment frees them to realize themselves, to develop new ways of relating to other women, and to engage in genuine friendships. The women’s prison, then, becomes a space of liberation.7

7. Manisty (1993) argues that the fact that the female prisoners narrate their own tales contributes to a new level of awareness for the women, and thus the prison becomes an arena for liberation.

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Another important inversion is Bakr’s portrayal of ‘Aziza as mad. It is an ironic portrayal, of course, for it is ‘Aziza who perceives the individual merits of the other female inmates and sympathizes with their difficult life experiences. The narrative framed by ‘Aziza’s story reveals how the women were mistreated by husbands, doctors, employers, and other figures of authority. It furthermore suggests how those individuals who wield power in society can hold the individual psyche responsible for problems ultimately resulting from social norms or economic realities, thus diffusing the possible motivations for rebellion (Arebi 1994; Habermas 1975). As Dinah Manisty points out, Bakr successfully develops a narrative about socially ascribed female madness that helps “to dismantle the fixity of such concepts as logic, normality and sanity by revealing the hidden transcript behind the behavior and logic of their mad heroines” (1994, 159).8 Bakr’s adaptation of the Arabesque narration has won her considerable critical acclaim. Latifa al-Zayyat (1992b) argues that Bakr’s use of digression in The Golden Chariot allows her to transform the complex, sometimes bizarre experience of the female prisoners into an understandable reality for the reader. Dinah Manisty suggests that Bakr’s use of circular, repetitive narration “provides a tool for unlocking the memories of the women prisoners, a process that leads, for some, to self-realization and discovery” (1993, 259). Hoda Elsadda (1996) argues that the digressive structure of the novel allows for a transcendence of what Cixous identifies as simplistic oppositional thought about gender relations and ideologies.9 According to Elsadda, Bakr generates a nonlinear narrative structure through a series of episodic portraits of the women that are woven together by the point of view of the narrator. The cumulative effect of these narratives generates a complex and compelling portrait of female oppression. This digressive

8. See Manisty 1994 for an excellent discussion of female madness as it appears in Bakr’s Golden Chariot and Radwa Ashour’s Ra’ayt al-nakhl (I Saw the Date Palms). 9. Farouk ‘Abd el-Qadir (1993) also argues that in her Golden Chariot, Bakr refuses to portray a simplistic oppositional relationship between men and women but rather presents a balanced portrait of the positive and negative traits of both male and female characters. In this sense, he suggests that Bakr succeeds where writers like Nawal el-Saadawi of the previous generation failed.

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style also allows Bakr to generate a sophisticated representation of the manner in which women are intimately involved in both private and public domains. Magda al-Nowaihi argues that Bakr’s Golden Chariot also challenges binary thought processes and categories by what she calls “the poetics of disorientation.” ‘Aziza’s voice is both disorienting of and disoriented by the voices of the other women, and also by the voice of the narrator, who sometimes seems to be telling the story from the individual women’s perspectives and sometimes possesses a more distant and balanced point of view. She argues, “Bakr’s narrative moves back and forth between spaces, characters, and languages that are normal and aberrant, normative and peripheral, centered and marginal, ridiculous and serious. By juxtaposing and dislocating both thematic and stylistic spaces, her narratives disorient readers in order to challenge their expectations, thereby presenting a powerful critique of that which has become normative in Egyptian life and redefining the concept of community” (2002, 73–74). Bakr’s poetics of disorientation also consist of the fact that many of her protagonists are profoundly troubled by the discrepancy between normative ideals of love, marriage, and family life and their traumatic lived experience. For al-Nowaihi, Bakr’s success is in revealing the hypocrisy and superficial quality of the various modes of language used in everyday life (intimate, journalistic, religious, and official) in order to help her reader perceive the oppressive mechanisms of society and of the government. Bakr’s narrative project, she argues, “disorients to reorient” (ibid., 74). The Golden Chariot recalls works by other Egyptian women writers who explore the relationship between women’s agency and social oppression, including works by Ihsan Kamal and, more notably, by the prominent Egyptian doctor, feminist, and activist Nawal el-Saadawi, whose critique of Egyptian society has been rejected as too extreme by some Egyptian intellectuals and by government officials.10 The Golden Chariot

10. Ihsan Kamal’s story “Sijn amlikuhu” (A Prison of My Own) describes a woman coming to terms with social conventions that restrict women’s lives in an upper Egyptian village (see Kamal 1965).

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bears comparison to el-Saadawi’s novel Imra’a ‘inda nuqtat al-sifr (Woman at Point Zero) (1973). Both novelists present their protagonists as women whose experiences of childhood sexual violation are linked to subsequent unhealthy or abusive sexual relationships and ultimately murder and imprisonment. El-Saadawi’s novel links the phases of Firdaus’s life, phases in which her abilities and ambitions are suppressed, she is sexually violated, and she comes to the realization that all women, despite their efforts and talents, are doomed to serve the needs of men. Bakr’s novel, on the other hand, focuses upon the links between women. Most of Bakr’s female characters have suffered because of dominant cultural attitudes toward women, but they also have character flaws and to some extent contribute to the negative social phenomena that she describes. ElSaadawi’s Firdaus is a near-heroic figure, a proud and courageous woman driven to murder by a society that deprives her of freedom and dignity. Bakr’s characters are more flawed and at the same time more complex and believable, and her bold critique is always tempered by a worldly and ironic sense of humor. Her characters are sometimes narcissistic, sometimes giving, sometimes bitter and lacking resolve, at other times willing to sacrifice everything for a loved one. Whereas el-Saadawi’s Firdaus fearlessly confronts death, Bakr’s ‘Aziza slips away, hallucinating about the flapping wings of the horses that are to carry her chariot to the heavens. Bakr’s Golden Chariot is a condemnation of the moral, social, economic, and political underpinnings of Egyptian society, yet it also focuses on the agency of the beleaguered female inmates. As she tells the stories of the women’s lives, the narrator details the ways in which they pursue goals, negotiate relationships, take responsibility, and attempt to improve the circumstances of their lives. The very structure of the text—‘Aziza’s screening of the inmates for inclusion in the chariot—reflects an act of women’s agency. As Dinah Manisty points out, the women’s narrating of their own stories affords them a certain amount of self-expression and self-realization (1993, 259–61). The Tomb of the Unknown Woman In her novella, Maqam ‘atiyya (‘Atiyya’s Shrine) (1996a), Bakr also uses a polyvocal narrative technique to deliver a wide-ranging critique of

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Egyptian society, from government policy to class relations and gender ideologies that devalue women. Like Gamal al-Ghitani in his novel AlZayni Barakat (1989), Bakr adopts the use of an “absent-present” figure for the topic of her novella, one who never appears as a character but around whom the entire work is constructed.11 The entire space of the novella is dedicated to the attempt to understand the personality and spirituality of Lady ‘Atiyya: is she a saint, a lowlife, or an ordinary woman? Unlike al-Ghitani’s Zayni, Lady ‘Atiyya is deceased at the beginning of the novel, and the reader does not have access to her voice in any form, such as a letter or a will. Perhaps this fact should not be surprising, since ‘Atiyya seems to be one of those women whom Bakr often writes about: women who have little or no education and no incentive to leave any written record or testimony of their lives. Instead, the reader is left to make sense of this absent—yet seemingly important—woman’s life by piecing together information from many personal (and subjective) accounts of ‘Atiyya.12 Like al-Ghitani’s novel, ‘Atiyya’s Shrine is composed of a pastiche-style narrative with numerous sections and narrative points of view. The first section is narrated in the first person by ‘Izzat Yusif, a young journalist at the magazine Al-sabah. She is charged with reporting on recent events involving the shrine and on the Society of Antiquities’ planned excavation of the shrine, through which it expects to discover archaeological evidence that would resolve scholarly disagreement about the historical genesis of the contemporary Egyptians. ‘Izzat’s voice disappears after this section and is replaced by an anonymous narrator who, on behalf of the magazine, announces the editors’ hope that ‘Izzat’s investigation will silence all those persons who deny a genetic or cultural link between the illustrious ancient Egyptians and the contemporary Egyptians, beleaguered as they are by social, economic, and political problems. The third section consists of a series of testimonies about ‘Atiyya from her son, daughter, husband,

11. Samia Mehrez (1994) uses this term, after Ceza Kassem, in her excellent chapter “Al-Zayni Barakat: Narrative as Strategy” in Egyptian Writers Between History and Fiction. 12. As Sabry Hafez (1995) points out, the title Maqam ‘atiyya could also be translated as “The Status of ‘Atiyya.”

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lover, landlady, and neighbors. Bakr cleverly renders the social and educational status of these characters by using her colloquialized fusha and strategically inserting colorful examples of popular expressions. In the final section, the voice of an anonymous narrator returns to announce ‘Izzat’s mysterious disappearance and her apparent previous distribution of her unpublished report to several unnamed people. Unlike al-Ghitani’s Zayni, Bakr’s protagonist is not a powerful public figure, but rather a local woman whose tomb some people are beginning to treat as a popular saint’s shrine. Yet, like Zayni, ‘Atiyya remains an ambiguous figure even after all the testimonials of people who knew her. These narratives provide conflicting accounts of ‘Atiyya’s life and personality and ultimately reveal more about their speakers than about this new and ambiguous saint. In each narrative, Bakr smuggles in social commentary either directly through the characters’ discourse or by mocking the speakers’ attitudes and manner of speaking. Targets of this critique include the rigid and sanctimonious attitude of certain members of the intelligentsia, middle-class indifference toward the lower classes, the Egyptian government’s oppression of the communists, the inability of the government to provide infrastructure (such as reliable telecommunication), a social conservatism that encourages men to be restrictive and controlling over women, and the gullibility of women who go along with these restrictions against their own best interests. As Sabry Hafez notes, Bakr successfully disentangles her social critique from “patriarchal binary thought” by positing multiple heterogeneous aspects of the female self (1995, 172). These aspects are revealed in multiple testimonies, the sum of which prevents a simplistic or predetermined evaluation of ‘Atiyya. ‘Izzat’s disappearance at the novella’s conclusion, apparently at the hands of the authorities, is a critique of a government that silences those intellectuals and activists who make public what it perceives to be subversive information. However, Bakr indicts the media along with the government. ‘Izzat’s editor in chief, who sits in a luxurious office sipping coffee, is held responsible for shelving her article that apparently revealed some inconvenient truth. This critique is echoed in the testimony of the archaeologist ‘Ali Faheem, who remarks, “Everything that is said about the freedom of the press and freedom of expression is a big

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lie which I have never believed and I will not believe as long as I live” (1986a, 57; 1992d, 171). Perhaps most important, Bakr mocks a retrospective approach to reforming society. The governmental authorities and the Society of Antiquities see ‘Atiyya’s grave site as the possible place to prove that the modern Egyptians are legitimate heirs to the cultural and civilizational achievements of the ancient Egyptians. After ‘Izzat compiles her report, it becomes apparent that ‘Atiyya was a relatively normal woman who expended her energies on the real problems that faced her community every day, such as feeding a neighbor’s baby, clothing a poor child, or encouraging a child’s attendance at school. Far from providing a missing link to the illustrious past, or information about the nature of the ancient Egyptians, ‘Atiyya represents the practical, clever, and industrious woman who accomplishes more than her fair share of everyday labor and logistics. When “the authorities” receive this information about “the real nature of ‘Atiyya,” they rush to cover it up, rather than allowing this “truth” to be published. Even the press colludes in this cover-up, with Egyptian and foreign journalists publishing conspiracy theories and other outlandish stories about the Lady ‘Atiyya affair. Here, Bakr mocks the idea that a society should wish or need to redeem itself by reference to past glory instead of focusing on its resources and people and dealing in some practical way with the troubled state of the country. As ‘Ali Fahim describes it, “We are completely besieged by all the elements of deformity that are imposed on us as though they were duties, and we comply with them submissively day after day, without resisting. . . . Why do we wear synthetic fibers in this stifling climate when we grow cotton and flax? Why do we live in these depressing buildings that resemble soap or shoe boxes when we have before us the spacious desert?” (1986a, 59; 1992d, 174). ‘Atiyya’s Shrine nevertheless ends with a kernel of hope in that the final narrator, after acknowledging that Al-sabah had abandoned its story on ‘Atiyya, remarks, “The sword anticipated censure, as the famous saying goes, and nothing is hidden that does not become public knowledge” (1986a, 61; 1992d, 175). The ordinary Egyptian with all her talents and faults, as represented by ‘Atiyya, still remains in the common memory of her community. Although the government may try to repress her, this “truth” remains.

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As a social critic, Bakr utilizes a range of techniques to encourage middle- and upper-class educated readers to consider the humanity of poor and otherwise marginalized women. She plays with language, revealing the links between the colloquial and more elevated languages, inverts taken-for-granted social values, and explores the many facets of women’s lives: the work they do, the values they hold, and the emotions they experience. She makes particularly clear the impact of poverty and government corruption and inefficiency on the lives of poor women. While delivering this many-pronged social critique, Bakr’s sophisticated play with language makes it more difficult for critics to dismiss her writing as having only sociological value, a charge often leveled by male Egyptian critics against women writers who employ realist approaches in their fiction. The Man from the Margins In her two-part historical novel, Al-bashmuri (The Man from Bashmour), Bakr broadens her concern for the causes and effects of marginalization and repression. She moves beyond her exploration of gender, governmental, and class oppression to explore issues of religious and ethnic oppression. Set against the social and cultural turmoil of ninth-century Egypt and Iraq, the novel explores questions relevant to the present day: the nature of individual spirituality, the ways in which beliefs merge and transform in individual lives, and the causes and effects of religious intolerance within traditions and between traditions. Like her other work, this novel attends to language itself, but her focus here is not upon the levels of the Arabic language but upon the interplay between Arabic, Coptic, Farsi, Greek, and even the remnants of the ancient Egyptian language in the medieval context. Bakr uses references to the Coptic, Egyptian, and Greek languages and religious traditions to flesh out the emotional and spiritual worlds of her characters. The Man from Bashmour explores the experience of Budayr, a Copt from the Bashmourite community in lower Egypt. The novel examines the coexistence and interchange of religions and cultures in the medieval Middle East through Budayr’s experiences and relationships during a period of journeys and spiritual wandering. It also examines the consciousness of a man marginalized both by his Christian religion and by his rural roots.

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Although he is male, Budayr bears similarity to some of Bakr’s female protagonists in that he suffers from restrictive sexual standards and the traditions of gender segregation and arranged marriage.13 His fate as a wanderer begins with a tryst with Amuna, a woman from his village, who is eventually chosen by his father to be his older brother’s bride. Devastated by this decision, Amuna commits suicide and Budayr flees the village, fearing the revelation of his illicit relationship. Thus begins Budayr’s life of wandering and of personal and spiritual exploration. After fleeing the village of his birth, Budayr obtains work as a sexton at the Church of Qasr al-Sham‘ in Old Cairo. During his tenure as sexton, he is sent on a mission with the deacon Thawna to deliver a message to the Bashmourites, who are rebelling against harsh taxes imposed in the name of the caliph at Baghdad. During this mission, Budayr is captured by caliphal troops and sent to Syria, where he is spared from a life of slavery by being assigned a position in the church at Antioch. Harassment by a priest at Antioch sends Budayr into flight once more, this time to Baghdad, where he works in the oven room at the caliph’s palace. There he is educated in Arabic and the Qur’an by a kindly supervisor. Exposed to the vibrant Muslim scholarship of the period, he converts to Islam and eventually decides to make his way back to Egypt in search of his friend and soul mate, Thawna. The Man from Bashmour is an attempt to generate a nuanced portrait of the human experience of two men: Budayr, who converts from Christianity to Islam, and Thawna, who becomes a Christian after practicing and studying the ancient Egyptian religion. Bakr explores the emotional and spiritual experience and motivations of these two men through three primary strategies. First, she generates a highly detailed representation of the cultural and linguistic milieus in which these men live, with a specific

13. Although there are no female protagonists in this novel, significant female characters appear in the narrative and are portrayed as having considerable agency. Dalluka is a priestess and teacher, and she is represented as attractive to Thawna because of both her intellect and her beauty. Budayr’s second encounter with a woman is with Suwayla, who pursues him for an impromptu marriage and a sexual encounter that she hopes will result in pregnancy and improved chances of surviving her impending enslavement by caliphal troops.

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focus on the religious aspects of her protagonists’ everyday lives: the ritual objects they handle and revere, the psalms, hymns, ecclesiastical garments, and other liturgical details. Second, Bakr creates a representation of the complexity of the religious and political situation in ninth-century Egypt, Syria, and Iraq as an individual may have experienced it. Specifically, she imagines what it may have been like to be an Egyptian Christian during the Arab incursion. Third, Bakr explores the similarities between Christianity and Islam and their respective forms of mysticism through the experiences of Budayr and Thawna. She portrays how beliefs merge and transform in the lives of individuals of various traditions through contact with people of other religions or through religious scholarship or movements. Bakr describes the complex cultural and linguistic milieu of ninthcentury Egypt during a time when “pagans,” Christians, and Muslim Arabs coexisted in the country. Although she uses standard Arabic throughout the text, including in the dialogue, Bakr describes various characters as speaking in “a clear Bashmouri Coptic dialect” or as “only speaking Akhmimi Coptic” (2004a, 8–9). Her complex characters use specific lexicons to evoke their cultural and religious backgrounds, a Coptic one for Budayr and a lexicon influenced by the ancient Egyptian and Greek religions and philosophies for Thawna. She conveys Budayr’s language through his utterance of Coptic words or phrases: the names of the Coptic months, ecclesiastical greetings, and so on, which she clarifies for the reader by means of footnotes (ibid., 7–8). She also presents a close description of objects used in the Coptic Church. Her description of Budayr’s ritual responsibilities as sexton evokes a language and a world of sights and smells that would be unfamiliar to most non-Coptic readers.14 As soon as I finished with the lamps, I turned to make sure that the fourteen instruments of priestly service at the altar had been arranged in their proper places. I cleaned those that needed to be cleaned, after which I examined all of them and straightened those that were out of

14. In the following block quotes I use Nancy Roberts’s 2007 translation of the novel, in part because of her informed rendering of words related to Coptic Christian liturgy and belief. Otherwise, I refer to the 2004 Arabic edition.

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place: these included the stone tablet, which is placed there as a symbol of the tomb; the paten which serves as a symbol of the manger in Christ’s infancy; and the wooden chest, or ark, that holds the books and the two consecrated cloths. (2007a, 6; 2004a, 11)

She also refers to the process by which names for these items were beginning to change, owing to increasing Arab dominance in the region and the growing use of Arabic in everyday life: Father Joseph’s alb was the only one whose crosses had been embroidered with precious stones, including sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, and carnelian, whereas those worn by the other clerics had all been embroidered with silk thread as is customary. As for the kerchief, it was held by the priest, since no one with the rank of deacon or lower was permitted to hold it at any time. It was also customary for the priest to wear a ghaffara, which—since the Arabs’ tongue has become the most commonly used language throughout the land—has come to be known as a jubba or ‘abaya. (2007a, 8; 2004a, 13)

Bakr describes Thawna as a scholar of language and religious philosophies. Thawna’s familiarity with the ancient Egyptian language is demonstrated to Budayr by his apparent ability to read inscriptions in the ancient temples and by his interpretation of an amulet that was written by a temple priest for a sick child. Thawna’s knowledge of the ancient Egyptian language and religion is a source of suspicion for his colleagues in the church, who spread rumors that he dabbles in magic and alchemy. Similarly in part 2, Bakr represents ninth-century Iraq as a dynamic site of cultural contact, scholarship, and conflict between those individuals espousing different religious perspectives. In ‘Afif’s manuscript shop, Budayr participates in copying the efflorescence of scholarship that was stimulated in part by Arab exposure to Greek philosophy and sciences. There he is also exposed to texts written by scholars representing various sects of Shiism, Sufism, and Zoroastrian or other “pagan” beliefs.15

15. Michael G. Morony (1984) argues that although Muslims probably became a virtual majority of the Iraqi population by the ninth century, significant religious minorities,

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Bakr’s second approach is to generate an interpretation of how two individuals experienced the complex religio-political situation of ninthcentury Egypt, both at the psychological and at the practical levels. She portrays Budayr and Thawna as individuals whose lives are deeply affected by the power struggles between the Byzantines and the Arabs in the Mediterranean and the impact of this struggle on the Egyptian Coptic Church. The Coptic authorities saw the Byzantines and their Melkite Christian allies in Egypt as the ultimate threat, since the Byzantines regarded the Copts as heretical. Throughout the narrative, Bakr portrays Budayr as becoming increasingly aware of the threat that the Arab tribes were presenting to the local Coptic communities. At the same time, he learns that some of these tribes were joining the Coptic Bashmourites in their struggle against the exorbitant taxes being levied by the Egyptian governor in the name of the caliph. Budayr receives most of his education in these matters from the politically astute Thawna: These are difficult times. Everything is in a state of warfare and strife. The Bashmourites have escalated their mutiny, and they send the governor’s forces away in defeat time after time. Meanwhile, the Arabs fight among themselves, and even our church is vulnerable to internal conflicts. The Byzantines, followers of the Chalcedonian sacrilege, constantly speak ill of our church and pay bribes to the Muslim governor in the hope that he will hand our churches over to them so that they can seize their property and gain the upper hand over all followers of religion in the entire land. (2007a, 22; 2004a, 29)

Bakr portrays Budayr as not fully understanding the divisions between the various churches in the region or the theological debates that led to these divisions. Here Bakr makes reference to the fallout of the fifthcentury Council of Chalcedon and the ensuing sharp division between those individuals who accepted the results of that council on the nature of Jesus Christ and those who rejected it. Bakr also references the other

including the Zoroastrians, Sabeans, and Chaldeans, remained active well into the early Islamic period.

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creedal debates of the era, the ones concerning the nature of Christ’s will and his soul, among other things (2004a, 131–32). As an uneducated man, Budayr struggles to understand these differences in doctrine and ritual. Here again Thawna serves as his adviser. “Yes,” I said, then continued, “I used to think that the difference between the Copts and the Melkites was over one fundamental issue only, namely, that of the hypostatic union.” Interrupting me to clarify, Thawna said, “No, Budayr. We disagree on thirteen subsidiary questions in addition to the fundamental issue. We agree on the three hypostases with a single, united Essence. As followers of Jacobite teachings, we believe that Christ has a single nature and a single will and constitutes a single hypostasis.” (2007a, 49; 2004a, 63)

Although Budayr does not fully understand these differences, he is nevertheless suspicious of those persons who adhere to the “heretical” beliefs of the Melkite Christians. He is also shocked by the beliefs and practices of those “pagans” that he and Thawna encounter during their journey, those individuals practicing some form of the ancient Egyptian religion. Although he has deep affection for Thawna, he also harbors doubts about his friend’s past and commitment to Christianity. These qualms are based on the rumors that Thawna used to engage in sorcery and are validated by Thawna’s clear interest in and knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture and religion. Budayr is terrified when Thawna goes into a delirious state after having been bitten by a snake and begins invoking the aid of ancient Egyptian and Greek gods, along with the mercy of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Thawna intones Coptic and Greek religious words and pronouncements, which Bakr again translates for her reader in footnotes (2004a, 90–97). This delirious state reveals Thawna’s complex spiritual past and his vast knowledge of ancient Egyptian and Christian belief and ritual practice. It is tempting to read Budayr’s fear as a reference to the current climate of religious strife and apprehension in Egypt and the larger world where Christians, Muslims, and Jews harbor mutual fear and resentment. As Bakr suggests, these negative feelings become bound up in complex ways with issues of territory and regional power.

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Bakr’s portrayal of Thawna is particularly complex; he is revealed as having studied the ancient Egyptian religion as a young man in Ahkmim at the hand of a woman savant. After the murder of this mentor (and lover), he studies philosophy and then becomes “a Christian Gnostic who claimed to have true knowledge” (ibid., 108). After Thawna recovers from his delirium, he reveals his past to Budayr and also admits that although he is now a committed Christian, he has lingering spiritual doubts. These doubts are reinforced by the current state of Egypt in which both Muslim Arabs and Copts are suffering under caliphal authority and by the fact that his own spiritual father at Qasr al-Sham‘ has sent him to discourage Christians from rebelling against these unfair taxes. Thawna informs Budayr that he believes that both Christians and Muslims are commanded to do good and that he is disillusioned to see leaders of both religions exploiting the masses in order to gain the upper hand in their power struggles. “I am afraid, brother. I no longer know what the truth is, nor can I tell my head from my feet” (ibid., 109). Here again, Bakr’s portrayal of the joint suffering of Muslim and Christians under an oppressive regime reads like a critique of the Mubarak government and its inability or unwillingness to deal with a failing economy, political corruption, and increasing popular demand for democratization. Bakr’s third approach to detailing the experience of Budayr and Thawna involves an implicit recognition of the similarities between Christianity and Islam. Bakr takes care to include in Thawna’s religious explanations to Budayr aspects of Coptic Christian belief that have clear parallels to Islam. These similarities include a list of those acts that both Christians and Muslims should renounce: murder, fornication, theft, lying, the temptations of Satan, and so forth (ibid., 81). Bakr also portrays Budayr as gradually realizing over the course of his travels that Muslims share with Christians many aspects of ritual and worship, such as the concern with ritual cleanliness and decorum within the sanctuary (ibid., 129). Budayr and Thawna have a positive experience during a visit to a mostly Muslim town, and Budayr realizes for the first time that he had inaccurate notions about Muslim women. He had been under the impression that Muslim women never left their houses, but in this village he sees women with uncovered faces intermingling with men in the market.

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The Man from Bashmour also investigates the issue of religious motivation in the characters of Budayr and Thawna. Bakr characterizes both men as individuals who have experienced existential uncertainty and have found comfort in religious doctrine and ritual. Of the two, Thawna appears to be the more profoundly spiritual. He was deeply immersed in ancient Egyptian spiritual practice and appears to have converted only after his mentor and lover was killed when Christians razed the temple in which she was teaching. At some level, Thawna’s conversion to Christianity is incomplete; his snakebite-induced delirium reveals him as plagued with doubts about the true nature of divinity and about his own spiritual merit. On the other hand, Bakr portrays Budayr as driven to religion out of guilt and desperation. He carries a burden of guilt about his illicit affair, which led to Amuna’s suicide and his abandonment of his natal village. Life in the church for Budayr provides a new home, and he finds some comfort knowing that he can confess his past transgressions to Thawna. As the narrative progresses in part 2, Bakr portrays both Thawna and Budayr as becoming disillusioned with the world and with both Muslim and Christian authorities. As a result, both turn to a life of asceticism and meditation, drawing upon the mystical traditions of their respective faiths. During his journey to Baghdad, Budayr begins to doubt his former beliefs. I concluded that what I had once believed with perfect certainty was nothing but a type of doubt that could never satisfy a person’s innermost longings, that axioms are nothing but beginnings, and that true doctrine only manifests itself through action, not through words and honeyed humbug. After all, there are people who take doctrine captive: They exploit it as a means to the gratification of their own passions and the fulfillment of their worldly ends. In other words, not everyone who recites the words of the Lord puts them into practice. . . . [W]ords of faith have to be joined with compassionate action. (2007a, 207–8; 2004a, 263)

Budayr begins to question the validity of what human beings do in the name of religion, including the building of edifices and empires to glorify God. Here Bakr’s voice emerges clearly, in a somewhat heavy-handed reference to the present and to the resurgence of fundamentalists among both Egyptian Muslims and Christians.

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Once Budayr is exposed to the Qur’an and Islam, guilt as a motivation is no longer enough to keep him in the fold. In Baghdad he is also influenced by Yashkuri, who espouses asceticism and appears to be a Sufi. With guidance from Yashkuri and his sheikh, Budayr delves further into spirituality and learns about mystical conceptions of knowledge and enlightenment. Here certain questions arise about Bakr’s portrayal of Budayr’s spiritual motivation. What is the significance of Budayr’s conversion to Islam? Is Bakr leveling a charge about an overarching and unfulfilling role of guilt and anxiety as motivators in Christian belief? Or is she simply describing Budayr’s capture and relocation to Baghdad as an example of the numerous ways in which Christians converted to Islam during this period? One reviewer reads Budayr’s conversion as Bakr’s critique of the Coptic religion or as a refusal to let his subversive narrative continue to emanate from a marginalized Christian character (Mahmoud 2000). I disagree with this argument because of the sympathetic treatment Bakr gives to the dying Thawna. At the end of the novel, Budayr attempts to convert Thawna to Islam, but the latter is content to remain in the Christian faith, despite any lingering doubts. Thawna points out to Budayr the similarity in the spiritual paths that they have each traveled. Again Bakr’s voice emerges clearly, emphasizing the commonalities in the goals and beliefs of Christians and Muslims who are more dedicated to the pursuit of faith than power and material wealth: “Look at the way you and I have ended up. I renounced and abandoned the world in order to be here and devote myself entirely to the service of Christ far away from people. And now you return to me after embracing Islam, clad in nothing but tunic and waist-cloth, and with nothing to your name but a staff to walk on. . . . What is the difference between us?” (2007a, 294; 2004a, 368). I argue that Budayr’s conversion in part 2 serves as a parallel to Thawna’s conversion from the Egyptian religion to Christianity in part 1. Bakr portrays both men’s interaction with religion as ambiguous and complex. For both men, conversion or religious change occurs under situations of stress. Thawna hides his relationship to the ancient Egyptian religion, fearing Christian reprisal, and Budayr is enslaved and transferred to the heart of the Islamic world, where he begins studying Arabic and the

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Qur’an as a distraction from his feelings of loss and displacement. Yet both men perceive their new religions as positive; they find solace and comfort in their new beliefs while clearly still maintaining an emotional attachment to certain aspects of their former faiths. Each remains attached to the person who established him firmly in that faith, Dalluka in the case of Thawna and Thawna in the case of Budayr. The fact that the murdered “pagan” Dalluka is in some sense posited as the Muslim Budayr’s intellectual and spiritual grandmother lends poignancy to Bakr’s exploration of the personal experience of religion and of the historical, political, and intellectual causes for the transformation of religious beliefs within individual lifetimes. Despite moments of strong authorial commentary, The Man from Bashmour remains a compelling text for the way in which Bakr represents the processes of cultural and religious change as they occurred in Egypt and Iraq during this tumultuous period. She imagines these processes as they were spurred on by contacts between members of different religions: the ancient Egyptian religion, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Islam. Furthermore, Bakr explores the complexity of human religious life, including the ease with which individuals experience spiritual confusion and the ambiguous role of religious authorities, who may or may not dispense compassion and knowledge to their followers. Here, Bakr draws upon histories of sectarianism within both Christianity and Islam. She imagines how individuals may have experienced the whirl of ideas being espoused by different groups, such as the Melkite and Jacobite Christians, the Khariji, Mu‘tazili, Shi‘i, and Sufi Muslims. She explores the nature of human intolerance when it comes to issues of religion and the depths of cruelty to which humans descend in its name. But in the characters of Budayr and Thawna, she also presents some hope, because each is willing to explore his own beliefs and his own doubts. Each man is willing to engage in sincere conversation and intellectual interchange. The Man from Bashmour raised controversy upon its appearance, with some critics arguing that Bakr was criticizing Coptic culture and others arguing that the novel was preoccupied with Arab persecution of the Egyptian Copts (Fathi 1999). Bakr apparently felt the need to clarify her motivations in the introduction to the English translation of the novel. “In

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August 1998, the Egyptian publisher Dar al-Hilal, which had been due to publish Part I of the Man from Bashmour (al-Bashmuri), called a halt to the publication process after sectarian strife broke out in Upper Egypt.  .  .  . For my part, I argued that the novel’s release at that time in particular could help to clarify the profound commonalities shared by Muslims and Copts in Egypt” (2007a, vii). Despite this initial controversy, part 1 of the novel received positive reviews. Abd al-Sattar Hatita (1999) praises Bakr’s generation of a language that effectively evokes an Egyptian past shaped by a multiplicity of cultural and linguistic influences. He argues that this language brings to life the struggle between rulers and ruled and tragic results brought about by those persons who use religion to their own ends and forget the essential human quality of tolerance in religion. Ibrahim Fathi argues that far from describing a context of Muslim versus Christian antagonism, Bakr illustrates the complex religio-political dimensions of the Bashmourite revolt, with both Coptic and Arab Delta dwellers rebelling against the kharaj tax imposed by the Egyptian governor and with the collusion of Coptic authorities with caliphal interests. He praises Bakr for creating complex characters “whose very contradictions allow them to mediate between the historical/documentary dimension of the novel and its fictional structure” (1999, n.p.). For Fathi, these multifaceted characters provide a compelling portrait of what happens to the marginalized when they fail to make a common cause. Once again, in The Man from Bashmour, Bakr has received positive critical attention for her narrative approaches toward exploring oppression and marginalization. Madiha Mahmoud (2000) describes Bakr’s use of historical narratives to explore the Bashmourite revolt in part 1 as “pure genius.” Mahmoud notes that Bakr sought out narratives that either have been ignored or attempted to silence the voices of the Christian rebels, and she employed them to create compelling portraits of Bashmourite personal and historical experience. Similarly, Mahmoud el-Wardani argues that in the first part of this novel, Bakr molded a tightly constructed text around the few historical narratives and eyewitness accounts of the revolt: “The great virtue of this method was that it allowed the novelist to exploit to the full ironies and missing links in her source materials, thus enabling

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her to reconstruct the narrative space in which she herself functions as a novelist. Al-Bashmouri was an impressively multi-faceted book that transcended the limitations of the conventional ‘historical novel’ and could be read at a variety of social, cultural and intellectual levels” (2000, n.p.). However, al-Wardani argues that Bakr failed to use historical narratives effectively in part 2, but rather used extracts from medieval scientific digests in a way that distracts from her narrative project. He also sees Budayr’s conversion to Islam as “unjustified from a literary point of view” and argues that this twist seems to arise from Bakr’s naive idea that once specific rituals and precepts are put aside, religions are essentially the same, particularly in their call for peace and justice. Al-Wardani does not seem convinced by Bakr’s project of demonstrating the cultural and linguistic interpenetration of the medieval Middle East. The controversy inspired by The Man from Bashmour speaks to contemporary Egyptian concerns about long-standing tensions between the Muslim and Christian communities. However, the success of Bakr’s creative use of cultural lexicons and her use of intertextuality in part 1 in particular suggest that critics continue to see artistically innovative writing as an appropriate site for discourse about sensitive topics such as sectarian violence and the political uses of religion. Conclusion Herbert Phillips (1987) argues that writers are anthropologically interesting because they crystallize new ways of looking at the quotidian and define what is right and wrong with the universe. Bakr accomplishes precisely this feat as she explores the way in which ruling ideologies shape the lives of female and male citizens. She explores the various ways in which individuals may react to social norms and institutions with specific reference to the often dire circumstances faced by those individuals who are low on the ladder of social power and authority. She paints the marginalized neither as helpless nor as heroic but develops a human portrait that explores the doubt, fear, and human frailty that somehow allow this circle of dominance and repression to continue. However, Bakr’s writing also provokes a set of questions that seek to alter this cycle, and she

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regards this fictional provocation as a possible impetus for social change.16 She encourages another way of thinking about the “other,” whether she is an inmate in an asylum or a lowly Coptic sexton. Bakr’s writing exhibits a distinctly postmodern concern for language itself, and it is through her focus on language that she develops this alternative vision of reality; she emphasizes the artistic nature of everyday language used by women and also reminds her readers of the rich linguistic, cultural, and spiritual heritage of Egypt and of the common humanity of the people adhering to those traditions, past and present. In this sense, her writing incorporates a classic anthropological aim, as she invites her readers to think actively about experience and subjectivities very different from their own. She accomplishes this task by collapsing linguistic difference and also by drawing attention to the ways in which language and narratives are structured and how one version of a language or discourse may be used to support the authority of those individuals who hold power in society. With regard to her writing on women, Bakr effectively uses her innovative female lexicon and modes of description and narration to reveal what MacLeod calls the “layered and overlapping bastion of oppressors” (1991, 145). Bakr describes the complex ways in which women are both victims and agents of oppression in a society shaped by inequitable class relations, by an andocentric gender system, and by a government that has been unable or unwilling to address the needs of the poor. In her historical fiction, Bakr explores the richness of other traditions and languages that were subsumed by the Arabo-Islamic incursion. In The Man from Bashmour, she explores the experience of both Muslim and Christian characters in the wake of the power struggles between the Abbasid and

16. In an interview with Muhammad al-Qadhafi Mas‘ud, Bakr states that Arab society has failed to keep pace with the West because it does not engage in a regular process of self-questioning about social values, religious and personal beliefs, and the conduct of everyday life. She says that this sort of self-questioning is an aspect of modernity in Western societies that has allowed them to develop culturally and politically. The Arab world, she argues, currently labors under a Salafist religious climate that insists upon imposing age-old answers to present circumstances (Mas‘ud 2008).

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Byzantine empires. In this work, she expresses not a “naive” view of religion, as Mahmoud al-Wardani (2000) suggests, but an appreciation of the complexity of human religious and spiritual experience. She generates an intimate portrait of the ways in which liturgical objects and language impact individuals emotionally and how they contribute to individual perceptions of the world, human experience, and the divine. In The Man from Bashmour, Bakr expands her interest in language to explore conditions of cultural and linguistic contact and how languages merge and transform, as one ultimately becomes the instrument of power and authority. She furthermore “uncovers” the hidden discourse of those persons whose language is made obsolete by the processes of invasion, conversion, and political change. Bakr’s literary focus on issues of marginalization and oppression is not an unusual one among Egyptian or Arab authors. However, Bakr displays an impressive range when it comes to dealing with the victims of this marginalization: the poor woman in the street, the sexually abused upper-class woman, the lowly Coptic sexton, and the Sudanese forced into fighting a foreign war. Bakr’s writing is also interesting from an anthropological perspective because it seems clear that the themes that pervade her work also reflect her own experience as an Egyptian intellectual and writer. She expressed to me her feeling that her own creative potential, like the capacity of other women writers, is limited by the nature of the quotidian for Egyptian women: that is, the burden of social expectations for women as wives and mothers; women’s reluctance, even in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Cairo, to move about and explore all sectors of society as freely as their male peers; and sometimes the sense that despite her accomplishments, she is not taken seriously as a writer or thinker because of her gender. Of course, as an upper-middle-class intellectual, Bakr stands at some distance from the women whom she hopes ultimately will benefit most from her attempts at reimagining gender roles. Her socioeconomic status clearly allows her to condemn the familiar and taken for granted in a way that the women she writes about certainly cannot. At the same time, her lower-middle-class roots, her observation of the hardships and political actions of poor women in her work as a supplies inspector, and her experience in the women’s prison have allowed her access to the worlds

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of poor urban women and sparked the anger that drives her critique of Egyptian society. As a younger writer, Bakr clearly struggled to have her cultural critical writing accepted as part of the legitimate literary field—that group of writers consecrated by major critics.17 She faced this challenge partly because critics objected to her focus on eccentric female characters and partly because of a critical attitude that Arab women writing about their distressed female compatriots are merely catering to a Western audience that eagerly consumes any work about “oppressed” Arab or Muslim women. Early on in my research, one critic told me that Bakr’s popularity was considerably augmented by interest from the West. He argued that Westerners are interested in Bakr’s work, like the writing of Nawal el-Saadawi and Alifa Rifaat, less for artistic reasons than because it addresses women’s sexuality and gender relations in an Arab and Muslim context. This charge, which I heard more often in relation to el-Saadawi and Rifaat, is surprising given that all three women write primarily or exclusively in Arabic. It may be explained simply as emanating from the resentment of male critics and writers who have not achieved equally wide international reputations. However, it also reveals a clear understanding of the cultural and political dynamics between East and West, in which the status of women becomes a measure of the morality and merit of a culture. In more recent years, Bakr has overcome much of the critical reticence toward her own work by continuing to experiment with the structure and diversity of the Arabic language and also by broadening her topical scope to explore male characters marginalized by their religious or socioeconomic status. This broadening of subject matter seems to have encouraged her critics to see her not as a single-minded advocate of women but rather as an accomplished writer with a broad set of human concerns. In chapter 3 we turn to the writing of Ibtihal Salem, who, like Bakr, challenges the reader to adopt a new perspective on women’s lives and emotional experience. However, Salem’s aesthetic does not focus on the links between the standard and colloquial language as Bakr’s does, but

17. See Jacquemond’s description of the Cairene legitimate field and its margins (2008).

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rather marks the shift between them. Salem uses a poetic prose interspersed with colloquial Egyptian to render women’s thoughts, dreams, and memories alongside a depiction of their conversations with lovers, husbands, children, and mothers. Through this compressed and evocative style, Salem delves deeply into women’s experience of love, marriage, work, war, and a range of other human experiences.

Ibtihal Salem Journeys into Memory and Experience

Ibtih al Salem’s writing explores the personal and political alienation experienced by individuals in Egyptian and Arab society. Her short stories and novels examine the various causes of alienation, from restrictive social attitudes toward women to inequities in the economy and political repression.1 Another important theme in her work is separation and the attendant melancholy experienced by people who are parted from friends, lovers—even children—owing to war and the harsh economic and political realities of life in Egypt and the broader Middle East.2 Salem’s terse, evocative prose explores inner worlds, memories, and conflicts—mostly

1. See, for example, “Al-‘Arabi” (Arabi) in Al-nawrus (The Seagull) (1989); “‘Ulba farigha” (An Empty Tin Can), “Al-murahana” (Making Bets), and “Dunya saghira” in Dunya saghira (A Small World) (1992); and “Futat” (Crumbs) and “Khalfa al-abwab” (Behind Closed Doors) in Nakhb iktimal al-qamar (A Toast to the Full Moon) (1997). 2. See “Da’irat al-dukhan” (Smoke Ring) in Al-nawrus (The Seagull) (1989), “Al-sajn fi-l-huruf” (The Shape of Prison) in Dunya saghira (A Small World) (1992), and Sunduq saghir fi-l-qalb (A Small Box in the Heart) (2004).

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of women—yet the stories grapple seriously with some of the most significant issues facing Egypt today: economic inequity, political repression, gender tensions, and religious fundamentalism. Some of Salem’s stories have a compressed, cinematic quality, an approach that may be related to her professional experience as a producer in one of Cairo’s public-sector theaters. This approach presents an intimate portrait of a moment in an Egyptian woman’s life, the look and feel of her flat, and the objects that she uses to accomplish quotidian tasks. Despite the fact that many of her stories take place in the space of a few hours or the span of a day, Salem skillfully draws the reader directly into the thoughts, memories, and hopes of her characters. She accomplishes this task through an efficient stream-of-consciousness style and through terse snippets of conversation that are rendered in the colloquial. Unlike Salwa Bakr and Radwa Ashour, who avoid use of colloquial syntax in their texts, Salem incorporates the colloquial Egyptian dialect directly into the internal and external dialogues of her characters to explore the psychological impact of socioeconomic and political factors—including war—on individual psyches. In the sections that follow, I present a sketch of Salem’s personal history and her views on the social and political role of the author in Egyptian society. I also examine her writing strategies as they appear in short stories from her collections, Al-nawrus (The Seagull) (1989), Dunya saghira (A Small World) (1992), and Nakhb iktimal al-qamar (A Toast to the Full Moon) (1997), and in her novel Sunduq saghir fi-l-qalb (A Small Box in the Heart) (2004). Finally, I describe the local and international critical response to her writing. Personal and Political Influences When Salem spoke about the relationship between her personal life and her creative work, she stressed the considerable influence of her family situation upon her writing. Salem emphasized in particular the struggles that she faced as she grew up and began to define goals for herself that did not fit with her parents’ expectations. While her adolescence and young adulthood were very difficult in this sense, they were periods of intense intellectual and emotional growth that were crucial for her development as

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a writer. These periods offered her a broad experience with people, which had a profound impact upon her storytelling ability. As she described the stages of her life, she spoke about the different kinds of people she met and interacted with in various places and situations and how they affected her thinking about the individual, family, religion, and society. Salem was born in Cairo in 1949 and grew up in a family of seven children, four girls and three boys. The family lived in Hayy al-Zahir, a district on the northeast side of the city, near the large and bustling business district around Ramsis Square. Her father was a university professor. Salem regards her childhood years in al-Zahir as having a profound effect on her personal system of values and the way in which these values inform her writing. In the 1940s and 1950s, al-Zahir was a highly integrated area, where Coptic Christians, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, and Muslims lived side by side. When Salem spoke about this area, she emphasized the harmonious way in which groups of different ethnic and religious affiliations lived together and said that this environment allowed her to understand the meaning and importance of the Arabic saying al-din li-allah wa al-watn li-l-jami‘ (Religion is for God, but the homeland is for everyone). Salem recalled that in al-Zahir, people were not overly aware of the differences between them; she had Christian and Armenian neighbors as a child but did not regard them as essentially different because of their religious and cultural backgrounds. Salem said that her youthful experience of living in this integrated area contributed to her strong conviction that people of different religious faiths and ethnic backgrounds can coexist peacefully. She also stated that her childhood in al-Zahir committed her to the belief that what is most significant about a person is not his religion but his individuality and spirit (author interview, Cairo, May 10, 1992). Salem lived in al-Zahir until she was eight years old. There she began her studies at a French school run by nuns, where she studied both French and English. As a grade schooler, she had already become fond of reading; she devoured children’s stories and often listened to broadcasts of tales from The Thousand and One Nights on the radio. When she was eight, her family moved to Heliopolis, where she entered a secondary lycée. Salem feels that attending this school also opened her mind and developed her social consciousness in two important ways. First, since it was a

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coed school, it provided an environment in which boys and girls learned alongside one another without developing an acute consciousness of their differences. Second, the curriculum exposed her to French, British, and American literature. Among the writers she read were Albert Camus, JeanPaul Sartre, Gustave Flaubert, Bernard Shaw, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Walt Whitman. She remembers being particularly enthralled with John Steinbeck and his Tortilla Flat. During this period she also read numerous Arabic authors, including Yusuf Idris, Mahmoud Taymour, Taha Husayn, Naguib Mahfouz, and Zaki Naguib Mahmoud. During her secondary school years, Salem also became fascinated by history and remembers feeling that the world was unfolding in front of her as she studied the Renaissance in Europe, the Industrial Revolution, and French revolutionary writers Voltaire and Victor Hugo. She recalls that her studies sparked her dream of having a career in which she could fully engage with the world both as an individual and as a writer. However, it was also this period when the seeds were sown for future conflict with her parents. Salem remembers that her parents were amused by her ambitions and that whenever she told her father that she wanted to be a reporter or a writer, he would simply laugh at her. During her teenage years, Salem’s growing desire to explore the world for herself brought her into direct conflict with her parents. By the age of sixteen, she had decided that there were irreconcilable differences between her own and her parents’ ideas about her future, and she made the decision to leave home. This decision was truly an extraordinary move for a young girl to make at this time, a fact that Salem acknowledges but defends by pointing to the profound differences in her own and her father’s philosophies of life. According to Salem, her father was a conservative man who wanted her to live the restricted life of a traditional upper-middle-class Eastern girl, moving only between her home and the university. She recalls that he wanted her to be educated mainly for the purpose of becoming some man’s sophisticated wife, who could engage appropriately with other intellectuals or educated people on social occasions and appear to be the proper daughter of a university professor. In the end, Salem separated from her family and lived in a student hostel.

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Salem describes this period before she went to the university as being difficult because she had to work to support herself in order to complete her high school education. She found employment as a typist for an insurance company and as a salesperson for another company. Salem entered the Department of Psychology at ‘Ayn Shams University in 1969, and her university years were active and vibrant. At eighteen she met another young writer and married him against the wishes of her parents. Her university years also coincided with the “No War, No Peace” period, the war of attrition with Israel, during which university students were active in political debates and demonstrations. Salem participated in this dynamic political atmosphere by writing for the student newspaper. She graduated from ‘Ayn Shams University with a degree in psychology in 1973. It was only after she had completed her degree that she was able to reestablish a relationship with her natal family. Salem would later write about the difficult road women must walk when they do not live up to the expectations of their natal or marital family members (ibid.). Salem has published four short story collections, three novels, and translations of French poems and short stories for children.3 Her short stories have appeared in major Egyptian literary journals such as Ibda‘, Al-qahira, Adab wa naqd, Al-thaqafa al-jadida, Al-qissa, and Port Sa‘id althaqafa. Her stories have also been translated into German, English, French, and Italian. She has received several national and international awards and grants for her fiction; her 2000 novel, Nawafidh zarqa’ (Blue Windows), won third place in the Egypt-wide competition for “Literature of the October War” in 1998. In 2005 she was awarded a writer-inresidence grant from the Hedgebrook Foundation in Seattle, Washington, where she spent time writing and lecturing. Salem has worked professionally in the Ministry of Culture, where she translated programs and

3. Salem has published four collections of short stories, Al-nawrus (The Seagull) (1989), Dunya saghira (A Small World) (1992), Nakhb iktimal al-qamr (A Toast to the Full Moon) (1997), and Yawm ‘adi jidan (A Very Ordinary Day) (2009), and three novels, Nawafidh zarqa’ (Blue Windows) (2000), Sunduq saghir fi-l-qalb (A Small Box in the Heart) (2004), and Al-sama’ la tamtur ahibba’ (The Sky Does Not Rain Lovers) (2008). Marilyn Booth has translated many of her stories in My Grandmother’s Cactus (1991) and Children of the Waters (2002).

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stories from French to Arabic for state radio and television. She has also worked as executive director in the Samir Theater, which is one of the public-sector theaters in downtown Cairo. Writing Survival Like other authors of her generation, Salem feels that writing is a profoundly artistic activity, but she also feels that she has a social role as an author. She says that her writing is an expression of contemporary social problems and a call for change. However, she suggests that writing also fills an emotional need for her in the sense that it helps her to deal with everyday life in Egypt: I . . . suffer from frustration, from having to deal with the economic and other pressures of daily living in Egypt, but I am holding my own. I also personally experience the frustration and difficulties of being a “different” sort of woman, and one living on her own in Egypt. Through writing, I try to feel that I can change something, even if only on paper. Maybe someone will read my work and understand that he should not just let himself get frustrated, but try to enact some change. I do not write for myself, or just for pleasure; I write for people. This is important: I write so that people will benefit, or so that they will at least think about things. As a writer, I have a vision and a consciousness. I want to be effective and have an influence on society through my writing; I have taken this as my role. (author interview Cairo, March 17, 2007)

Salem stressed in our interviews the idea that “culture is the people,” that cultural forms should be accessible to ordinary people and part of cultural debate and change. She says that she makes her work accessible to the public by publishing it through the government publishing organizations such as the GEBO and the GOCP, which sell inexpensive paperbacks. She also publishes short stories in the newspapers and literary magazines, which are also inexpensive and relatively easily accessible. She says that she feels gratified that her books have sold well and that she has received positive responses to her work, particularly from young people. At the same time, she notes that in the current political climate, authors who criticize certain aspects of society, such as religious fundamentalism, potentially put themselves at risk:

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Nevertheless, I still try, and I still believe that culture is the people. I feel that I play a role, and I thank God that up until this point, that role has not put me in danger—although it may still. If it did present me with danger in the past, it was when I was practicing politics and was in demonstrations at the university and other things. During the seventies I was always freely expressing my opinion. I was fired from my work for that, and that was a price that I paid. But that does not matter. Now, I write, and I know that there are risks that one faces as an author. I am a nonveiled woman, an open-minded woman, and right now I am safe. However, the Middle East is going in the direction of fanatical Islam, so we do not really know what the coming years may bring. I do not know what I may face in the future; it is a big question mark. Look at what happened to Nawal el-Saadawi and the Saudi woman [Rajaa Alsanea] who wrote Banat al-Riyadh [Girls of Riyadh]. God protect us. But we won’t stop. We will work. I do not write literature in a direct style, and that is a good thing. Thank God, I have a role. (author interview, Cairo, March 17, 2007)

Unlike Salwa Bakr, Salem does not appear to have a conscious agenda for dealing with the Arabic diglossia or for expressing herself as a woman writer. She says that she does not try to change the Arabic language to express herself as a woman. Rather, she states, “The characters express themselves through their own language. The work comes out of me; I do not make it” (ibid., September 18, 1992). This statement is interesting because Salem does forefront the experience and consciousness of female characters, which necessitates her representation of female spheres, conversations, and the colloquialisms and sayings common to women’s speech. However, Salem seems to regard her experimentation as more related to the links between poetry and prose than to the inherent gender biases in language itself. Salem is not naive about the role of the woman writer in Egypt. She acknowledges that the role of the writer is limited because of the high levels of illiteracy in the country, government censorship, and “the censorship of the street.”4 She recognizes that there are many socially conservative

4. See Jacquemond 2008 and Booth 1996 for a discussion of censorship issues in Egypt.

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people who do not approve of the activities of a woman writer or intellectual and who regard women’s writing as something shameful. Nevertheless, Salem, like so many of her peers, firmly believes in the power of the book as a means to communicate a vision for change in society and also as a means to effect this change at some level.5 Despite relatively low levels of literacy and a small circulation of individual stories or books, Salem remains committed to writing and publishing, and she makes efforts to improve her exposure by talking to young people and doing radio and television interviews related to literature and culture. The Woman and the Sea The northern coastal city of Port Said is the setting for many of Salem’s early stories in The Seagull. Salem lived in this port city with her husband for ten years after graduating from the university. Port Said has a unique place in Egyptian history, as it was engulfed in three wars (in 1956, 1967, and 1973) and later, during the infitah, became a madina hurra (free zone) where goods could be purchased tax free. Because of this tax-free status, shops and boutiques multiplied to meet consumer need, and the city developed a distinct commercial atmosphere. The city has also had a significant foreign presence, and throughout much of the latter part of the twentieth century the city was divided into the Hayy el-ifranj (foreigners’ quarter) and the Hayy el-‘arab (Arab quarter). Wealthy Egyptians lived in the foreigners’ quarter also, but the poor were kept out. According to Salem, resentment of this socioeconomic division and disparity grew, especially after the 1956 Tripartite Aggression against Egypt.6 Salem’s story “El-‘Arabi” (Arabi) explores this resentment and the desperation of Port Said’s poor. The cinematic quality of Salem’s writing is particularly noticeable in this story, as it breaks into the scene of

5. Jacquemond argues that this belief in books as a crucial method of communication is strong among the Egyptian intelligentsia in general despite the marginal place occupied by literature and books in the market for symbolic goods (2008, 6). 6. Ibtihal Salem quoted by Marilyn Booth in Booth’s collection of translated stories Children of the Waters (2002, 13).

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a distraught man, ‘Arabi, standing atop a lighthouse tower, hurling his clothes into the air, and screaming.7 I have included the transliterated colloquial for the benefit of those readers familiar with the dialect: Ya ‘aalam, ya khalq, ‘ashar siniin mu‘aashiriin al-fiiran, wa migaawiriin az-zibaala wa-ddibbaan fi ‘ishat safiih, ‘ashar siniin shaarbiin al-murr. (1989, 76) You world, you people! For ten years we’ve been living with rats in a shack made of tin, having trash and flies for neighbors. For ten years we’ve drunk nothing but bitterness. (2002, 15)

‘Arabi’s complaint is his poverty, and the destitution of his neighbors in the Arab quarter, and the lack of assistance from those individuals holding power and wealth in the community. Salem relies on local dialect and colloquialisms to render the personalities of ‘Arabi and his wife, Umm Rida, who tries to talk ‘Arabi down. Although ‘Arabi’s behavior is outlandish—even to the extent that his wife gives up on him—the reader’s empathy is drawn to him as the victim of an unjust economic system and a corrupt local government. The latter is represented by the mayor in his shiny shoes and expensive foreign car. Some people in the crowd that gathers below describe ‘Arabi as “having lost his mind,” while others express solidarity by throwing stones at the police assigned to control the crowd. Eventually, ‘Arabi is lured down from the tower with the promise of an apartment, only to be seized and beaten by the police chief. The sea is an important point of reference in Salem’s stories of Port Said. In ‘Arabi it represents the economy of the past, which was based on the fishing industry and upon strong bonds between members of the local community but has been overtaken by the newer commercial ventures of the free zone. In her story “Madinat al-kartun” (City of Cardboard), the sea represents the haunting absence of the men who go to work on seafaring boats, but also the possibility of experience outside the stifling

7. According to Salem, “‘Arabi” (Arab) was a nickname frequently given to men from this popular quarter. This nickname implied familiarity and a sense of belonging to the group that made up the backbone of the city (Booth 2002, 13).

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present of the unnamed protagonist. “City of Cardboard” explores the double alienation of a woman who feels estranged not only from the city that she lives in but also from her family members, as they are drawn into the commercial activities of the Port City. This sense of alienation is achieved though a stream-of-consciousness style and temporal disjunctures, as the narrative shifts between the protagonist’s mundane activities and her memories. In this story, the protagonist worries about her husband, who has been missing since the evening before. Her cause for concern is his behavior on recent evenings, during which he sat with colleagues in their living room amid his cartons of merchandise, drinking tea and doing drugs. However, it is not only her husband who has become absent to the protagonist but all the inhabitants of the city. “Boutiques were scattered all over the street and from their fronts appeared appliances, colored cloth, tinned goods, different brands of shampoo, and plastic flowers. The crowd surrounded the boutiques, and the open cartons full of merchandise seemed to blend with the bodies” (1989, 41; 1991, 100). On the surface, the unnamed protagonist is merely awaiting the return of her absent husband, but at another level she is missing any sort of real human interaction in a city in which people’s lives and consciousness have been overtaken by the business of buying and selling. In this story, the schoolteachers, the ostensibly pious men leaving the mosque, and the local prostitute are equally lacking integrity and any recognition of the importance of genuine human interaction. Here, as in other pieces, Salem’s work betrays nostalgia for a time before the advent of consumer and capitalist trends and before the rise of religious fundamentalism. She writes with fondness about the comfortable atmosphere of the old quarters and neighborhoods and the sense of collective belonging that existed in pre-1970s Egyptian cities. However, this longing for the past is not necessarily a naive one. It is balanced by a recognition that Egyptian women—who are foregrounded in most of these stories—have often struggled to achieve a sense of self-fulfillment. Salem relates this struggle to cultural expectations that women’s central role be one of wife and mother, and she suggests that these expectations do not leave room for those women who want to explore interests outside these roles. Salem’s stories imply that these values also place women in a

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vulnerable position when their men turn out to be neither good providers nor faithful companions. Salem’s fiction, like the work of a number of the seventies authors, often focuses on women who are facing the world alone: as widows, as women whose social and economic circumstances have rendered them unable to marry, or as women whose childlessness has brought about abandonment or divorce. Some of Salem’s fiction also addresses the circumstances of women whose family situations have been affected by war. Her story “The Seagull” describes a day in the life of a woman in Port Said during the time when that city was engulfed in war. It references the 1973 October War with Israel during which the Egyptians crossed into Israeli-occupied territory in the Sinai just east of Port Said and the Suez Canal. This compact, ambiguous, and poetic story explores the experience of a woman who appears to be waiting for news of a loved one, probably her husband, who has gone off to fight in the war. The story focuses on a single conversation between a woman and a sailor friend with whom she appears to be emotionally close. Not only is the woman burdened with concern about her husband, but she is also having trouble with her son’s school and she has discovered that she is pregnant. When we spoke about her motivation for writing this story, Salem remarked that her own life has been profoundly affected by war. Shortly after their marriage, her husband left to serve in the October War, and there ensued a six-month period in which Salem had no communication with her husband, information about his location, or knowledge even if he was still alive. Eventually, she learned that he had been severely wounded, had lost the lower part of one of his legs, and had been convalescing in a provincial hospital. It was only after he was transferred to a hospital in Cairo that Salem was able to see him again. In the Cairo hospital she became familiar with the atmosphere of war, the sights of wounded people and grieving families. She recalls being at the hospital and watching an ambulance delivering men so badly injured that blood poured in rivers from their bodies when the medics removed them from the ambulance. She recalls thinking that their horribly mutilated bodies looked more like the forms of slaughtered animals than of men.

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During this period, Salem developed an intense interest in and sympathy for the widows of the war. Although she was not particularly interested in the action of the war itself, she was fascinated with war’s effects on people. She personally experienced the momentous changes that war imposes upon the life of an individual. As the wife of a newly disabled man, she made the decision not to have more than one child, so that her husband would not be burdened with the task of feeding a large family. After living through the war, Salem began to write about its effects on people, especially women, who are often put in the agonizing position of waiting to find out whether their loved ones have survived battle. “The Seagull” mourns the destruction of war, not only the individual lives lost in the fighting but also those persons overcome by the anxiety of waiting and the strain of carrying on at war’s conclusion, once bodies and spirits have been wounded. The story juxtaposes the darkened, war-ravaged city, which represents the world of human beings and their self-imposed destruction, with the sea that carries ships and sailors to distant lands. The city represents the negative potential of mankind as manifested in war: its colors are the dark-blue paint of blackout windows and the khaki of military uniforms, and its streets are packed with the dead and mourning. The ocean represents another side of life, its huge waves and migrating gulls symbolizing both the freedom and possibility of adventure and the vigor and beauty of the natural world. The world experienced by the protagonist is one in which the negative aspects of mankind have become ascendant and in which destruction overtakes even the gulls that once played over the shore. Like many of Salem’s stories, “The Seagull” ends with no resolution for the protagonist, only the suggestion that the future may hold the return of life and vitality, represented by the seagulls, to the Egyptian shore. The stories in the collection The Seagull were well received by Egyptian critics. Edwar al-Kharrat praised Salem’s efficient use of the image of the besieged Port Said as a means to critique both the effects of war and the effects of Sadat-era economic policies. For al-Kharrat, the portrait of the besieged city suggests that “an uninvited guest, the cancerous tumor of excess, has occupied the place of the heart and hit the source of

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life itself” (1994a, 110). Al-Kharrat also praises Salem’s privileging of the female voice and her incorporation of the details of female existence as women respond to events at both the personal and the political levels. Al-Kharrat also argues that the title story of the collection represents a substantial achievement in cross-genre writing. He cites “The Seagull” as a successful example of the qissa-qasida, or story-poem, a short and condensed form that nevertheless encompasses rich detail about human experience and the social environment. For al-Kharrat, the story-poem has a poetic rhythm, yet is distinguished from other poetic forms in that whereas the latter rely on a musical or melodic structure, the story-poem is primarily based on narrative structure and retains dialogue that presents significant information. Al-Kharrat argues that “The Seagull” expresses meaning through bare, fleeting, and surprising images in the narration and dialogue, rather than through any studied or discursive examination of the protagonist’s situation. Certainly, through her spare but evocative prose, Salem suggests that while the technical end of war may allow some to return to normal lives, the toll of war continues to weigh heavily on the poor and on the families of the wounded and killed long after the formal cease-fire. Small Worlds for Women In the title story of her second collection, Dunya saghira (A Small World) (1992), Salem explores the bitterness and alienation experienced by a woman who has been unable to fulfill the conventional expectations of wife and mother. She uses the idiom of self-questioning to flesh out the protagonist’s marital experience and the lack of personal support from her family. The narrative point of view is of a barren woman whose husband has informed her of his decision to take a second wife. The story begins with a fortune-teller’s vision of the protagonist standing in a corridor, a door closed between herself and her husband, and a little girl crying in her arms. The young woman’s aunt confidently interprets the vision as boding well for the protagonist. But the protagonist keeps asking herself: “Al-bab al-musad wa ‘arafnahu, fa-ma bal al-tifla?” (We know what the closed door means, but what about the child?) (1992, 19). This question becomes a refrain throughout the story as the protagonist goes

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to her mother’s home, only to endure the latter’s sorrowful talk about her children’s unhappy fates and about the Christian neighbor that she believes has cast an evil spell upon the family. The protagonist continues to wonder about the fortune-teller’s words, as she listens to her mother’s plans to make a potion to counteract the spell. Here Salem problematizes the older generation’s prejudices and supernatural beliefs as hindering real human interaction between the women. The mother’s anxieties about her Christian neighbor seem to contribute to her inability to support her daughter or bolster her depressed mood. Elsewhere, Salem describes the details and nuance of women’s nonorthodox religious belief in more sympathetic terms, but here the older woman’s preoccupations are primarily an emotional barrier between the older and younger generations.8 Salem achieves a poetic quality in her short stories by developing a dominant image that draws the emotional focus of the reader. In several of the stories discussed here, an enclosure or barrier, whether a door, a wall, or a mentality, emerges as a dominant motif. In “‘Arabi,” the barrier is a socioeconomic one represented by the tower that ‘Arabi must climb to garner attention. In “A Small World,” the closed door between husband and wife results from an inflexible male expectation that his wife produce a son. In “Akyas al-hilwa” (Sacks of Candy), a balcony wall becomes an inadequate shelter for a Muslim child, who, having learned Christian prayers from nuns at school, innocently chants her verses and enjoys candy given to her by the priest. Crouched against the wall of the balcony, she is the victim both of the priest, who gave her candy in exchange for learning verses, and of her father, who overhears her and violently punishes her for reciting Christian prayers. In the story “Al-ghadab” (Rage), the barrier is a prison wall separating the protagonist from her husband, a political prisoner. This very short story is composed of three stanzalike sections. The first blends images of the protagonist waiting to see her jailed husband with images of nuns scurrying across the courtyard

8. In A Small Box in the Heart, Salem describes the grandmother’s belief in jinn in a more ambiguous fashion.

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of a church and memories of a child being told to obey a priest, perform Christian rituals, and ask for forgiveness. The second “stanza” describes the arrest of the husband: “The guards snatched you from the bosom of warmth in the middle of the night” (1989, 10). The wall remains between the woman and man. This barrier is as much rage itself as it is the physical wall between two people. In the final “stanza,” the speaking voice claims victory over the wall, having battered it with all her strength. The breath of life is restored as the horizon stretches before her: “Dahikat ‘ayn alshams, fa-kaffa al-nafas al-hazin ‘an al-inziwa’, sara fatiyan, tamaddada hata kaffa al-naqus ‘an al-daqq” (The eye of the sun laughed, and the sad spirit renounced its seclusion. It became young and expansive again, as long as the church bells remained silent) (ibid., 11). The breaking of the wall represents a challenge to the oppressive powers, both the authority of religious leaders who demand obedience and the authority of the government, which stifles political opposition. Salem’s protagonists go to the margins of their social and physical worlds to look for release from the forces that oppress, whether they are intolerant religious views, the tyranny of the wealthy, political oppression, or restrictive gender ideologies. ‘Arabi is portrayed as having climbed so high as to be “bayna al-sama’ wa-l-ard” (between the sky and the earth) (ibid., 75); the unnamed protagonist of “City of Cardboard” seeks to relieve her anxiety about her husband by walking out to the harbor wall. In her novel A Small Box in the Heart, Salem’s protagonist seeks to overcome personal, political, and economic obstacles by exploring both within the deep recesses of memory and beyond the borders of her country. The Small Box of Memory Salem wrote A Small Box in the Heart shortly after the US invasion of Baghdad in 2003. Like many other Egyptian intellectuals, she was angered by the invasion and dismayed by the rapid fall of the city. The latter she felt was owing to the internal weaknesses of Iraqi society resulting from Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime and poor relations between the Sunni and Shi‘a citizens. Salem herself lived and worked in Iraq during the early 1980s and witnessed social and sectarian tensions in the country, but also felt, as an intellectual and writer, unable to speak and write openly about

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this sensitive issue and others. She said that her experience of living in Baghdad was similar to her experience of living in Cairo in that in both countries, writers and journalists are pressured to avoid what some have called the “triangle of taboo”: topics related to politics, sex, and religion (Booth 1996, 132). For Salem, life as a writer in both countries gave her a deep sense of personal and political alienation (author interview, Cairo, March 17, 2007). In A Small Box, Salem experiments with the language of time, storytelling, and myth to explore the topic of alienation of the individual as experienced both inside and outside of her own country. She approaches this theme through the estranged second-person point of view of Maryam, who appears to relate her life story to her younger self in the form of an internal monologue. This internal monologue is composed of the multiple and shifting temporalities of Maryam’s memory: happy childhood days spent with her friends Sa‘eed and Kawthar in an old and diverse quarter of Cairo, the abrupt disruption of those friendships when Maryam’s father moves the family to a suburb nearer his workplace, her university days in the tense political climate of late-1970s Cairo, and her brief stint working as a news editor in Iraq. The emotional distress that Maryam experiences as a result of her disrupted childhood is compounded by her personal experience of some of the central trends and conflicts of twentieth-century Egypt and the larger Arab world. Salem explores these conflicts through Maryam’s developing relationships with Sa‘eed, Kawthar, and, later, the Palestinian ‘Aziz, whom she meets in Iraq. Maryam’s reminiscences draw the reader into her significant comingof-age experiences. During her university years, she participates in student demonstrations against Sadat’s foreign and domestic policies and then flees from the ensuing crackdown by security forces. In her postuniversity years, Maryam and Sa‘eed rediscover each other, and together they visit his mother in the old quarter. Maryam experiences a profound sense of loss when she sees what the rapid transformation and industrialization of Cairo have done to the neighborhood. Large buildings have replaced the old park where the children used to play, and a tourist café and crowds of people have replaced the warmth and diversity of the old neighborhood in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together

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relatively comfortably and shared aspects of their cultural and religious traditions. Although Maryam and Sa‘eed are happy to reestablish their relationship, it too falls victim to the hardships of life in late-twentiethcentury Egypt. Neither is able to find employment in Egypt because of harsh economic circumstances resulting from the wars with Israel and the Open Door policy instituted by Sadat. Maryam decides to go to Iraq to seek work as an editor, and Sa‘eed decides to go to America to pursue graduate studies. Sa‘eed promises Maryam that he will return to resume their relationship, but never does. During Maryam’s period of working as a newspaper editor in Iraq, she meets people from across the Arab world, but is particularly drawn to ‘Aziz, a member of an underground democratic Palestinian political organization (al-hizb al-dimuqrati al-filastini) (2004, 95).9 ‘Aziz lives the life of a political refugee, moving between Egypt, Iraq, and Tunis during his prolonged and arduous search for a sense of self and communal identity since his family’s flight from Palestine in 1948. Ultimately, this relationship also ends sadly for Maryam when Iraqi authorities start to crack down on the members of ‘Aziz’s organization. Salem employs the language of time or memory and the language of myth or storytelling to explore Maryam’s past, present, and possibilities for the future. She writes an evocative poetic prose throughout the narrative, broken by sections of dialogue rendered in a colloquialized fusha. This colloquialized fusha varies for each of Maryam’s new interlocutors. The narrative and dialogue are themselves interrupted by lines of verse, which the characters sing or recite to themselves. These poetic interludes, which range in content from verses of classical poetry to the political poems of Mahmoud Darwish, suggest an aesthetic of mourning, but also imply the importance of art as an emotional refuge. The Language of Time Salem constructs a shifting narrative in which fantasy melds with reality and present activities give way to memory. She introduces Maryam’s

9. Possibly a reference to the Popular Democratic Front.

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narrative of self-questioning and remembering with a poetic entrance that sets a melancholy mood for the first part of the book. The times have voices. The night, silence and longing take shares of you. They surround you and overcome you. What’s with you and this singing of yours, Maryam? Why don’t you let on? You wander the alleys and flee from your own oppressive time. With an exhausted spirit you ask yourself: Are you a wicked woman, or is this a wicked time? Or perhaps you’re just betting on a losing horse for the thousandth time? (ibid., 9)

The site for much of Maryam’s remembering is her deceased grandmother’s home. Maryam wanders around the home, inspecting the objects and furniture that bring back memories of her grandmother, but her detailed memories of her grandmother are particularly spurred by her discovery of her grandmother’s old chest. Salem incorporates elements of close description into her poetic prose, and here her style is less compact than in her short stories. Salem’s language of time is also marked by shifts of person. The narrative is dominated by second-person narration as Maryam addresses herself. However, sometimes there is a sudden shift, in which Maryam begins to address her deceased grandmother (ibid., 11). Elsewhere, the narrative alternates between Maryam addressing herself and describing in the third person the places and people of her life. It is through Maryam’s remembering voice that the reader learns details about the old quarter in which Maryam spent her early childhood. This section of narrative has an almost ethnographic quality, as it details the physical and linguistic milieu of the old quarter.10

10. This ethnographic-style description is similar to the portrayal used by Radwa Ashour in her novel Granada (2003a).

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Salem incorporates into Maryam’s memories detailed representations of the everyday life of the women in the old quarter and also of the adults and children that peopled Maryam’s childhood. This section describes the quarter as a traditional residential area but also one that housed a mixture of Muslims, Christians and Jews. Salem portrays the members of these different religious groups as living together harmoniously and even participating in each others’ religious holidays and festivals. She uses colloquial Egyptian directly in the dialogue to represent the women’s conversations, quarrels, and affectionate moments. For example, she humorously depicts the diversity of the neighborhood by representing the Armenian Umm Meena’s severely flawed Arabic when she defends herself to Umm Sa‘eed after flirting with the latter’s husband: “wa tartun umm Meena: anti za‘lan khabiibi, inni khilwa?” (Umm Meena stammered: “you are mad at me because I am beautiful?”) (ibid., 31). Salem represents these women as getting along for the most part, although they are aware of, sometimes amused by, and sometimes annoyed by the differences between them. This representation could be read as a somewhat idealist representation of Egypt’s more ethnically diverse past. Yet at the same time it represents a recognition that relations among Muslims, Christians, and Jews have been less tense in the past, and it presents a hope that they may be again in the future. The Language of Storytelling and Myth Salem’s shifting narrative evokes the act of storytelling as the speaking voice retells old tales. Just as the narration slips between narrative voices, and between present and past, it also moves between fantasy and reality in the space of Maryam’s memory. Salem develops a magical-realist atmosphere as she incorporates fantasy elements from The Thousand and One Nights and other aspects of the popular storytelling tradition to describe Maryam’s memories of her grandmother: You dusted off your grandmother’s kohl jar, Maryam, that ancient silver kohl jar, the one whose cap was a hand engraved in the Islamic style. You used to watch your grandmother as she applied a line of kohl, drawing a fine black line along the edge of her eye. . . . You lifted the top of the kohl

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jar cautiously. An apparition emerged from the jar and presented itself to you saying, “your wish is my command!” You backed up, frightened, scrutinizing it, it was the apparition of your grandmother. Immediately you uttered formulas requesting the safety for which man and jinn have always been willing to exchange the treasures of the world. The apparition disappeared as though it had never been. (ibid., 13–14)

As Maryam wanders through her grandmother’s old home, she also remembers the silver cabinet, which was always full of china, silver, and other fine objects. Beyond evoking her childish awe of these beautiful objects, the cabinet reminds Maryam of the traditional expectations for her own future. “Your grandmother had inherited the silver cabinet from her mother, who had in turn inherited it from her own grandmother. And thus time continued to wait, resolutely, for your own long delayed wedding, Maryam. But, where will your wedding party come from? Those still betting on you settling down are few in number” (ibid., 14). Here Salem’s use of magical realism serves several purposes. First, she conjures a disjuncture by injecting the grandmother’s apparition into an otherwise realistic depiction of Maryam’s experience of her grandmother’s old home and of the deteriorating neighborhood. This disjuncture echoes the contradictory experiences of Maryam’s life: a childhood spent in a cohesive community that led to an adulthood that must ultimately be spent largely alone and in exile and youthful experience of colorful and active neighborhoods that have been destroyed or ruined by the encroaching building required by capitalist and consumer growth. Second, Salem uses the slippage between reality and fantasy to explore layers of memory and the way in which childhood conceptions or memories inform adult thoughts and hopes for the future. This slippage suggests Maryam’s rejection of the circumstances of her present and her desire to return to the imaginative and cultural richness of the past. Third, the abrupt shift between Maryam’s narration of her life and her grandmother’s fantasy tales also signals a questioning of the efficacy of individual agency in a present marked by inflation, un- and underemployment, and a government unwilling to brook criticism. In her grandmother’s tales, characters are influenced by

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the whim of supernatural creatures; in Maryam’s reality, people’s lives are limited by joblessness, government censors, security forces, and their own ensuing frustration. The helplessness experienced by Maryam and her colleagues in the face of economic and political forces seems little different from the helplessness felt by those individuals whose reality is informed by belief in the powers of capricious supernatural creatures such as jinn. The trope of storytelling (minus the magical element) also appears in part 2 of the novel, which describes Maryam’s experiences in Baghdad. There, Maryam becomes acquainted with individuals from across the Middle East who, like her, have fled their homelands in search of economic and political security. The novel’s master scene is an evening party (sahra) in ‘Aziz’s flat, which is referred to as the “airport” because it is the regular meeting place of ‘Aziz’s friends of different citizenships and identities. In this section, Maryam’s older self as narrator provides a sweeping glimpse of individual alienation and desperation across the postcolonial Arab world. Maryam meets and hears the stories of ‘Ali, a student in the final year of the Cinema Institute with ambitions to make documentaries in South Lebanon; Marwan, a playwright from al-Sham currently living in exile in Geneva; Mazin, ‘Aziz’s childhood friend who has fought in South Lebanon; “Ibrahim the Egyptian,” an artist; and Hamdan, a friend ‘Aziz made while living in Tunis. Each character is represented as speaking in his or her own dialect and bringing unique cultural expressions to a cosmopolitan conversation. Maryam’s remembering voice reminds her: “You felt a warmth amidst this group and wanted to know their stories. You wiped away a tear of laughter with the back of your hand. You said: ‘allahuma ’ig‘al-u khayr!’” (Pray God all turns out well). “Mazin wondered out loud—Why do the Egyptians always repeat that expression?” (ibid., 99). Although Ibrahim relates this saying to the specific historical experience of Egyptians, who have suffered multiple invasions and occupations over the centuries, the sense of apprehension that it implies becomes a central point to which other individuals in the room can relate. Mazin, for example, speaks of the people existing between life and death in the refugee camps in South Lebanon. The master scene also serves as the frame for ‘Aziz’s narration of his own and Mazin’s childhood and youth in the Jordanian refugee camps

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after their families’ flight from Palestine in 1948. ‘Aziz’s is a double tale of multiple exiles, as he and Mazin grew up in the camps together and eventually joined the fedayeen. Together they fought and were ambushed, jailed, released, and returned to fighting for a while before fleeing to Egypt. In Egypt they were supported by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and finished their education, only to fight again as fedayeen in the 1956 war. After the war, they settled into the literary and intellectual life of Cairo until 1967 and the Debacle, which, as ‘Aziz puts it, “made our lives hell and blew away our dreams and our lofty ambitions” (ibid., 112). ‘Aziz and Mazin participated in the demonstrations of 1968 and were arrested and deported from Egypt. Mazin went to Lebanon to join the Popular Front, and ‘Aziz went to Tunis, where he worked in an office under the auspices of the PLO. He stayed there until he wearied of office work and moved to Iraq. The group’s collective sense of sadness and alienation is signaled by their appreciation of ‘Ali’s performance of Mahmoud Darwish’s iconic poem “Ummi,” which he wrote while imprisoned in an Israeli jail: “I long for my mother’s bread / And my mother’s coffee” (ibid., 102). The sahra becomes a site in which individual tales of loss and longing unfold. But it also serves as the context for an ensuing discussion about the possibilities for future action. ‘Ali and ‘Aziz respond to the sadness of the group by suggesting that individuals must resist the sense of defeat. They suggest consciousness raising and political reform as solutions to political corruption and repression. Their discourse only inflames the frustration of Hamdan, the newspaper editor, who argues that no one can effectively struggle for freedom under the censorship and control of the regime. Mazin also argues against the possibility of peaceful social change and claims that he has found his own sense of freedom and fulfillment by taking up arms among the Palestinians of South Lebanon. It is through Hamdan’s discussion of what is publishable in Iraq that Maryam realizes that writers and intellectuals in Egypt and Iraq face similar constraints. This point signals the beginning of her realization that her attempt to flee from social and political alienation has failed. The third and final part of the novel is set back in Cairo, to which Maryam returns after her disillusionment with life in Iraq. The last scene

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of the novel represents a final alienation for Maryam. She decides to escape her sad reminiscences and renew her relationship with her childhood friend Kawthar. However, instead of experiencing the warmth of an old friendship, Maryam finds Kawthar a changed woman. Kawthar has become a religious zealot and has adopted the niqab.11 She will not even allow Maryam to address her by her first name, preferring instead to be addressed in a religious style, as ukht or hagga. Maryam asks herself, “Could this be the same Kawthar that you once knew, or another woman entirely behind that niqab?” (ibid., 162). Kawthar here represents the “other,” the “alien,” within Maryam’s own country. She is represented as closed off from real human interaction because of her adoption of a fundamentalist lifestyle. It is important to note here that Salem, who regards herself as a Muslim with secular inclinations, does not by any means regard all religiously oriented people in negative terms. However, her portrayal of Kawthar’s fundamentalism is clearly unsympathetic. Kawthar’s religious choice becomes yet another source of alienation for the secular-oriented Maryam. But Salem does not lay the burden of Egypt’s problems entirely on the Islamist trend. She suggests that there is no hope for either Kawthar or Maryam, except for memory, the “small box in the heart,” which may ultimately provoke some change for the better. Maryam’s loss of her relationships with Sa‘eed, ‘Aziz, and Kawthar is linked in the narrative structure of the novel with Maryam’s grandmother’s tales of youths, particularly young men, who were tempted into the waters of a nearby canal by a seductive water jinni who dwelled there. The young men would disappear, never to be seen again. The water jinni ultimately represents a range of destructive forces, from ineffective and repressive governments to divisive religious ideologies and international neglect of those persons displaced by war and occupation. Why does Salem use the idiom of memory and longing to explore the topic of individual alienation? Does the focus on crossing temporal

11. A face veil worn by women who have adopted one of the more conservative forms of Islamic dress.

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boundaries here simply signify mourning for possibilities lost and black prospects for the future? I argue that the shifting narrative upon which the novel is structured renders the narrative resistant to fixed interpretation. The memory and the mourning of the novel are polysemous; they suggest both profound sadness and a determination to go on. The consciousness that informs the narrative is surely melancholic, but at the same time it remains active, persistent, and questioning. The novel closes with Maryam leaving Kawthar’s home and walking toward the Nile. She wonders if Sa‘eed and ‘Aziz have found personal fulfillment in their respective decisions to migrate to the United States and to join the struggle in South Lebanon. Her final reflections are inspired by strains of a Bayram al-Tunsi song that float through the air, of which she catches the phrase “we have only ourselves.” Her thoughts suggest the possibility or hope for what the individual may achieve despite restrictive gender and other social ideologies, government censorship and other forms of political repression, and her own growing sense of alienation. Salem’s work has garnered serious critical attention in Egypt, the Arab world, and the West. Overall, her experiments with cross-genre writing and with subject matter have been well received in Egypt. Prominent Egyptian writer and critic Edwar al-Kharrat praises the way in which Salem inverts conventional social and moral values and associations and explores topics that may be considered unusual or even taboo. For example, he notes that in the story “Shadow Puppets,” Salem discusses sexual desire in old age—topics not commonly associated in Egyptian and most other societies. Here she explores the hope for sexual gratification in an older couple, while also hinting at the agonistic nature of sexuality in general, as dogs engage in garrulous mating rituals in the street below (1994a, 109–18). Al-Kharrat also notes that Salem’s experimentalism includes the juxtaposition of two somewhat contradictory approaches, the poetic and the realist, and he suggests that she does not always successfully blend these approaches. He argues that in some pieces, the realist tone and intensive description clash with other more elliptical and poetic elements. In the otherwise successful “Shadow Puppets,” for example, he suggests that her formal lexicon and detailed description of the old couple’s bedroom do not fit well with the overall spare, poetic texture of

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the story. He states that she is more successful in combining these techniques in “‘Arabi,” where she uses descriptive elements and colloquial Arabic to render the physical and linguistic milieu of the popular quarter, yet maintains a poetic prose style. Other critics are less reserved in their praise of her poetic prose. Medhat Abd al-Dayem writes, “Ibtihal Salem’s stories have a special rhythm replete with the language of poetry or the poetic power of language” (2002, n.p.). He notes that her poetic language reaches maturity in her novel Blue Windows (2000), where it serves as the vehicle for her incisive observations of the impact of the October War on Egyptian society. Egyptian critics respond positively to her critique of the trend toward capitalism and individualism in Egyptian society and to her lament of the losses of 1967, which is perhaps not surprising given the leftist, nationalist orientation of many among the country’s intelligentsia. However, her success is perhaps most significantly related to her experiments with poetic prose and her concise treatment of multiple levels of social issues in an elliptical prose style. Salem’s ability to weave together multiple issues as she explores the consciousness and daily experience of lower- and middle-class Egyptian women and men generates a sophisticated commentary that is appreciated by the literary establishment in Cairo. In the West, Salem has also received positive appraisal of her use of lyrical compression to generate a complex weave of economic, gender, and political critique (Booth 2002; Saliba 2003). Therese Saliba notes that in the story “My Friend Patriot,” the oppression of the female subject is linked not only to a globalized consumer economy but also to the national and international pressures and policies that led to war in the Gulf region. However, Saliba notes that Salem also succeeds in maintaining an element of hope in her pieces. She notes that “through the intimate details of everyday lives, it is the gestures of human connection that restore dignity to the desperate, the emaciated poor, women, prisoners, those left behind by the forces of globalization” (2003, n.p.). Marilyn Booth, who has translated a collection of Salem’s short stories, argues that her writing is difficult to classify. She states that Salem’s “meteoric stories hover somewhere between the narrative demands of story-telling and the immediacy and visuality of vignettes or film takes and the compressed depths of prose

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poetry.” Her stories bring forward female experience and examine how women both “celebrate the heritages that have shaped their identities as much as they resist aspects of them” (2002, 3). Nevertheless, she notes that Salem makes use of a complex narrative technique to render equally complex the contradictions facing Egyptian women and men. Booth notes that while she brings gendered experience to the fore, Salem links this aspect of experience with poverty and raises timely questions about how moral frameworks are to be maintained in the face of social change, poverty, and the demoralization of Egypt’s middle class. Conclusion Ibtihal Salem’s writing clearly expresses a political critique and aims to recover and validate certain aspects of a national and cultural past that once provided support and comfort to Egyptian women and men. Her stories express her generation’s frustrations with the failures of Nasser’s revolution and of Sadat-era economic and political policies, which she sees as weakening the structure of Egyptian society and the morale of the Egyptian people. She laments the continuing intrusion of certain cultural trends generally associated with the West, including an individualism that lends itself to self-indulgence and the neglect of the community as a whole. In many of her stories, the struggle to survive in a new globalized economy is contrasted with a past in which people may have been poor, but they were at least supported by a strong sense of communal identity and belonging. At the same time, her stories do not portray a romantic image of the past, as the past is also a site of restriction for women. The older women portrayed in Salem’s stories have lived lives limited by the lack of formal education and by family expectations and obligations that have been burdensome or have run contrary to their own desires. Salem portrays the ideologies and worldviews held by these women in a complex manner. In some stories, Salem describes women’s popular or nonorthodox belief in negative terms, as a barrier to dealing with issues or relating to others. In some pieces, however, women’s knowledge of folktales and proverbs, traditional means of food preparation, or managing relationships is valorized as a valuable aspect of cultural knowledge that is worth maintaining for future generations.

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While social and political critiques emerge clearly in Salem’s stories and novels, this aspect of her writing is balanced by its emotional depth and poetic artistry. Although her critique is sometimes biting and critical of men’s neglect of the needs of women and girls, her work has been recognized by Egyptian and Arab critics as subtly couching this critique in an innovative textual style. The social and political critique in Salem’s writing is also balanced by a writing style informed by a deep interest in human emotion and interpersonal interaction (and also perhaps by her academic studies in psychology). Through exploration of her protagonists’ thoughts and memories, Salem examines complex emotions: anger, bitterness for injustices suffered or opportunities never received, and the losses to war and to poverty, but also remnants of hope and idealism that linger from childhood into the present and may be the seed for some change in the future. Salem’s stories also get at the complex dynamics that hinder real human interaction. She explores the indifference of the educated and wealthy toward those lower on the socioeconomic ladder. She also examines the barriers between the younger and older generations, especially as these limits relate to educational differences. As Marilyn Booth points out, she is particularly skilled at making connections between the perspectives of the young and the old. Salem’s characters remember stories and pieces of wisdom that were passed down to them by mothers and grandmothers and benefit from them, even if they choose to interpret those nuggets in new and different ways. Salem also explores her interest in intergenerational communication outside of her own writing. She takes an interest in young writers, encouraging them to pursue and develop their early ideas and experiments with writing. She has also translated children’s stories and poetry from French into Arabic and encourages parents to expose their children to literature from different cultures. Like many authors of her generation, Salem demonstrates a strong sense of political and social commitment. She lived a period of political activism primarily during her student days, demonstrating on the campus and writing for the student newspaper. As an adult, she has focused this commitment in her writing and now uses her pen to express her political discontent and to inscribe a vision for the future.

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As we will see in the next chapter, Nemat el-Behairy has also established a literary authority by direct but artistic use of the colloquial language to explore the worlds of women. But el-Behairy has, perhaps more than any other writer of her generation, used her literary authority to engage in the sometimes risky business of writing the body.

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N emat el-Beh a iry’s fiction bespeaks a concern for the emotional life of Egypt’s women and other socially or economically disenfranchised Egyptians. Her short stories and novels explore the significance of personal needs, emotional and physical longings, and intellectual or artistic aspirations. El-Behairy furthermore examines aspects of a social and cultural system that contribute to the thwarting of these desires and the effect of restrictive social and cultural mores on individual psyches. Like other Egyptian intellectuals, el-Behairy regarded herself as playing an important social role in society, bringing to the fore central issues that concern the future development of society: social justice, women’s rights and human rights more broadly, increasing identification with the Islamist current, and democratization.1 Her novels and short stories address the question of how the socially and economically marginalized resist the pressures of government and social oppression,

1. See Armbrust 1996 and Jacquemond 2008 for discussions of Egyptian intellectuals’ views of their roles in society and in shaping Egyptian modernity.

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both by drawing upon their own cultural and linguistic traditions and by bucking them. El-Behairy explores the quotidian effects of cultural mores and of poverty as miriam cooke has described Lebanese women writing about the “dailiness of war” (1988). Like the Lebanese writers, el-Behairy concentrates on the minutiae of her beleaguered characters’ lives. This focus on detail fleshes out a lived reality and communicates the repetitive, daily experience of poverty and disenfranchisement. Sometimes el-Behairy, like Ghada al-Samman, uses heightened detail of mundane circumstances to convey women’s (and sometimes men’s) feeling of alienation from a restrictive environment. Like other women writers who have addressed issues of women’s personal longings or physical desire, such as Nawal el-Saadawi and Alifa Rifaat, el-Behairy was aware of the transgressive nature of her writing, yet at the same time she saw it as linked to the strong historical role of the female storyteller in the Arabic literary tradition. Although women and girls do not define the conditions of the socioeconomic oppression that they live, they nevertheless participate intimately in that reality. El-Behairy takes a close view of this participation and explores the ways in which females struggle to shape their environment and achieve a sense of self-fulfillment. El-Behairy’s female characters exist in a harsh environment not entirely unlike a war zone as they strive to achieve a basic livelihood, education, or marriage. They live under conditions over which they have little control, often little food, little safety, and no guarantee of a secure future for themselves or their families. El-Behairy writes against what she regards as an inhospitable environment for girls and women, and she details the hardships that girls and women face, including emotional and physical neglect by parents and sexual abuse.2 She also engages in what Hélène Cixous calls the “universal battlefield” in which writers and other women struggle against hierarchical symbolic systems that valorize the male at the expense of the female

2. “Nisf imra’a” (Half a woman) in Nisf imra’a wa qisas ukhra (Half a Woman, and Other Stories) (1983, 7–12) and “Al-tariq ila al-sabi‘” in Al-‘ashiqun (The Infatuated) (1989, 92–98).

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(1994, 38). El-Behairy offers an alternate version of reality in her characters’ steadfast resistance to their circumstances. This resistance manifests itself in the transgressive desires of female characters and in their stubborn insistence upon dreaming of a future in which they possess both greater cultural capital and personal happiness. Her transgressive text is composed in poetic prose that challenges the formal-informal binary by including those very colloquial expressions that are used by and about women, sometimes to intimidate, sometimes to commiserate, sometimes to encourage and support. El-Behairy’s interest in the lives of lower-class women derives from her own experience of growing up poor in Cairo and of extricating herself from the rigid expectation of parents who had neither the inclination nor the financial means to offer their daughter education. El-Behairy was born in Cairo in 1953, the oldest of four siblings. She returned with her mother to live her early childhood in her grandfather’s home in Tel Bani Tamiim in the Delta area. In the 1960s her family resettled in Cairo with the hope of improving their financial circumstances, but instead joined the ranks of the urban poor. Like many poor urban Egyptians, el-Behairy’s family lived for a period on the roof of a building owned by a wealthy family. Their shelter was a shack located next to the landlord’s chicken pen. She described an earlychildhood incident that occurred on that rooftop that helped her to realize the discrepancies in quality of life between families like hers and families of the upper-middle and upper classes. “The landlord raised chickens in a pen; it was full of chickens, and we were living next to the chickens. I was amazed, what are all these chickens? Then the children of the family, who were my age, used to come to look at the chickens, and then they would look at us as though we were chickens too. . . . They used to look at me and say, ‘Allaaahh, eh da?’ [My goodness, what’s that?]. . . . ‘Mom, bring her so we can play with her!’ Things like that” (author interview, Cairo, September 7, 1992). As a rooftop dweller, el-Behairy experienced many harsh aspects of childhood poverty. She described herself and her brother as “like starving cats,” smelling the aroma of roasted chicken wafting up from the house below and waiting for the owner of the building to put out the garbage so that they could rummage through it for morsels of food.

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El-Behairy’s childhood was harsh not only in terms of poverty but also in terms of family dynamics. Her father was domineering and strictly controlled his family’s activities. Her paternal grandmother lived with the family and was complicit with her son’s harshness, particularly toward el-Behairy’s mother. El-Behairy locates her determination to gain personal independence in witnessing her father’s harshness toward her mother, who in her words “was not able to do anything except eat her silence, sadness, and oppression.” El-Behairy also spoke about her early awareness of the differences in the way that girls and boys may be treated in Egyptian society. She knew that her father bore some resentment to her mother for bearing a girl (herself) as a first child, while all her sisters’ first-born children were male. When she was two, her brother Hamid’s birth was celebrated with a party and musicians. El-Behairy recalled being very small, under everyone’s feet, and not able to find a place for herself in the crowd, until a neighbor woman took her aside and gave her a carrot. “It was like I became a small rabbit, quieted and calmed by being given a carrot. I looked at the carrot and thought how needy it was, how small and strange it looked, and it was like looking at myself, it was so alienated and lonely. I felt that there was no interest in me as a girl but an abnormal amount of interest in the boy” (ibid.). El-Behairy escaped the uncomfortable atmosphere at home by wandering the poor neighborhoods in the area, interacting with vendors and learning about the “strange and entangled worlds” of orphans, criminals, and prostitutes. She befriended an old blind woman who sold sweets and dates to children in an area called ‘Arab el-Muhammadi. El-Behairy used to explore the streets for hours until the old woman had finished her selling, and then she would guide the woman through the busy streets back to her home, in exchange for the leftover sweets. She was also fascinated by an orphanage located near her rooftop home. She remembers watching the orphans rehearsing plays for presentations on Mother’s Day and was also sometimes able to enter the orphanage, as one of her mother’s acquaintances was a cook in the kitchen. El-Behairy recalled that she was ambivalent about this woman, for while she provided access to the fascinating world of the orphanage, she also used to pilfer meat from the orphanage kitchen to feed her own family. El-Behairy stated to me that

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she had sometimes wished to be an orphan, so that she might participate in children’s plays and occasionally eat meat for dinner. El-Behairy would later describe the people and situations that she encountered during this period as like the strange and complicated worlds of Kafka’s stories. Although her wandering earned her punishment from her father, she nevertheless continued to explore the lower-class neighborhoods that would eventually become the setting for many of her own short stories. After her father amassed some wealth working in Saudi Arabia, el-Behairy’s family moved to a middle-class district near Midan al‘Abbasiyya. This turned out to be an important move for el-Behairy’s intellectual growth. She was in preparatory school at that time and was developing an interest in literature. However, her family’s resources still did not include funds for luxuries such as books and magazines. So elBehairy befriended a book dealer who sold his goods on the ground floor of their new building. This man had children who did not like reading, and so he took an interest in the young el-Behairy. He encouraged her to read and, after going out to collect new books, would set aside a special selection for her perusal. El-Behairy related to me that her struggle to obtain books as a child fueled her adult interest in writing children’s stories and in making them accessible to children and their parents. El-Behairy’s bookseller provided her with a wide range of reading materials, from Superman comics to texts by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. She recalled that reading worked a sort of magic, as she began to think about and imagine the larger world represented in books. She said that it was at this point that she began to write and that her passion for writing was fueled by her desire to create fictitious characters, especially strong, independent, and enthusiastic female characters. Particularly fascinating for me was el-Behairy’s remark that once she had created them, these characters served as role models for her own behavior. Here we see evidence of the author creating literature as a way not only of prompting change in the world, but also of facilitating her own personal development. El-Behairy described her childhood in Cairo as an extremely impoverished one both in the physical sense and in the sense that her father was an overbearingly strict and authoritarian man and her mother gave most

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of her attention to Nemat’s brother. Her father did not intend to enroll her in the university and so put her in a secondary trade school that did not prepare students for the thanawiyyah ‘amma, the test that determines eligibility for the university. El-Behairy discovered that even though she had not completed a standard secondary education, she could still qualify by taking an aptitude test. Along with some colleagues, she prepared herself, sat for the exam at Cairo University, and a few weeks later received the news that she had passed with scores that placed her in the College of Business. She stated that the sense of joy and disbelief that she felt upon learning of her admittance followed her through the four years of the university and that she always used to look at her student identification card not quite believing that she was realizing her dream. El-Behairy graduated from the College of Business, ‘Ayn Shams University, in 1972. For much of her adult life, she worked as an accountant and specialist of administrative affairs at the public-sector electricity administration in Nasr City. In 1984 she married an Iraqi poet and critic and moved with him to Iraq, where they lived together for two years. This marriage did not last, however, as her husband began to curtail her activities and the Iraqi regime denied her permission to publish while she was in the country. In 1986 she returned to Egypt, resumed her position at the electric company, and continued her writing pursuits (ibid.). El-Behairy published six short story collections and two autobiographical novels.3 She published many short stories and critical articles in Egyptian and Arab magazines and newspapers, such as Ibda‘, Al-hilal, Al-katiba, and Al-ahram, and she published several children’s books. In 2004 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and her experience with this illness is the subject of her autobiographical novel Chronicles of a Radiating Woman. El-Behairy died of her cancer in 2008, at the age of fifty-five.

3. El-Behairy’s short story collections are Nisf imra’a wa qisas ukhra (Half a Woman, and Other Stories) (1983 and reprinted by Dar al-Hurriya in 1984), Al-‘ashiqun (The Infatuated) (1989), Irtihalat al-lu’lu’ (Departures of the Pearl) (2003b [1997]), Dil‘ a‘waj (A Bent Rib) (2003a [1997]), Hikayat al-mara’ al-wahida (Tales of the Lonely Woman) (2005a), and Shay al-qamar (Moon Tea) (2005b). Her novels are Ashjar qalila ‘inda al-munhana (A Few Trees at the Bend) (2006a) and Yawmiyyat imra’a mushi‘‘a (Chronicles of a Radiating Woman) (2006b).

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Writing the Story of Female Negation El-Behairy constructs specific parameters for the oppressive social spaces occupied by her female and male characters. These parameters are defined by the power of social institutions, such as cultural expectations that women become wives and mothers, and sociopolitical circumstances, such as un- and underemployment, inflation, lack of public services for the poor, and government oppression. Like Salwa Bakr, elBehairy explores those moments of epiphany when girls or women realize that their emotions and physical experience are not of primary concern to family members, peers, or society at large. Some of her female characters recognize that their bodies may be seen by others as an object of use, a tool for sexual pleasure or for reproduction, and that their physical maintenance and presentation serve an important function in preserving the respectability of the family. Although her characters experience alienation upon this realization, they stubbornly carry on in the attempt to realize at least some of their personal desires. The world of oppression that el-Behairy describes does not hold males solely responsible for the negation of female aspirations and emotions. Rather, el-Behairy portrays this attitude of negation as being inherent in aspects of a cultural tradition maintained as much by mothers and grandmothers as it is by male social authorities. At the same time, she clearly portrays this cultural tradition as one that has the capacity to produce strong and lively women who are able to resist pressure to deny their own selfhood and personal longings. Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of her female characters lies in their ability to imagine a more satisfying future and to rely on that dream in itself as a source of strength to struggle against silence and compliance. In her first mature story, “Nisf imra’a” (Half a Woman), el-Behairy constructs a text full of references to customary practices and women’s sayings in order to describe the emotional state of a young woman who is being pressured into marriage. The story is framed by the narrator’s reference to her presentation of coffee to her suitor (the coffee traditionally symbolizes the first meeting of the proposed pair and an opportunity for the couple to see and form an opinion of each other). Throughout the story,

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the protagonist’s agency is suppressed: for example, her mother and suitor do not include her in their discussion of the upcoming marriage. The proposed marriage itself is based on the protagonist’s physical resemblance to the suitor’s deceased wife, and the narrative works around the protagonist’s growing conviction that she is being sought as a replacement for this woman. The narrative switches between the protagonist’s recollection of things her suitor and mother have said to her and her imaginings of what life would be like as a proxy for a deceased wife. The story centers on the narrator’s representation of her mother’s overwhelming anxiety to get her daughter married. The narrator describes herself as forced constantly to endure her mother’s anxious inspection of her face, as she looks for evidence that her daughter is approaching spinsterhood. The glances of your eyes every morning frighten me. . . . I conceal myself from them. You search my face for elongated lines under the eyes. . . . [T]he girls of the family have married . . . and young ones cling to the hems of their dresses. You fear that your green seedling will grow old and not bear fruit. Her face has turned rosy and her figure shapely. You are afraid that the fruit might fall without being picked up by anyone . . . even though I work you feared that I might end up with the shadow of a wall and you think it’s better for me to seek the shadow of a man’s wall. I used to leave you and come to the river. I sat at its green bank, I looked to its fast waters and its ripples. Why then, does the river not fear its wrinkles? You push me to marry him despite all that he said, for no reason except that he has shoulders as broad as a wall. (1983, 9)

El-Behairy writes the protagonist’s reflection in fusha but with the phrase khashiti ‘alayya min zill al-ha’it wa tarina annahu min al-‘ajda an astazill bi-jidar rajul (you feared that I might end up with the shadow of a wall, and you think it’s better for me to seek the shadow of a man’s wall) makes reference to the popular saying zill raagil wala zill il-heet (the shadow of a man is better than the shadow of a wall). This saying is quoted to women to reinforce the imperative of marriage even if to a less-than-ideal man. The protagonist is never named in the story, although we do learn the name of the suitor’s late wife. The erosion of selfhood implied by the namelessness

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of the protagonist is emphasized as the protagonist bemoans her mother’s view of her as like a green seedling that, in order to be successful, must reproduce the circumstances of its own existence within a discreet and limited time. The story draws to a close with the protagonist imagining a sexual encounter with her would-be husband even as he continues to call her by his former wife’s name. The narrator does not assert her own agency until the final lines of the story. Even here she does not make her voice heard. Instead of offering her suitor the cup of coffee that symbolizes her future wifely potential, she takes it and throws it into the sink, thereby rejecting the engagement and marriage. In “Half a Woman,” el-Behairy juxtaposes moments of realism and fantasy to explore the psychological impact upon a young woman of social and family pressures to marry. The narrative proceeds in a measured, poetic fusha, but it makes reference to the colloquial idiom when it describes the mother’s discourse. This discourse of intimidation is laced with proverbs and elements of popular belief that suggest the limits of women’s options and reinforce the status of the married woman and mother over the standing of the unmarried woman. El-Behairy lays blame for ignoring the personal needs and aspirations of young women (and men) at the feet of several elements of Egyptian society. In “Half a Woman,” she portrays a mother actively seeking to reproduce the circumstances of her own existence without concern for the emotional well-being of her daughter. In “Hilm al-raml” (Sand Dream) (1989, 33–39), the agent of authority is a female aunt, who places her own objectives above the aims of her son and niece who have announced their love and physical attraction for one another and their wish to marry. Once again, el-Behairy represents the female authority employing popular belief to strengthen her argument concerning this marriage. El-Behairy casts her net wider in the title story of Al-‘ashiqun (The Infatuated) (1989), where she blames the government for its treatment of rural young men who are bound to fulfill their military service in the harsh conditions of military encampments located on the outskirts of Cairo. She portrays the youth as languishing in the “oppressive and tyrannical” atmosphere of the camp, divorced from normal social interaction with women or family members. Their only source of pleasure is to sneak out of the post and

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gaze at women on the bus or in the streets of the city. Their “imprisonment,” she suggests, transforms the men into animalistic beings who can only long for the basic human pleasures of social interaction. Undermining the Dominant Discourse El-Behairy posits a challenge to the oppressive social world that she depicts by subverting what Mushira Eid calls “the predominant, accepted traditional (male) discourse, a discourse criticized for over-emphasizing the colloquial-standard dichotomy to maintain power over the written word and the world it represents” (2002, 205). Like Salwa Bakr and other writers discussed in this book, el-Behairy fuses the colloquial and formal idioms to describe the authoritative aspects of women’s language, including the popular terms and expressions they use with each other. However, unlike Bakr, el-Behairy inserts colloquial vocabulary and occasionally grammar directly into the internal and external dialogues of her characters. Her use of these colloquialisms is strategic so as not to disturb her poetic quality of the largely fusha text. In “Half a Woman,” the mother’s invocation of colloquial expressions represents an attempt to intimidate the daughter into acceding to conventional expectations for her future. El-Behairy puts popular sayings to a different use in her story “Al-hayy yakhlu min al-qamar” (The Quarter Without a Moon) (n.d.), which describes the plight of young women in the gloomy, run-down buildings of the Sixth Quarter of Madinat Nasr. The Sixth Quarter is one of the popular districts where el-Behairy lived after her own marriage to an Iraqi poet failed and she returned from Iraq to Egypt. The Sixth and Seventh quarters are two large, adjacent neighborhoods in Madinat Nasr, an urban extension of Cairo that stretches northwest into the Sahara Desert. The Sixth Quarter was originally built to house families fleeing from provincial cities that were bombed during the 1967 war and was later used to house residents of older Cairo districts where buildings had collapsed. While the buildings in the Sixth Quarter are densely packed and in bad condition, the ones in the neighboring Seventh Quarter are newer and in good repair. Many of the flats in the Seventh Quarter have been privately constructed by the new bourgeoisie, the families who earned their wealth either in the Gulf countries or

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through commercial projects initiated under Sadat’s Open Door policy in the early 1970s. Women and men from the Sixth Quarter go to the Seventh to work, women as maids, cooks, and nannies and men to do menial labor such as hauling (Booth 1991, 126; author interview with el-Behairy, Cairo, June 2, 1992). El-Behairy spent six years in the Sixth Quarter before earnings from her writing helped her to purchase an apartment in one of the “new cities” (Madinat al-Shuruq) in 1992. However, after her move she maintained her interest in the inhabitants of lower-class areas, whom she describes as living “‘ala hamish al-mujtama‘i, ‘ala hudud taqalidihi wa quyudihi wa wa‘ihi” (on the periphery of society, on the borders of its traditions, its strictures, and its consciousness) (author interview, Cairo, September 26, 1992). In “The Quarter Without a Moon,” an omniscient narrator describes the young women Amuna and ‘Anaba, as they stand by a window in their apartment building, examining the passersby for potential husbands and discussing the improved lives they hope to live as wives, removed from the overcrowding of their homes and the oppressive authority of their fathers. The story depicts the girls’ deep-seated anxiety that the young men of their district will attempt to marry girls from the wealthier adjacent Seventh Quarter. This anxiety leads to desperation for ‘Anaba, who tells Amuna that she is willing to marry the first man who knocks on her door in order to have the freedom of being mistress of her own home and control over the company she keeps. While in “Half a Woman,” el-Behairy invokes the colloquial language through strategic use of fusha, in “The Quarter Without a Moon,” she writes the narrative largely in fusha, while rendering the girls’ dialogue in colloquial Arabic and directly inserting proverbs into their conversation. El-Behairy uses the switch between the two levels of Arabic to get at the girls’ worldviews and linguistic milieu and to convey their almost desperate hope that marriage will free them from the dullness and constraints of their lives. ‘Anaba tells her friend, “Nifsi atgawiz gizamaati” (I want to marry the shoe repair man). Amuna laughs and replies with half of a proverb: “Law ‘ishiqt, i‘shaq qamar” (If you love, love one beautiful as the moon) (n.d., 1). Here, el-Behairy invokes the proverb “In saraqt israq

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gamal wa in ‘ishiqt i‘shaq qamar” (If you steal, you may as well steal a camel, and if you love, love one as beautiful as the moon). Here el-Behairy suggests that while girls from impoverished families may recognize the limits imposed upon them by socioeconomic circumstances and social mores, they may nevertheless have a profound sense of their own value, a recognition of their own dreams and desires, and a drive to fulfill those dreams. In this story, el-Behairy represents the popular tradition as a resource that females may draw upon to invoke and legitimate their right to make individual choices. Writing to Realize New Selves El-Behairy’s personal experience of overcoming both poverty and sexism during her own childhood and adolescence clearly informs her writing about Egyptian society. She writes her experience to help readers recognize the commonality of their experience and to reassure them that they are not alone in their struggle to extricate themselves from oppressive personal or social circumstances. El-Behairy’s fictional universe teems with girls and women who wish to transgress the social spaces and social codes that define their existence. She portrays the difficulties of women’s experience but also suggests how they use their creativity and initiative to try to overcome the social, personal, and economic limitations imposed on them. In this sense she represents the cleverness and industriousness that ethnographers have shown to be highly valued by Egyptian women in working-class milieus (Early 1993; Singerman and Hoodfar 1996). Like Salwa Bakr, el-Behairy figures women at the intersection of household and workplace, carrying both the double load and the complicated personal and social implications of working both in the home and in the workplace.4 In “The Quarter Without a Moon” and “Half a Woman,” el-Behairy explores the situation of women either aspiring to marriage or being

4. Arlene MacLeod (1991, 1996) argues that women’s entry into the formal workplace not only doubles the load of work that a woman must carry but also potentially diminishes her husband’s religiously and socially prescribed role as breadwinner and her own role as wife and mother in the eyes of the community.

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pressured into marriage as a form of salvation from the low social status of the unmarried female. El-Behairy argues that Egyptian women are taught to believe that marriage is salvation, that only marriage allows a young woman movement from one stage to another, from girlhood to womanhood, to improved economic status and an opportunity to reconstitute her identity and lifestyle in a way that allows her more authority, responsibility, and independence. El-Behairy powerfully demonstrates the profound effect of this idea on the consciousness of young women. Yet she also points to the impotence of this strategy, as men may be equally unable to improve the socioeconomic circumstances and therefore the social status of their families. According to el-Behairy, lower- and middle-class men tend to be enculturated to regard their honor as embedded in their authority over wives and daughters. This belief, she suggests, encourages men to prevent women from working and from thus realizing their own potential and improving their own social and personal status. In her story “Atbaq fi-l-hilm” (Dreaming of Dishes), el-Behairy critiques a social system that suppresses a woman who is more ambitious and talented than the “responsible male(s)” in her life. The narrative encompasses a dissonance between the detailed description of the impoverished and depressing urban scene of the Sixth Quarter and the energy and resourcefulness of the female character that inhabits that landscape. The sheer ugliness of the Sixth Quarter is also set into contrast with the lively and colorful language that the impoverished protagonist uses to discuss her situation and the future with her stubborn and ineffective husband. El-Behairy renders her protagonist housewife somewhat unusual by depicting her as a woman determined to improve herself by means of educational radio shows and reading whatever she can. At the same time, she situates her in a familiar linguistic milieu of lower-class urban women. She achieves this setting by both directly weaving popular sayings into her descriptions of the woman’s thoughts and conversations with her husband and using fusha words and phrases to invoke the colloquial language and elements of religious and popular belief. The story opens with the protagonist waking from a dream in which she was eating meat with her family. She recalls her mother quoting the saying “al-lahm fi-l-hilm ghamm” (meat in dreams means gloom) and fears that the future will

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bring hunger. “She rubbed her eyes and (feigned) spitting into her gown while saying ‘Oh Lord let everything be well.’ And when Zanati returned from his work she uttered the invocation ‘In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful’ and pronounced the formula ‘there is no power and no strength save in God’ and she sought protection in God from the cursed Devil three times and told him of her dream. Zanati smiled and slapped her gently on the behind and admonished her not to sleep naked” (1989, 81; 1991, 105). The narrative is written in standard Arabic, although elBehairy favors specifically Egyptian vocabulary and selects some verbal constructions that both are proper Arabic and might be heard in the street. But she makes the text dense with references to women’s speech patterns, superstitions, and proverbial sayings. In the above short passage, there are six such references. First, the description of the protagonist spitting into her gown—or feigning such an act—refers to a popular belief that doing so may dispel evil or perhaps counteract the effects of the evil eye. Second, with the phrase “ya rab hat al-‘awaqib salima” (Oh Lord, let all turn out well), el-Behairy invokes the more common Egyptian expression with the same meaning: “Rabbina ygiib il-‘awaqib salima.” El-Behairy’s next three references to the colloquial idiom appear in the line “wa hina ‘ada al-zanati min ‘amalihi basmalat wa hawqalat wa ista‘adhat bi-llah min al-shaytan al-rajim thalath marat.” Here she uses three fusha verbs that refer to the acts of invoking the name of God, reciting the formula “la haula wa la quwata illa bi-llah” (there is no power and no strength save in God), and taking refuge with God against the devil. Without using the actual expressions at all, the reader familiar with the colloquial can imagine the woman’s verbal expressions of concern before telling her husband of her dream and fears of what it might augur. With the sixth reference elBehairy injects a bit of humor into her narrative when she describes Zanati’s affectionate slap and advice not to sleep naked, referring to a popular belief that when someone sleeps naked, he or she may have a bad dream. El-Behairy’s protagonist dreams of dishes that she will cook with meat she expects her husband to bring home from the butchers, but she is disappointed when he returns from the crowded shop like a man wounded in battle and having lost their money. She is frustrated by the fact that while she has more street smarts and ambition than her husband, she is

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still constrained by his fear of the social repercussions of her working outside the home. El-Behairy’s dreamer of dishes is not intimidated by the neighborhood gossips but derives courage in remembering and invoking proverbs and religious invocations to stave off her fears of hunger and of the dishonest neighbors and businessmen with whom she has to contend. She uses these sayings to strengthen herself against her husband’s arguments and to fortify her belief in her own ability to earn money, put food on the table, and ignore the neighborhood talk. She is, like many of el-Behairy’s poor urban female characters, capable and prepared to be her own salvation and potentially the salvation of her family and community as well. Transgressive Subjects/Other Experience El-Behairy’s fiction works against what Cixous calls the “eternal assassination” of misogyny: the negation of women’s thoughts and intention and, indeed, their very physical and mental well-being (1994, xxi, 37–40). El-Behairy counters this negation by representing in detail the moments of a woman’s life that may on the surface appear insignificant but may also be considered a representation of the “present passing” for a large segment of the population, that is, impoverished and uneducated women. ElBehairy seeks to explore the humanity of those individuals whom society ignores or negates by delivering a poignant representation of female hope, frustration, and desire. In her story “Al-‘asafir tu’arriq samt al-madina” (The Birds Disturb the Silence of the City) (1994), she extends this concern with female aspiration and desire to the sexual realm. “The Birds Disturb the Silence of the City” explores another type of marginalized human experience: the middle-class woman who has chosen not to marry or not to remain married and the physical and emotional isolation that she may experience outside the umbrella of marriage. The story focuses upon the consciousness of a female inhabitant of one of the new, sparsely inhabited suburbs. In the early hours of morning she begins to watch a young couple that have parked in the deserted street below and have begun making love in the car. The narrative represents the couples’ lovemaking in tender but not particularly graphic detail. Woven into the narrative are the protagonist’s musings about her physical and social isolation, her bitterness

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about the lack of affection and intimacy in her own life, and her temptation to offer her own apartment to the lovemakers. The story draws to a close with the suggestion of the protagonist’s autoerotic act. El-Behairy’s reference to the protagonist’s sexual longing and activity is clearly transgressive as she gives primacy to an aspect of human experience of the type that Foucault (1980) refers to as “subjugated knowledge,” a bloc of knowledge that is disqualified from dominant modes of theorization about the social world. In the context of Egypt and the larger Arabo-Islamic world, treatment of female sexuality may be considered a transgression into the realm of subjugated knowledge because of enduring negative cultural attitudes about feminine nature and sexuality and subsequent taboos regarding discussion of female sexuality (el-Saadawi 1981, 1988; Mernissi 1987). Additionally, according to some Egyptian cultural critics, women’s embodied or emotional experience is widely regarded as unimportant to the larger project of understanding the functioning of the family or society (el-Saadawi 1983; Bakr 1991a). In Cixousian manner, el-Behairy brings to the fore intimate aspects of female experience and mourns the effect upon women’s psyches of a cultural system that tends to silence, control, or “obliterate” this experience. Indeed, el-Behairy posits her protagonist’s emotional and physical longings as a reason to reimagine a social and economic system that appears to prevent the socially condoned initiation or consummation of meaningful relationships. El-Behairy also contrasts the implicit social acceptance of the material and sexual overindulgences of a Muslim fundamentalist neighbor with the social and economic reality that renders the young couple and the female protagonist without legally and socially condoned partners. She uses this contrast to draw attention to and question the values of a society that is increasingly accepting the moral authority of Islamist individuals and groups. As Booth notes, el-Behairy’s act of writing the body serves as a bid for artistic freedom in a context in which intellectuals are increasingly under physical and verbal attack from Islamist-oriented individuals and groups who find their writing morally objectionable. It also represents an attempt to figure and validate lifestyles and experience that are other than the ones idealized by religious and social conservatives, whether they are from the Islamist trend or not.

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The story not only addresses the alienation of individuals who are not able for either personal or financial reasons to fit into a conventional family structure, but also urges an engagement with an “other” who is not easily understood, precisely that individual who sits outside the umbrella of marriage and family. It discourages the urge, in Cixous’s words, “to compromise the integrity of an other in order to validate the self” (1994, 27–28). Here el-Behairy presents the protagonist and the illegitimate lovers as expressing needs basic to all human beings, although they are compelled to buck convention in order to fulfill those needs. Finally, she mounts a critique of a government unable to address economic problems or to deal effectively with the housing crush in the rapidly growing capital city, both of which issues underlie the couple’s need to make love in their car. El-Behairy faced difficulties upon submitting the story to the government-sponsored journal Ibda‘. Although accepted by the editor, some of the print-shop workers—whom el-Behairy identified as belonging to the Islamist current—refused to typeset the story. As Marilyn Booth (1996) notes, the resistance that el-Behairy encountered in publishing the story speaks volumes about the complexity of literary censorship in Cairo. Both secular and Islamist elements exist within the journal organization, but all are on the government payroll. The print workers who attempted to shelve the story were both in the pay of and ideologically opposed to the Mubarak government, which they considered secular and Western oriented. Whereas in the Nasser and Sadat regimes, government-appointed censors determined what was publishable, it has more recently been “the censors of the street”—in this case civil servants—that have taken writers to task for their topics and sociopolitical positions. “The Birds Disturb the Silence of the City” elicited strong reactions from many journalists, critics, and creative writers and from the general public, and these responses were published in several widely circulated magazines and newspapers, including Sabah al-khayr, Ruz al-yusuf, the Egyptian Gazette (an English-language newspaper in the city), and Al-sha‘b, the Islamist-leaning opposition newspaper. Commentators criticized the story for its explicit sexual content, and some directly questioned the morality of the author herself, attempting—in an all-too-common fashion—to link the female author autobiographically to her creative work.

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Writer and critic ‘Ala’ al-Aswany charged el-Behairy with writing in a pornographic style, arguing that her use of sex in this story served no artistic end, and he concluded that the story was simply “obscene” (1994). However, as Booth (1996) points out, al-Aswany’s attack seems to have been more about the fact of el-Behairy’s female authorship than about her use of sex in the story, as he had not criticized recent works by male Egyptian authors for incorporating socially unacceptable sex into their fiction. His critical comments seem particularly gratuitous considering his subsequent extensive use of sexual content in his novel ‘Imarat Ya‘qubyan (The Yacoubian Building). An article by Mahmud Himaya published in Al-sha‘b characterized el-Behairy as a wanton woman who was not only living outside the religiously dictated protection of men but in fact attacking male honor by writing explicitly about sex (Booth 1996, 141–42). Publication of “The Birds” had an immediate and concrete impact on el-Behairy’s life. She reported to me that colleagues at work and other acquaintances were shocked by the story and distanced themselves from her. She was soon transferred to another office. However, several writers and intellectuals admired el-Behairy’s story and characterized it as a serious and artistically skillful attempt to address the harsh reality facing Egyptian youth (Bayumi 1994). In interviews with me, el-Behairy said that she knew the story would cause an uproar but decided to publish it anyway, because, in her view, one of the functions of writing is to lay bare the consciousness of individual selves, to begin a dialogue that aims at identifying social problems and addressing them. For her, the emotional impact of rigid family structures and expectations on women and the impact of the economy on the psychological and social development of young people are two of the most important crises facing Egypt today. The phenomena of Islamism and religious fundamentalism, which she and many other Egyptian scholars link to poverty and governmental incompetence, threaten to further limit the possibilities for young women and men. The young couple in the car represent the “birds” that may have disturbed the early morning of the observant protagonist, but the story suggests that their plight is of as little concern to the powers that be as is the protagonist’s own loneliness and alienation (author interview, Cairo, December 25, 1996).

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El-Behairy takes her exploration of female emotional and physical experience further in her autobiographical novel Yawmiyyat imra’a mushi‘‘a (Chronicles of a Radiating Woman) (2006b), where she recounts her personal experience of being diagnosed with and treated for second-stage breast cancer in Cairo. She also further develops her exploration of woman’s experience of being an outcast of sorts, at the intellectual, physical, and moral levels. The sense of personal marginalization expressed in this book is perhaps also a reflection of the fact that el-Behairy was forced to sell her flat in Medinat al-Shuruq in order to pay for her cancer treatment. She then rented an apartment in 6th of October City, one of the satellite cities built in the desert outside of Cairo. For a writer, this move represents a considerable hardship, because it involves a significant commute in a crowded minibus into the city center where most literary events occur (author interview, 6th of October City, March 18, 2007). In Chronicles, el-Behairy brings into the public domain an aspect of experience normally held private: the intimate experience of female disease. She lays bare her emotional and physical experience of her diagnosis and of the subsequent removal of her right breast. She writes of this experience as being the culmination of personal and economic struggles throughout her lifetime and suggests that as with these former struggles, it is her practice as a creative writer that has allowed her to deal with this illness and with its aftermath. El-Behairy relates her illness in part to the psychological pressures of being a woman writer observing the deterioration of her society, the increasing factors of poverty and government oppression and a social world that is “closing the doors and windows of reason that it once opened, from which the sun and the moon are retreating, along with change and development. We have begun to live the characteristics of a society that is retreating from all its civilizational accomplishments on account of a handful of delusions” (2006b, 13). The novel proceeds in a poetic prose alternating between dream; memory; “confessions” about her realized and unrealized aspirations; experiences in the hospital waiting for MRI exams, surgery, and chemical and radiation treatments; and observing the sadness of the other “women of one breast” undergoing various stages of cancer treatment (ibid., 158). As in her other writing,

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el-Behairy transgresses norms of discussing the female body by describing in detail her anticipations and physical experience of losing a breast. She states that during the MRI examination: “I lay down on my stomach and the nurse instructed me to put my breasts in the two openings. I was overcome by the feeling that the amputation was going to occur immediately and at that very moment. The metal tongue of the machine extended to draw me slowly into the mouth of the mythical beast—a high-tech beast—and I surrendered my situation to God” (ibid., 35). El-Behairy’s testimony about her body includes memories or dreams induced by anesthesia during the surgery to remove her breast. These dreams include memories of her adolescent experience of being the first girl in her class to develop. “I felt the burden of having filled out my bra despite the slenderness of my body. The boys started to look at me appraisingly and I tried to hide my breasts by embracing my school bag as though hiding something shameful about my very nature” (ibid., 53). El-Behairy’s literary treatment of her individual experience of pain parallels her treatment of her experience of gender inequities and poverty: writing becomes a means to deal with and overcome personal challenges. The image of a woman confronting nausea, mouth pain, loss of eyelashes, and a head resembling “a peeled taro corm” (ibid., 111) repeats throughout the narrative. Her strategy for survival lies in covering the mirrors in her home so as to re-create a vital image of herself as a living woman and writer in the pages of her memoir. For el-Behairy, illness becomes the loss of integrity of the body, “an occupation” (ibid., 116) of sorts in which the doctors and medical treatments determine her movements, her ability to write, and even her ability to wash her body. But it also represents the loss of social support in large part, as she explores what it means to deal with severe illness when family members, neighbors, and work colleagues regard the illness as a result of moral deficiency (ibid., 132). She knows that she is regarded as a woman who has bucked convention and left the confines of the family structure for a career and that her writing addresses issues that some consider inappropriate or even obscene. She queries: how does the writer-intellectual live with the social judgment of being a renegade woman who is receiving her just reward?

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Although she does not see it as an issue for herself personally, elBehairy also brings to light the challenges of breast cancer survivors who know that they are regarded as reduced in femininity, the breast being a symbol of sexual desirability and an aspect of the usefulness of the female body. She declares “all women of one breast are wretched women” (ibid., 158). She argues that the cultural construction of femininity is deeply embedded in folklore, “mothers’ and grandmothers’ tales.” This construction demands that women be enticing to men, and hence their social power over others lies primarily in their ontological status as “bearers of the virus of enticement” (ibid., 168). However, she reassures one of her textual interlocutors that she herself wants only to be able to live and overcome the pain of treatment so that she can continue to write and complete planned works that she considers her own “children,” the results of her own specific brand of feminine creativity. In the final analysis, el-Behairy envisions a future in which women are not considered the sum of their body parts or physical beauty. She insists that “the women of one breast” not consider themselves wretched women or fear their own reflections, but that they realize themselves—like their mythical Amazonian counterparts—as women who can fully engage in the activities and joys of life. The memoir—above all—is a brave act of bringing one’s own loss and loneliness into the public sphere and the willingness to share intimate aspects of physical and emotional experience. Although some of her work has generated controversy among Cairene literati and other members of the reading public, el-Behairy has also received considerable praise and formal recognition for her work. Her short stories and novels have been discussed in literary circles and on television and radio interviews by prominent critics such as Edwar al-Kharrat and Dr. Saeed al-Bahrawi. In 1996, el-Behairy was awarded a prestigious grant from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture that allowed her to take a three-year leave from her position as specialist of administrative affairs at the electric company in order to devote herself to writing full-time. She received a writing fellowship from the Swiss Rolt Foundation in the 1990s. In 2005 she received a Certificate of Appreciation (shahadat al-taqdir) from the Egyptian Higher Council for Culture. That body posthumously awarded her the Excellence Prize (ga’iza al-tafawwuq) in 2008.

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Whereas her early work about women’s emotional and physical experience met with some skepticism and concern that she was interested in representing only the miserable elements of female society, her later work has been recognized as expressing important truths about the female experience. Ibrahim Fathi wrote about her Ashjar qalila ‘inda al-munhana (A Few Trees at the Bend): “This is a feminine novel in the new meaning of the word, because the author talks about the body and relations of love. The relationship of woman with her physicality is a relationship with the world and with human oppression and not just with the biological body. It is a social and civilizational body expressed through a language of beautiful imagery” (2006, 180). Other critics have praised el-Behairy for her ability to blend matters of personal and general concern in the “ingot” of a single story and for the effectiveness of her poetic prose in expressing the struggles, hope, and strong, sometimes pugnacious nature of the female spirit (Youssef 2006; el-Wakeel 2006).5 Although it is a commonplace for Egyptian critics to praise works for successfully blending the personal and general, it is probably a greater accomplishment for a writer like elBehairy, who has been taken to task so harshly by some critics for her intimate portrayal of the female experience. Reflections on the Ethical Contribution of Women’s Writing The last time I saw Nemat el-Behairy was in March 2007 when I visited her with our mutual friend, writer Ibtihal Salem. As we discussed recent trends in Egyptian society, both women emphasized the idea that the situation for Egyptian women is becoming increasingly difficult and complex. They remarked that many observers see growing social conservatism reflected in women’s increasing donning of the higab or the niqab, and both women expressed concern about what increasing identification with the Islamist trend might mean for their country. Yet at the same time, they suggest that Egyptian women are not as socially conservative as they might appear. Although they have donned the higab, they argued, many women

5. The comments by Ibrahim Fathi, Sha‘ban Youssef, and Sayyid al-Wakeel are in a review article at the end of el-Behairy’s Chronicles of a Radiating Woman (2006b).

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have also become aware of and vocal about their rights as women in an Islamic community. According to el-Behairy and Salem, it is becoming an increasing trend for women to seek divorces from husbands they perceive to be inadequate or abusive and to take their children with them. Indeed, the divorce rate has increased since Egypt broadened its divorce laws in January 2000, which made it easier for Egyptian women to obtain a divorce.6 Women are increasingly finding fault with Egyptian men (including male intellectuals and writers) because, according to these writers, men have a backward view of women and an “ownership” (mulki) view of marriage. They want a pretty, feminine woman to call their own, to care for them, their children, and the house. But women are not necessarily going along with this idea, and therefore the divorce rate is increasing. The family, they said, is broken, and Islamist orientations do not seem to be helping. What of the place of the female intellectual? El-Behairy expressed her concern that “we are living in danger,” saying that if an Islamic regime gains power, it may decide to silence liberal writers and intellectuals. Ibtihal Salem referenced the story of Nawal el-Saadawi who has been marked for death by Muslim fundamentalists, and thus has spent many years in self-imposed exile outside Egypt. During this conversation, watching the sun set on 6th of October City, we discussed how these women writers fit, as intellectuals and as innovators, into their society and into the Islamic religious tradition. Alluding to the idea that no mortals ultimately know who will be rewarded in heaven, el-Behairy remarked, with her unique mixture of sadness, humor, and sarcasm, “It won’t be me.” Ibtihal Salem retorted, “Yes, especially you.” To me, Salem’s response to her friend speaks volumes about these writers’ commitment to the idea that they have an important role to play in this changing society and that their critiques and commentaries, no matter how violently received, have important ethical and artistic merit.

6. Legal amendments made in 2000 allow a woman to initiate divorce on grounds of incompatibility, but she must renounce all financial claims upon her husband and also return money that was given to her at the time of marriage. This form of divorce is called khula (Abu el-Magd 2008; Hawley 2000; Sterns 2009).

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Conclusion El-Behairy’s focus on language allows her to represent that language as a point of connection for women with the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. This point of connection suggests the continuation of some of the difficulties faced by earlier generations of women, including lack of education, resources, and, sometimes, self-confidence. But these constellations of linguistic pieces also represent a source of women’s strength and creativity, a venue for the practical knowledge about managing relationships that may guide new generations of women as they face personal and professional lives very different from the lives of their mothers. By juxtaposing a knowledge of and obvious fondness for the colloquial expressions within the framework of a fluent fusha text, el-Behairy also engages in the somewhat ironic activity of affirming and celebrating these two aspects of language even as she uses them to craft a critique of social mores, the shifting social and economic situation, and the ways in which women suffer in the pursuit of marriage, in its midst and in its aftermath. In a sense, el-Behairy participates in what Saddeka Arebi (1994) has described as a process of affirmation and approbation engaged in by Saudi Arabian women writers, as they proceed simultaneously with the critique of certain social views or institutions. However, for el-Behairy, writing clearly has an incisive, disruptive nature. She stated, “I believe that the writer has no less importance in society than the man of religion or even the surgeon, who opens up the wound and gets out the disease and points to it and says, ‘This is what had to be removed.’ I believe that my role as a writer is like that” (author interview, Cairo, December 25, 1996). In this sense her work may also be compared to the “creative dissidence” of Nawal el-Saadawi, who highlights, in Brinda Mehta’s words, “the urgency of narrative and cultural reassertions in local memory, wherein women initiate the necessary nushuz (rebellion) against patriarchal authority by becoming agents of change” (2007, 154). El-Behairy’s more sophisticated play with the levels of language becomes perhaps an even more effective tool than el-Saadawi’s direct critique of patriarchal discourse. Despite the strident attacks by critics like al-Aswany, her play with language has resonated with other critics and

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readers who regard it as an innovative way to reassert the importance and beauty of women’s emotional and linguistic worlds. The literary value of her writing exceeds the literary accomplishment of el-Saadawi because of her sophisticated play with levels of language as a tool to critique patriarchal discourse and to reassert the importance of women’s personal and linguistic worlds. El-Behairy’s use of language play as a tool is, of course, more characteristic of writers of her own generation, although she goes further even than most of these writers in drawing out the details and implications of women’s emotions and physical desires. She struggles, in Cixousian terms, to bring intention, desire, and authority back to the female realm. At the same time, her transgressive text always refers back to the more familiar moments of lower- and middle-class women’s lives— the daily vagaries and the repeated expressions that work both to comfort women and to confine them. We turn now to Radwa Ashour, who, like the other writers discussed in this book, focuses her attention on women’s subjective experience of family, economic, and political life. Ashour has been dubbed the “spiritual daughter of Latifa al-Zayyat” (Jacquemond 2008), perhaps because of her success with the historical novel form and because of her privileging of a political over a feminist critique. While the relationship between the levels of the language has been integral to the writing strategies of the authors considered thus far, Ashour’s focus lies in developing the historical novel to delve into women’s emotional and intellectual experience.

Radwa Ashour Fiction Writing as a History of the Subjective I love writing because I love books, and also because I fear death. Not only death at the end of the journey, but death by being buried alive and the assassination of capability, because I am a woman and a citizen of the third world, and the heritage of both is like that of the baby girl who is buried alive. —Author interview with Radwa Ashour, Cairo, November 30, 1992 In 1991 when America bombed Iraq, Egypt was part of the Alliance. It was shown on TV, and we were supposed to be happy. But I was very depressed. Any intellectual or educated Egyptian person feels that Baghdad is part of our heritage. The image of a naked woman flashed though my mind. I asked myself: are the Arabs disappearing as a people? The answer is “yes.” —Author interview with Radwa Ashour, Cairo, March 22, 2007

R adwa Ashou r’s fiction details the subjective worlds of women, men, and children as they confront social and political oppression, personal loss, and the contradictions of cultural and political upheaval. Her work is infused with a sadness that emanates from the constant separations endured by her characters, whom she sometimes describes as “like branches severed from a tree” (1994a, 18, 203; 1990, 84). Parents, children, lovers, and spouses are separated by war and colonization, political imprisonment, exile, and death. Women and girls are psychologically alienated 109

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from the dominant culture and from those individuals who impose its norms and strictures. Phantoms of loved ones emerge as memories that provoke sadness and nostalgia, but also emphasize connections between past and present generations. However, there is also a skillfully drawn tension between the prevailing melancholy of adult characters and the liveliness of children, whose needs, desires, and interpretations of their worlds often serve as a source of humor and who are portrayed as the ones who will continue the struggles of previous generations. Personal and Professional History Radwa Ashour was born in Cairo in 1946 to a middle-class family living in the neighborhood of Manyal, which is located on the Nile island of Rawda. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother, the daughter of a university professor, was a housewife. She attended primary and secondary school at the Lycée Français de Caire, a secular school in the bustling market district of Bab al-Luq, and at the College for Girls in Zamalek. Her mother, who was fond of Arabic poetry and composed poems of her own, sparked Ashour’s early interest in literature. The young Ashour also had access to the family’s extensive personal library, where she read the classics of the Arabic, European, and Russian traditions. Ashour graduated from Cairo University in 1967 with a degree in English, before traveling to the United States for graduate work. She received a PhD in African American literature from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst in 1975, after which she took up her current professorship in the English Department at ‘Ayn Shams University. Ashour is married to the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, with whom she has one son, poet Tammim Barghouti. Ashour’s relationship with Barghouti has been characterized by long periods of separation, as Barghouti was exiled from Palestine after the 1967 war and then barred from settling permanently in Egypt by the Egyptian government. For thirty years Barghouti sought temporary refuge in several countries, but now resides with Ashour in Cairo. Ashour is a critic who has tackled Egyptian, Arab, and American social ideologies and political policies. Her memoir, Al-rihla: Ayyam taliba misriyya fi amrika (The Journey: An Egyptian Student’s Days in America) (1983), contains her reflections on her years at Amherst along with a

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critique of American society, including its treatment of minorities and US governmental policies in the third world, particularly Vietnam and Palestine. Some of her later works present a critique of gender ideologies, socioeconomic inequities, and government corruption in Egyptian and Arab society. Ashour has published widely in both the academic and the creative fields. She has published three monographs of literary criticism, one memoir, two collections of short stories, and seven novels.1 She has published many critical articles in Egyptian and Arab literary journals such as Nur, Al-hilal, Al-adab, Fusul, and Alif. Part 1 of the Gharnata (Granada) trilogy was named Best Novel of the Year by the General Egyptian Book Organization in 1994, and the following year the trilogy took first prize in the Arab Women’s Book Fair in Cairo. A History of the Subjective Ashour’s fiction can clearly be read as “cause conscious” in that it links the specifics of characters’ inner worlds with major social and economic phenomena and political events. This aspect of her work, however, is balanced by her artistic play with narrative technique; she employs streamof-consciousness, dream-narrative, and intertextual techniques to achieve this linkage and to explore the complexity of human relations in the face

1. The following are Ashour’s critical studies: Al-tariq ila al-khayma al-ukhra: Dirasa fi a‘mal Ghassan Kanafani (The Way to the Other Tent: Studies of the Works of Ghassan Kanafani) (1977), Gibran and Blake: A Comparative Study (1978), and Al-tabi‘ yanhadu: Al-riwaya fi garb afriqiya (The Subject Arises: The Novel in West Africa) (1980). Her memoir, Al-rihla: Ayyam taliba misriyya fi amrika (The Journey: An Egyptian Student’s Days in America), was published in 1983. Her creative works include two collections of short stories, Ra’aytu alnakhl (I Saw the Date Palms) (1990) and Taqarir al-Sayyida Ra’ (The Reports of Mrs. Ra’) (2001), and seven novels. The novels are as follows: Hajar dafi’ (A Warm Stone) (1985), Khadija wa Sawsan (Khadija and Sawsan) (1989), and Siraaj (1992). The first book of her trilogy Gharnata (Granada) was first published in 1994. The second two volumes, Maryama wa al-rahil (Maryama and the Departure), were published together in 1995. The trilogy was republished in a single edition in 2001. Atyaf (Apparitions), Ashour’s autobiographical novel, was published in 1999. Qit‘a min uruba (A Piece of Europe) appeared in 2003. Ashour’s stories have been translated by Marilyn Booth (1991), William Granara translated her novel Granada (2003), and Barbara Romaine translated her novel Siraaj (2007).

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of these social and political upheavals. Ashour also employs sensual detail with a photographic sharpness that allows her to characterize the physical, cultural, and psychological environments of her characters.2 Like other writers of her generation, Ashour employs detail in a way that works toward what Cixous (1994) has described as the project of recovering the female self. That is to say, she describes and valorizes the details and depths of women’s experience as wives, mothers, workers, and revolutionaries. Equally important, Ashour begins to expand the limits of what it means to be female in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Egypt and to explore the extent to which women are involved in many aspects of social, political, and economic experience. Although Ashour tends to privilege a female consciousness and forefronts strong female protagonists, in many cases she does so in a way that allows for exploration of issues relevant to both men and women, such as the tension between loyalty to family and to national causes and the personal cost of service to them both for individuals who are committed to self-development, whether it be emotional, artistic, or intellectual. This universal aspect of her writing is perhaps part of what accounts for her wide critical acclaim among Egyptian critics, who tend to criticize women writers for focusing too narrowly on women’s issues. She also achieves other aspects that Egyptian critics praise: a fluid fusha style, a creative and symbolic approach to dealing with political issues, and a sophisticated interlinking of public and private spheres (Ayyad 1996; Jacquemond 2008; Osman 1996; al-Zayyat 1994a). In this chapter, I explore the way Ashour uses various techniques to explore female subjectivities and to make her

2. Referring to the language in The Journey, Osman points to this enduring aspect of Ashour’s oeuvre. She notes that Ashour pays “heed to the minute details of things, of colors and shadows, and embodies them with a photographic sharpness pulsating in a flowing, exuberant language” (1996, 6). Doing so allows her to generate compelling portraits of the psychological worlds and motivations of characters that variously react to their circumstances with feelings of anger, alienation, loss, and fear. Osman argues that because Ashour allows women to take center stage in so many of her novels and short stories, she provides imagined perspectives of women experiencing various socioeconomic, political, and psychological realities.

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sometimes eccentric, critical—if not dissident—characters compelling to a wide range of critics and other readers. Recording the Postcolonial Experience Ashour explores the psychological effects of war and occupation from a female point of view through several characters in her novels Hajar dafi’ (A Warm Stone) (1985) and Gharnata (Granada) (1994a).3 Here, she seems to draw on her own experience of growing up in postcolonial Egypt. In interviews, Ashour stated that while she was at the Lycée Français de Caire, she struggled with an attitude of cultural superiority among the French teachers, who indirectly tried to impress upon the students a belief in the superiority of the French language and culture over the Arabic and Egyptian languages and cultures. Ashour recalled that the school was attended by students of various cultural and religious backgrounds, including Egyptian Muslims, French and English girls, foreign and Egyptian Jews, and a few Egyptian Christians, and that the French teachers always treated the Egyptian students as inferior to the European students. Ashour recalled one particular teacher who used to tell the Egyptian students that they were the people of “in sha’ allah” (if God wills), insinuating that because Egyptians frequently utter this phrase prior to speaking about the future, they are a passive people who get nothing accomplished. Ashour recalled that this negative atmosphere at the lycée was balanced by her own mother’s pride in the Arabic language, which allowed her to develop a healthy sense of cultural identity despite the difficulties of growing up in postcolonial Cairo (author interview, Cairo, October 12, 1992). In her own self-reflexive discourse and writing, Ashour relates her desire to write to a need to express a sense of estrangement and frustration that derives from both her gendered experience and her national identity. “As a woman and as a person who lives in Egypt, in a third world country . . . [t]his is what I know most: thwarted aspirations” (ibid., November 30, 1992). Elsewhere, Ashour has described writing as a form of self-defense: “I write in self-defense and in defense of countless others with whom I

3. For example, Bushra in A Warm Stone and Saleema and Maryama in Granada.

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identify or who are like me. I want to write because reality fills me with a sense of alienation. Silence only increases my alienation, while confession opens me up so that I may head out toward the others or they may come to me themselves” (1994b, 7). Clearly, writing for Ashour is a political and social act. She is part of a generation of youth that saw Gamal Abd el-Nasser’s nationalist-socialist agenda as a new and hopeful beginning for Egypt and the larger Arab world. She graduated from college the year of the 1967 defeat at the hands of the Israelis, which was widely regarded by Egyptians and Arabs as a humiliating defeat and an indictment of the weakness and inefficacy of Arab regimes. Ashour’s fiction speaks of her disillusionment with a succession of Egyptian regimes and her frustration with the plight of “ordinary” people who suffer the consequences of governmental inefficacy and oppression. At the same time, she explores the wider oppression experienced by the Egyptians and Arabs at the hands of their historical colonizers and neocolonizers—which is particularly evident in the Granada trilogy. She has stated that the impetus behind the trilogy was the aftermath of the first Gulf War. The suffering of the Iraqi people during that conflict brought back memories of the 1967 defeat and of the colonial occupations of Palestine and Algeria. For Ashour, writing at this historical juncture became “a retrieval of a human will negated. I write, the space becomes my own, and I am no longer an object acted upon by history but a subject acting in history” (Rakha 2000).4 In a recent interview, Ashour stated that she experienced the American bombing and occupation of Iraq as not only humiliating but also a possible signal of further catastrophe for the Arab world. “The image of a naked woman flashed through my mind. I asked myself: are the Arabs disappearing as a people? The answer is ‘yes.’ I thought of Granada, which I was not interested in before. I went to the University of Cairo to study books on the fall of that city. I was so scared. I wanted to know if I was facing my own death” (author interview, Cairo, March 22, 2007). .

4. Youssef Rakha included this quote from an unidentified conference paper by Ashour in his 2000 interview with the author.

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Like other members of her cohort, Ashour has combined her writerly role as political and social critic with a certain amount of political activism. In 1972 she and two other students sent telegrams to President Sadat and other authorities on behalf of the Council for Egyptian Writers and Artists decrying the detention of University of Cairo students who had protested Sadat’s efforts to make peace with Israel (see Ashour 1983, 7). She said, “My lack of understanding of the internal workings of politics and the fact that I am not a born leader would inevitably restrict the scope of my political activity, but in those years I was nonetheless very active within the limits of what was assigned to me” (Rakha 2000, n.p.). However, it is clear that for Ashour, the social role of the writer is equally potent as that of the activist. She argues that the author’s role is significant because the writer works “in the space of peoples’ consciousness and of history—nothing less.” In her view, the “historical” aspect of writing derives from the fact that the author presents her relation to a given historical moment, and to the collective self, traditions and culture of that period. The author must present the “truth” as she sees it, and each author’s take on that truth will be unique, according to her unique historical affinities. Her interpretation will be symptomatic of the reality in which she lives, the reality that she is writing about, and her relation to the language and literary tradition within which she works. Because she writes in part out of commitment and a desire to win others over to her vision, Ashour is very conscious of the way that her language may be received by the audience. She describes language as a bridge that belongs to no one, but upon which one is capable of moving toward the other. She enjoys experimentation with language and technique, but feels that she must write in a way that maintains a relationship with the audience and makes them feel that they count. “I would not destroy the bridge totally and completely because I need it to communicate” (author interview, Cairo, October 12, 1992). While her writing conveys political and social messages, it is equally a complex creative and personal act for Ashour. She says that each writer defines a vocabulary particular to herself, a garden of language where she goes both to create meaning and to relish the act of creativity. For her, this vocabulary is rich with local Egyptian images, from the natural

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environs of the Nile and ancient Egyptian architecture to the close relationships between husband and wife, mother and child. The Arabic that she draws upon ranges from “Qur’anic Arabic to the call of the peddler, from the national anthem issuing from the mouths of children at school in the morning to the speech of a hypocritical politician” (1994b, 8). When I spoke to Ashour about the process of writing itself, she said that one of her greatest challenges is to find her place as a “legitimate daughter” of the rich Arabic literary tradition. She said that while she feels that the Arabic literary tradition has been largely the domain of men, she is less concerned with how she might appropriate this tradition as a woman and more concerned about how she will contribute as a person who is heir to an enormous and complicated cultural and literary heritage. Unlike Salwa Bakr, she does not feel that she needs to change the Arabic language so as to express herself as a woman: My ambition is much more than that. It is to appropriate this very rich and beautiful and complex language to fit my experience as a human being who lives in [the present]. It is a language of such rich heritage that I feel I have a problem already, a problem to appropriate it .  .  . to make it my own, to add anything to it and to be a legitimate daughter of this tradition. It is always possible to be a writer and not to be conscious of the greatness of your heritage, and that would be catastrophic. As a writer, I am very much aware of the wealth of the Arabic heritage and language. . . . [T]he problem is much more than appropriating the language to express a woman’s experience; it is learning how to relate to this language, and how to appropriate it, to be part of it, how to make it a part of you and how to be a continuation of this very rich tradition, a tradition full of snares. (author interview, Cairo, October 12, 1992)

Nevertheless, Ashour recognizes that as a woman writer, she is part of a cultural heritage in which women have been particularly marginalized and suppressed, and she tries to explore this suppressed potential in her female characters. While recognizing that women in Egyptian and Arab society suffer as a result of their gender, Ashour says, “I am not a feminist in the European or American sense of the word, I am not a confessed feminist.” She takes this position because the “woman problem”

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is not widely regarded as the first priority for social change in Egypt. However, she suggests that a talented woman writer may contribute to the position of women by examining aspects of female experience that have remained unexplored for the simple reason that many women have been effectively silenced by society and because so few women have been afforded the opportunity to develop their potentials (ibid., November 30, 1992). Mothers, Daughters, Citizens, and Revolutionaries In her first novel, A Warm Stone, Ashour adopts a shifting point of view and a stream-of-consciousness approach to weave together issues of political repression with concerns about women’s struggle to find gratification in work, personal relationships, and their role as citizens. A Warm Stone is set in 1970s Cairo in the midst of the 1972 sit-ins at Cairo and ‘Ayn Shams universities, which students staged to criticize the Sadat government’s handling of the Israeli occupation of Egyptian and other Arab land and demand more democratic participation in government, increased freedom of the press, and reform of the country’s socioeconomic structure (see Abdalla 1985). This decade also saw the 1973 October War of the crossing into Israeli-held Sinai and the 1977 food riots that broke out in Cairo after the government announced the cessation of subsidies for basic foodstuffs and commodities. Against this backdrop of social, political, and economic turmoil, Ashour presents the extended family of the widow Shams. Ashour situates her female characters within an intricate web of human relations, through which she deconstructs the complex sociopolitical environment faced by women and the contradictory demands to which they are subject. She renders these characters compelling through their commitment to the nation, yet she complicates their circumstances by depicting their participation as fraught with concerns about loyalty to family and middle-class concerns about decorum. Key to Ashour’s exploration of female motivation is her depiction of generational differences between a group of women, all of whom emerge as singular personalities: the matriarch, Shams; her daughter, Bushra; Salma, Shams’s bint fi-l-rada‘a

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(daughter by breast-feeding);5 and her future daughter-in-law, Amina. Ashour uses the different circumstances and experiences of these women to explore the rapid cultural change of this period but also the lingering effects of patriarchal control on the younger generation of women. In this novel, we find an achievement common in Ashour’s later novels, what Osman calls an “equality of narrative point of view” (1996, 7) between diverse characters. By skillful use of polyphony, Ashour succeeds in making compelling the psychologies and motivations of women socialized in very different cultural and educational worlds. The matriarch, Shams, is depicted as having preoccupations typical of women of her generation: she is focused on domestic duties and on safely escorting her children to adulthood. She is politically naive and does not understand her children’s involvement in opposition politics. Yet Shams is not stereotypically situated in the isolation of the private sphere. Her loyalty to her family does not preclude an awareness of suffering on the part of the Egyptian public, and she is sympathetic to their cause. Thus, when she finds herself in the midst of a popular food riot against the government, she demonstrates her solidarity with the workers, students, and housewives by filling her shopping basket with stones to give to the demonstrators (1985, 144–45). The university-educated Bushra appropriately engages with her social and political ideals by teaching in a rural girls’ school, but is frustrated in this goal by both the apathy and inefficiency of the school administration and the “retrograde conditions” in which girls and women live (ibid., 41). These conditions include male oppression of females in the form of denial of education and physical violence and senior female complicity in this oppression by supporting restrictions on girls and younger women and by justifying male privilege in the name of the status quo. It is through a dream narrative that we access Bushra’s frustration and sadness about the conditions of the rural women:

5. In Islamic tradition, the bint fi-l-rada‘a is considered a blood relative and the equivalent of a sister to the breast-feeder’s own children.

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She saw herself standing behind the door of the community center and the door was ajar allowing her to see out but not allowing anyone to enter. The people were standing in a long line that zigzagged until it disappeared on the horizon. Their faces were compressed under the oppression of pain. Their features were like mulberries and their eyes protruding. The women in their peasant dress were thin like stalks but even so had swollen bellies, and were carrying little ones with swollen bellies on their shoulders and sides and in their arms. (ibid., 37)

Bushra’s strength in the face of loneliness and political alienation is rendered believable by access to her moments of idealism—hope for her future work and her marital relationship—and also to her anger and frustration at the corruption and coercive means of the Egyptian government. Amina is also represented as a member of the “new generation” of college-educated women. Empowered by knowledge, she is able to buck the patriarchal control of her father, risking his anger and the potential marring of her reputation by participating in the university demonstrations and being jailed along with the other students. She is portrayed as an active woman full of promise at the beginning of the novel, a woman who will participate in fighting government oppression and in the reform of the nation. However, her marriage to Shams’s son, the communist ‘Ali, ultimately stifles her potential. Despite her husband’s revolutionary politics, she is left with a conventional life of child rearing and housework, which she finds unsatisfying. Amina’s sister, Salma, finds herself compelled to abandon her homeland entirely, to work abroad, fleeing an abusive arranged marriage and the ensuing family and social censure of her divorce. Salma’s poetry (which is incorporated into the text) and later conversations with her half sister, Mediha, carry a recognition of the exploitation of “third world” peoples by European countries and the superficial understanding Europeans have of these people as a source of labor and little else. This critique of “first world” imperialism is layered upon the novel’s multileveled critique of restrictive gender ideologies, of the Egyptian government’s neglect of the lower and middle classes, and of an economic system that forces its citizens to emigrate, tearing families apart in the pursuit of economic survival.

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Perhaps most effective in terms of Ashour’s portrayal of the subjective histories of women is her intimate depiction of women’s experience as mothers. Ashour uses a stream-of-consciousness technique to generate what Cixous calls a “feminine practice of writing”: an intimate portrait of feminine experience (1983, 287). For example, she privileges Shams’s reflections on the physical experiences of pregnancy and breast-feeding young children. “Shams asked herself as she was lying on her bed if the years had passed slowly or in the blink of an eye. It seemed like only yesterday when Bushra was an infant in her white swaddling clothes, moving her lips, searching for the breast, nodding off as she was sucking only to wake up again when she scratched her nose with her fingertips” (1985, 8). Shams emerges as a symbol of maternal giving, helping her neighbor Qadriya to feed Salma: “She picked up Salma and her breasts filled with milk until her robe became wet and then she nursed her” (ibid., 9). By focusing on the sensual aspect of maternal experience, Ashour brings to the fore aspects of human experience that are not usually publicly discussed or treated in literature by men. However, she also subverts dominant patriarchal notions of the women’s body as a “tool” for reproduction by valorizing women’s personal subjectivity, moods, thoughts, and feelings connected to their roles as mothers and nurturers. Ashour’s skillful portrayal of female physical and emotional experience works to affirm Shams’s social and personal role as a mother.6 Equally skillful is Ashour’s representation of women’s role in the preservation of the patriarchal paradigm. Here she avoids reproducing a (reverse) binary paradigm that constructs the female as “good” or even ideal and the male as “bad.” Shams is represented as a thoughtful and loving mother, who is nevertheless tempted to hold her daughter to conventional standards for courtship and marriage. While engaged in the routine actions of preparing a traditional Egyptian dish, Ashour’s matriarch struggles with the positive and negative consequences of mimetic reproduction of the couple and the family:

6. Ashour employs similar feminine language in her description of Saleema nursing her son in Granada (1994a, 150).

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She uncovered the broth and left it to boil on the stove. Then she fetched the chopped mulukhiyya leaves and tossed them into the pot. She reduced the fire under it and lit the third burner. She took out a brass frying pan from the food safe and put three spoonfuls of butter into it, and then set it on the fire. Once the butter had diminished, she added the garlic to it. “Bushra is young and it is up to her mother to advise and direct her. But what if she really loves him?” She stirred the garlic that had begun to sputter in the pan, added some coriander and the kitchen became filled with its scent. She removed the cover from the mulukhiyya pot and emptied the butter sauce into it all at once and sighed as she hurriedly checked the covers, as though fearful that the aroma might escape if the pot remained uncovered. “We knock ourselves out for them until they grow up and then strangers come and take them from us!” (ibid., 92)

On the one hand, Shams feels compelled to reproduce the conditions of her own existence, choosing a man for Bushra who will provide her with status, wealth, and stability. On the other hand, she has some sympathy for her daughter’s desire to choose her own spouse and achieve emotional fulfillment. All the while she experiences a sense of melancholy that the patriarchal-patrilocal system ultimately means the departure of her daughter from her immediate presence. A Warm Stone critiques certain social norms (enforced by both men and women) that restrict women’s choices in marriage and education. Indeed, Ashour suggests that patriarchal control as much as political oppression destroys the chances of promising young women (such as Amina) to reach their full potential as persons. Perhaps most strongly, the novel criticizes a political leadership that talks about democracy and then arrests its citizens when they protest domestic and foreign policies. This point is most powerfully symbolized in the final chapter of the book after Bushra is harassed by policemen for falling asleep, exhausted, against the statue of the Egyptian renaissance—the “warm stone” of the novel’s title. Rewriting the History of Occupation In A Warm Stone, Ashour develops a series of singular female characters that are compelling because of her intimate portrayal of their personalities but also because, as a committed writer, she depicts them as intimately

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caught up in the wider social and political issues of the period. In Granada, Ashour uses a similar approach, but achieves a finer balance between gender and nationalist political issues, as she moves away from an exclusive focus on female subjectivity to a narrative structure that includes the perspective of men. Here, males and females of different generations are fully involved and interconnected in the “national” and ethnic cause—this time the struggle to survive and to maintain an Arabo-Islamic identity in the wake of the fifteenth-century Castilian invasion of Granada. While she explores the experience and memory of both male and female characters, it is a woman, Saleema, that emerges as the most compelling and serious character despite her eccentricities. Ashour develops this complex character through a metaphor of healing and an intertextual move that links Saleema with the illustrious Arab medical tradition. Granada thus functions as a historical palimpsest in which she invokes the Arabic literary tradition to rewrite a history of the city that is inclusive of a female point of view. Granada follows the lives of bookbinder Abu Ja‘far, his family, and two apprentices, Na‘em and Sa‘d, in the wake of the Castilian takeover of the Islamic kingdom of Granada in 1492. It is a polyphonic text in which the narrative shifts from third-person narration to moments of intimate access to the consciousness of several extended family members. This narrative technique allows the reader access to the thoughts, memories, dreams, and longings of Abu Ja‘far; his wife, Umm Ja‘far; his widowed daughterin-law, Umm Hasan; his granddaughter, Saleema; and others. Access to the consciousness of each character supports and lends depth to Ashour’s depiction of the emotional and material vulnerability of both women and men in the face of political and religious oppression and the deterioration and breakup of families that ensue from war and occupation. With the death of the patriarch, Abu Ja‘far, early in the narrative, there is a transfer of textual authority to his granddaughter, Saleema. It is Saleema, rather than a male heir, who symbolically carries on his legacy: she has inherited his love of books and his passion for knowledge. Although part of a newly marginalized community, she transgresses a conventional female role because of Abu Ja‘far, who had determined to educate her “like ‘Aysha bint Ahmad, the jewel of Cordoba’s ladies and gentlemen, and who

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surpassed them all in her understanding, knowledge and refinement” (1994a, 49). Although to a certain extent Saleema is victim of the double bind of gender and national disenfranchisement so often portrayed in Arab women’s literature (see, for example, Badr 1991; Bakr 1991a; and alZayyat 1989, 2000), she also represents an exception in that she has been empowered by the patriarchal authority of her own family. She is motivated to study out of a desire to escape the boredom of everyday activities within the household. Saleema’s studying leads her to develop an interest in herbology and medicine, which does become a source of tension in her family, as it distracts her from her “proper” priorities, that is, helping with household duties and attending to her husband. However, Saleema’s unusual interests do not compromise her family’s affection for her, and in this respect her character is a departure from many eccentric female characters in contemporary Egyptian women’s fiction, who are condemned by family and society for their eccentricity or alleged madness.7 Throughout most of the narrative, Saleema mediates the positive role of healer and the negative attribute of eccentric. Initially, her struggle to acquire knowledge of medicines and the body integrates her into the community of adult women and earns her a measure of social prestige and personal power: At first it was the books that preoccupied her, she stayed up late at night underlining in the texts and making notes in the margins. Then, she became preoccupied with questioning local women who knew about such things. She enquired about the ancient remedies that they used to cure pain, and she went out and bought pots, vials, vessels and jars, and went about making concoctions from both fresh and dried herbs. She

7. Saleema’s character appears to be a development of the character Fawziyya, who appears in one of Ashour’s early short stories, “Ra’ayt al-nakhl” (I Saw the Date Palms), in her short story collection by the same title. Like Fawziyya, Saleema’s enthusiasm for her plant-related interest and skill is regarded negatively by the people around her. Fawziyya’s passion alienates her from all but one woman in her community, whereas Saleema’s family is grudgingly able to accept her interest. Allegedly mad or highly eccentric protagonists also appear in Salwa Bakr’s Golden Chariot (1991a, 1995) and “Ihda wa thalathun shajara jamila khadra’” (Thirty-one Beautiful Green Trees) in Maqam ‘Atiyya (‘Atiyya’s Shrine) (1986a).

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ground, soaked, cooked, cooled and distilled. Then the women of the quarter began to seek her advice on the cure for one malady or another. (1994a, 154; 2003a, 115–16)

Through her skilled practice of healing, Saleema acquires the “male attribute of power,” and her medical knowledge “becomes the means through which a woman escapes the roles traditionally assigned to her sex” (MaltiDouglas 1991, 133).8 Through an intertextual move, Ashour links Saleema with the power of the Arab medical and philosophical heritage. This linkage includes her symbolic inheritance of Abu Ja‘far’s love of books and her actual inheritance of his important medical and philosophical texts. It is Abu Ja‘far who recognizes and appreciates Saleema’s intelligence and insists upon continuing her education despite the family’s economic difficulties, and after his death, Saleema continues to pursue her studies through a small but valuable set of manuscripts that he saved from the Castilian purge. These works include Ibn Sina’s medical encyclopedia Al-qanun; Ibn al-Baytar’s encyclopedia of drugs and plants, Al-jami‘; and Ibn Tufayl’s Risalat Hayy Ibn Yaqzhan. Ashour quotes at length from the latter—the passage in which the foundling Hayy examines the body of his dead gazelle mother in an attempt to understand the reason for her death.9 Indeed, it is the death of a gazelle—Sa‘d’s wedding gift to Sal-

8. Malti-Douglas (1991) notes the ways in which Nawal el-Saadawi uses this strategy to empower the female heroine in Mudhakkirat tabiba (Memoirs of a Female Physician) (1980) and other works. 9. Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn ‘Abdallah Ibn Sina (d. 1037) wrote Al-qanun fi al-tibb. Ibn alBaytar (d. 1248) wrote Al-jami‘ li-mufradat al-adwiya wa-l-aghdhiya (Bulaq, 1291), an expansive description of drugs and plants, many of which were not known to the Greeks (Encyclopedia of Islam [Leiden: Brill, 1960], 1:214). Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185) wrote Risalat Hayy Ibn Yaqzhan (The Epistle of Hayy Ibn Yaqzhan) in Spain toward the end of the twelfth century. It is the story of a child who appears on an island, either spontaneously or floated there in a box, is nurtured by a gazelle, and grows to adulthood. Through a long process of observing natural phenomena and reflecting, he gains understanding of the physical universe and an understanding of the Divine. See A. S. Fulton’s introduction in The History of “Hayy Ibn Yaqzhan” by Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl.

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eema—that prompts Saleema’s own ruminations about the causes and meaning of death. Ashour privileges Saleema’s role as healer over her position of wife and mother, though she does also serve these roles. Saleema’s relationship with Sa‘d is, at least initially, one of nurturing and healing. During their “honeymoon,” Saleema serves a therapeutic role in the inverted position of auditor in a storytelling pair. Here, Ashour regenders the paradigmatic storyteller of The Thousand and One Nights. In successive late-night sessions, Sa‘d tells his new bride stories of his youth in Malaga, of the Castilian siege of the city, the starvation death of his sister, and the enslavement of his mother. Sa‘d’s act of storytelling to Saleema provides him an opportunity to deal with the phantoms of his lost family, and his emotional and physical union with Saleema formally reintegrates him into the sphere of family.10 Throughout most of the narrative, Ashour depicts Saleema as capable of balancing the positive role of healer with the negative attention that she attracts as an eccentric working outside the bounds of “normal” female activity. In the end, however, Ashour suggests that this type of female knowledge may be perceived as dangerous by the social and political authorities that hold sway over women’s lives. Ultimately, Saleema’s behavior arouses enough suspicion among neighbors and the Castilian authorities that it becomes grounds for her conviction and execution for witchcraft. Significantly, the patriarchal authority that ultimately convicts Saleema is the Christian Castilian one and not her own Muslim community. Granada is an attempt to explore the emotional and psychological impact of war and colonization upon the psyches of both women and men. Throughout, the narrative describes the uncertainty and anxiety of those persons in the midst of occupation who are seeing their most basic rights gradually stripped away and their cultural and religious traditions

10. Sa‘d is among those characters who see phantoms of absent loved ones, a motif commonly used in classical Arabic poetry (Granara 2003, 59). This motif reemerges in the second book of the trilogy, in which Maryama dreams of Saleema and mourns other dead or dispersed family members.

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criminalized. Clearly, Ashour’s characterization of the wide-ranging and brutal occupation of the Castilians in Granada and the New World can be read as a reference to more recent occupations and invasions in the Arab world, most notably in Palestine and Iraq. Yet the text speaks to a general historical problem of colonization and the devaluation of one culture in the face of another. The text focuses specifically on the strength of female characters who determine to carry on the business of life and caring for family and maintaining what they can of their own cultural and religious traditions. Through the experience of loss of relatives and homeland, Ashour brings her characters into intense engagement with issues of life and mortality. It is these experiences that inspire their ability to focus their creative energy on the future.11 In Granada, the strongest element of hope resides in the form of texts and female oral narration. Through Abu Ja‘far and Saleema’s clandestine acts, some Arab books survive the Castilian purge. Although Saleema is executed in the end, her voice and wisdom live on in the person of Maryama, her sister-in-law, whom she teaches to read and write and whose narrative voice ends the novel. “In the sky, ‘Aysha, is a big tree which has as many green leaves as there are people on the earth—all the people on the earth—young and old, girls and boys, those who speak Arabic like us, and those who don’t. A big tree, ‘Aysha, leaves fall from it and

11. Female characters whose struggles parallel Saleema’s appear in several of Ashour’s early short stories, including “Safsaafa wa al-jinral” (Safsaafa and the General), “Ra’ayt alnakhl” (I Saw the Date Palms), and “Al-jalis fi hadiqa yantathir” (The Man in the Garden Waiting). In “Safsaafa and the General,” the protagonist overcomes her grief about her husband’s early death and her frustration that she cannot substantially help her fellow villagers. Safsaafa recuperates her frustrating journey to see the general by ensuring that she returns to the village with gifts for the children, colored pencils for one so that he can draw and create and an orange for the other. In “I Saw the Date Palms,” Fawziyya also overcomes grief about the loss of her family and devotes herself to plants that represent both family ties and the creative potential of women, and she passes her knowledge of planting on to another woman who will engage her own agency through the acts of planting and growing. In “The Man in the Garden Waiting,” the mother’s fear of uncertainty and death inspires a new determination to engage more fully in the present with her child.

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sprout anew continuously. Every year on the night of Laylat al-Qadr, the tree sprouts a strange and marvelous blossom. In the year our story talks about, the tree sprouted” (1994a, 310; 2003a, 229). Maryama’s act of storytelling to Saleema’s daughter, ‘Aysha, at the hour of her mother’s execution represents the continuation of maternal nurturing and the resilience and continuity of the family. Storytelling becomes “the conqueror of the ultimate and all-silencing event, death” (Morsy 2007, 231). At some level, Maryama becomes the symbolic custodian of the Arabic legacy because she insists on speaking Arabic with her children at home even though the Castilians have outlawed use of Arabic in public. In Granada, Ashour brings to the fore female characters who are able to actively engage their world and challenge the expectations of both their family and society. She describes the characters of Saleema and Maryama as born out of her desire to demonstrate the profound impact of female agency in all aspects of social life. According to Ashour, “This book is not feminist in an orthodox sense, but it is in the sense that I show women taking things in hand. Women are always dealing with life and getting things accomplished but often stories and histories do not show this. . . . I even give prominence to Maryama, for surviving and carrying on day to day” (author interview, Cairo, March 22, 2007). In this sense, Ashour “exposes” the hidden histories of women whose daily activities, although mundane, are equally important to the functioning of society as the public and historically recorded actions of men. Conclusion In general, Ashour’s writing is received as politically committed work with an artistic sophistication that prevents the social and political content from appearing obtrusive and direct. Critics argue that the intense detail of her narrative style underlies her successful interweaving of public and private histories (for example, Osman 1996). In Egypt, much of the critical response focuses on her dominant themes of social and historical responsibility and how these subjects might speak to the reader (for example, Ayyad 1996 and al-Zayyat 1994a). From my point of view as an anthropologist exploring how writers deal with the depiction of motivation and desire, I find Ashour’s stream-of-consciousness

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and dream-narrative techniques particularly compelling. By means of these methods, Ashour effectively intertwines social and political contexts with the intimate psychological worlds of her characters. Like many women writers of her generation, Ashour presents her female (and sometimes male) characters as confronting an oppressive and morally deteriorating social milieu. Through the stream-of-consciousness and dream narratives, Ashour presents a particularly detailed and compelling representation of characters’ fears, motivations for their action or inaction, and rationalizations for their behavior. Through this intimate depiction of consciousness, she presents essentially countercultural figures—particularly women—as intelligent, supremely rational, and sympathetic, even as they face tragic separations from family members and friends. The stream-of-consciousness technique also allows her to present the minutiae of women’s worlds: the foods they cook, the implements they use, the common expressions they use among themselves, and the small and large obstacles they face on a daily basis. Through accurate representation of actual social exigencies and historical events and the imagined responses of her heroines, Ashour seamlessly interweaves the public and private together “without letting the intricacy of the yarns .  .  . escape from between her fi ngers” (Osman 1996, 7). Ashour’s intelligent and rational female characters challenge cultural stereotypes of women as less rational and more emotional than their male counterparts. These female characters have noble ambitions, whether they are mothers and housewives or women in pursuit of formal or informal careers. Still they are not perfect; they suffer from pride, stubbornness, and occasional lack of self-confidence. But Ashour’s characterization of extraordinary characters is couched in the context of a social world that is challenging for all because of larger issues such as government corruption, a poorly managed economy, and the cultural aftereffects of European colonization. Because her critique so finely interweaves issues of national and gender identity, it may appear to some readers less directly challenging to patriarchal structures of Egyptian society than the work of Salwa Bakr or Nemat el-Behairy, who focus more specifically on the effects of Egyptian and Arab cultural mores and social expectations on women. Nevertheless, her rewriting of Egyptian and Arab histories in a way that

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privileges female subjectivities clearly carries an implicit and nuanced critique of female marginalization in the Arab and Egyptian social worlds. In the next chapter we examine the fiction and critical writing of Etidal Osman. Whereas Ashour has distinguished herself in the genre of the historical novel, Osman is best known for her unique short story style. Unlike the other prominent women fiction writers of her generation, Osman is exclusively a short story writer. She is also well known as a literary critic and as coeditor of an internationally noted cultural magazine, Al-sutur. Like her peers, Osman draws upon the Arabic literary tradition to generate her fictional worlds, but she is unique in her mining of the Sufi tradition as a conceptual source for the exploration of contemporary questions of identity, consciousness, and the imagination.

Etidal Osman Egyptian Women’s Writing and Creativity It seems to me that the only way of facing all the crises in social, political, and economic life, all the fragmentation, all the tearing apart of things, all the fear of losing identity, is the concept that if we can reproduce our tradition in a modern context, that may provide the solid base, the integrity of the modern human being. —Author interview with Etidal Osman, Cairo, November 14, 1992 Whenever woman is a writer, she is able to face the power [sulta] of society that imposes a marginal position upon her, with another power, and that is the suggestive power of the imagination. —Etidal Osman, “Al-khitab al-adabi al-nisa’i: Bayna sultat al-waqi‘ wa sultat al-takhyil”

M y f ir st encou n t er with Egyptian writer and critic Etidal Osman was in the spring of 1992. We had arranged for an interview to take place in the offices of the government-run General Egyptian Book Organization, where she was serving as deputy supervisor of publishing. I found Osman in one of the building’s spacious editorial offices, sitting at an 130

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enormous table covered with papers and manuscripts. Like other Egyptian women authors I interviewed for this study, Osman greeted with enthusiasm my request for an interview to talk about her motivations and ideas about the role of women writers as social critics. As I became familiar with her creative and critical writing, it became clear that Osman shared with other members of her literary cohort a sense that the woman writer could play a role in raising social consciousness about a variety of issues, including how dominant ideologies of gender impact women. Osman, like Salwa Bakr, Ibtihal Salem, Sahar Tawfiq, and others, has engaged in experimentation with prose style and narrative strategies to generate texts that privilege a female perspective (see Osman’s “Washm al-shams” [Sun Tattoo] [1992]; “Al-sultana” [The Sultana] [1992]; and Bahr al-‘ishq wa-l-‘aqiq [The Sea of Passion and the Carnelian] [1987]).1 However, particularly interesting for me was Osman’s focus on the role of the imagination in the development of the human consciousness. Osman draws upon a long Islamic philosophical tradition that treats the imagination as a basis for spiritual growth. Her fiction is not explicitly spiritual, but rather addresses issues of personal experimentation and desire, particularly the ones of people who sit outside dominant structures of power. Osman’s focus on the imagination is manifested in stories about children’s dreams and fantasies and explores the process of the child’s expanding consciousness (for example, “Al-bahr laysa bi-ghaddar” [The Sea Is Not Treacherous], “Bayt lana” [A House for Us], and “Yunus al-bahr” [Jonah of the Sea] [1987]). Osman is also a prominent literary critic, and her emphasis on the imagination manifests itself in her criticism of Egyptian women’s writing. She has discussed the work of several prominent Egyptian women writers (1996, 1997, 1999) and has examined how some of these writers use the space of the imagination to evoke, question, and transform images from the popular tradition to suggest new ways of thinking about women’s psychology, intellect, and creative potential (1993).

1. “Sun Tattoo” and “The Sultana” are in the collection Sun Tattoo (1992). Both stories have been translated into English by Radwa Ashour in Samaan 1994. “The Sea of Passion and the Carnelian” is in Yunus al-bahr (Jonah of the Sea) (1987).

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In the first section of this chapter, I situate some of Osman’s motivations and attitudes toward writing in the context of her personal biography and the intellectual world within which she has worked. Second, I examine some of Osman’s short stories dealing with questions of individual desire, intellectual creativity, and innovation, and I explore the ways she draws upon the Arabic literary tradition as one way to ground her uncompromisingly personal vision in a way that is aesthetically credible. I argue that Osman provides a unique approach to discussion of the human condition in often highly abstract stories that juxtapose the languages and imagery of Sufism with the structure and atmosphere of the folktale. These elements, woven together in a poetic prose style, evoke the experiential intensity of childhood desires, fears, and expanding awareness. In the third section of the chapter, I address some of her critical work and explore her own critique of how Egyptian women writers have used the medium of creative writing to treat issues of women’s inner emotional worlds and the impact of gender relations and ideologies upon women. Becoming a Writer in Cairo As she narrated the story of her early life, Osman revealed a keen awareness both of the difficulties faced by women of her mother’s generation and of the centrality of these women in the lives of the extended family. She was born in Cairo in 1942 but spent her early-childhood years living in her maternal relatives’ home in the countryside. Her father died two months after she was born, which prompted her mother’s move back to her home village, Tukh, located in the Delta province of al-Qalyubiyya. This area of the country was often described to me by Egyptians as socially conservative and one in which women’s personal and social lives could be quite circumscribed. Osman’s mother had been only twenty years old when she married Osman’s father, a man forty years her senior. It was in fact her second marriage; she had married first as a teenager and lost her first husband to typhoid before conceiving children. Osman stated that her father had chosen her mother for marriage because he thought she was barren, and while he wanted a young wife to take care of him as he aged, he wanted no further responsibilities of fatherhood.

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Osman spent her first five years in Tukh, until her mother, concerned about the quality of education her daughter would receive in the village, moved back to Cairo. They settled in the area of al-Zahir near Mahatat Nasr and Ramsis Square. As in the experience of Ibtihal Salem, this middle-class district exposed the young Osman to people of various nationalities and religions, as it housed a large population of foreigners (including Greeks and Palestinians who came to work in Egypt in the 1940s) and minorities, including Christians and Jews. Osman attended school in the nearby area of al-‘Abbasiyya, an upper-middle-class quarter during the 1940s and early 1950s. Osman recalls that during the time she and her mother lived in al-Zahir, her grandfather’s house in al-‘Abbasiyya was bayt al-‘a’ila, the home and gathering place for the extended family. She spoke about her paternal grandfather’s house with affection because it was home to her paternal aunts, with whom she had close and supportive relationships. Osman lived in al-Zahir until she was fourteen, at which time her mother remarried and they moved to the Pyramids area. The influence of strong senior female relatives emerged clearly in Osman’s narration of her early life history, although she never directly related their influence to the other main theme that emerged in this story—her early love of reading. She said that as a child, she read anything she could get her hands on, ranging from the sentimental and romantic writings of Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti to detective novels and the innovative stories of Yusuf Idris, who, she recalls, was very much in vogue in the 1950s. Throughout her school days, she continued to read both classical and modern Arabic literature, along with Western fiction in translation. It was also during her middle-school days that Osman began to write, sitting up late at night with a small lamp in her bedroom, working on a story until her mother scolded her for straining her eyes. In 1963 Osman graduated from Cairo University with a degree in English literature. She lived with her aunts in al-‘Abbasiyya until she married and moved to alDuqqi. In 1979 Osman completed a second degree in Arabic literature from the American University in Cairo. She started writing stories seriously around 1980. As she narrated her life history, Osman portrayed her desire to write as being linked to the desire to change aspects of the world with which

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she was dissatisfied or to create an alternative reality. This desire is still clearly part of her motivation as a mature writer. Like other intellectuals I interviewed, she mentioned the obvious problems of high rates of illiteracy and poverty as being particularly difficult barriers to improving the lives of many Egyptians. However, she emphasized her idea that Egyptians have suffered a sort of crisis of identity as a result of the social, economic, and political turmoil of European colonization and wars with Israel. She suggests that one way writers can address this social and psychological fragmentation is to facilitate reflection at both the individual and the social levels. She argues that all writers can contribute to this process but that female writers may have a special role. Women in Egypt (and other societies) are socialized to express their desires, aspirations, and frustrations indirectly, and some female writers (though not all) adopt a similar strategy for expression in their writing. This approach may involve the use of a complex or layered symbolism, which the reader must read and reread to discover underlying emotions and meanings in the text. The reader’s encounter with unexpected style and images in a text may foster a willingness to discard assumptions and encourage a new reaction to reality. At the same time, Osman expressed frustration that prevailing Egyptian mores and public education levels render it easier for a female journalist to garner public attention than for a female literary writer, as the journalist’s storytelling and social analysis are more direct and explicit and more accessible to the general public (author interviews, Cairo, April 14, 1992; November 14, 1992; and December 22, 1996). Osman’s first story to appear in print was “Yawm tawaqqafa aljunun” (The Day the Madness Stopped), which was published in the journal Ibda‘ (Creativity) in 1983. Since that time, she has published widely in the fields of literary criticism and fiction (book-length published works are listed in the references). Osman has also published stories and articles in numerous literary magazines, including Ibda‘, Nur, Al-katiba, and Fusul. She has held a number of posts in the Ministry of Culture, as editor of Prism: Cultural Register and Report (1970–75), editorial secretary of Fusul: Journal of Literary Criticism (1980–85), and editorial manager of that journal (1985–92). In the 1990s she served as deputy supervisor of publishing

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in the General Egyptian Book Organization. More recently, Osman has served as coeditor of the Arabic cultural magazine Sutur and has lived and taught in the United Arab Emirates. The Adventure of Writing In the introduction to her collection of short stories Yunus al-bahr (Jonah of the Sea), Osman describes her literary experiment as an adventure upon which she is accompanied by “a supply of ancient texts, tales and myths” (1987, 6). Her project is to create a type of “new writing” that is somewhere between narrative and poetry. Her creative trajectory also has a social element, in that she argues that literature can encourage the intellectual flexibility that is important for people’s existence in a new age. In a tone echoing Ludwig Wittgenstein or Benjamin Whorf, Osman claims that language shapes the structures of consciousness through which individuals perceive the world (ibid., 5–7). She argues that if people have become mired in fixed ways of doing things, it is because they are constrained by fixed ways of thinking, and that the author may address what she perceives to be deficiencies in the way people think and act in the world by generating a new style of writing that will stimulate new ways of thinking. Osman argues that this task is not an easy one, however, because the writer must first come to terms with the vast heritage of Arabic literature. She claims that the Arabic writer must always struggle to find her own creative trajectory, as the weight of the Arabic literary tradition is constantly pressing down upon her and is ever present in her consciousness. Significant for Osman is the fact that the Arabic language has a sacred aspect, as the Holy Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad and then recorded in Arabic. According to her, the writer cannot possibly write without being influenced by this weighty and sacred heritage, but as a contemporary person, she cannot relate to or be harmonious with all aspects of this tradition. Thus, the author is always faced with the question of what she takes from this heritage and what she rejects. In the end, Osman feels, the writer must find a balance between her identity as a contemporary being and her identity as an inheritor of the Arabic tradition, for she can neither live in the present without the past nor understand the past without the present (author interview, Cairo, March 14, 1992).

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Osman’s discussion about her relationship to the Arabic language mirrors the acknowledgment by other Egyptian writers such as Gamal al-Ghitani (1994) and Salwa Bakr, of the impact of time-honored narrative models on their work.2 Osman’s concerns with innovation in writing and intellectual freedom also resonate with major debates and discussions in Egyptian and Arab literary circles. During the 1990s, literary journals published many articles on the issue of writing and freedom. In 1992, Fusul published three full editions with the title “Literature and Freedom.”3 These special issues contained articles from prominent male and female writers from Egypt, the Arab world, and the West dealing with issues ranging from the relationship between social conditions and creativity to Foucault’s concepts of discourse and power and individual testimonies by Arab authors about their own writing practices. Women writers and critics contributed to this discussion, including Radwa Ashour (1995a), who published an article exploring various metaphors and strategies used by Arab women writers such as Latifa al-Zayyat, Nawal el-Saadawi, Liana Badr, and Etidal Osman to portray restrictions on women’s experience and consciousness.4

2. Samia Mehrez argues that for al-Ghitani, intertextuality becomes a conscious strategy for subverting the conventional differences between “fiction” and “history” and between the imaginary and the real. She suggests that for al-Ghitani and others, resurrecting models from the Arabic literary tradition may serve to mislead censors but also invites a rethinking of the historical record (1994, 1–16, 58–77). Salwa Bakr has described her use of the story-within-a-story technique and other digressive writing strategies popular in the oral and written Arabic tradition as a way of portraying the repetitive and mundane nature of women’s lives in the lower socioeconomic classes and also in the women’s prison (Seymour-Jorn 2002). 3. Fusul (Spring, Summer, and Fall 1992). In his introductory article for the first edition, editor in chief Gabir Asfour wrote that the editorial staff decided to pursue this theme out of the conviction that freedom is the basis for social and intellectual progress and is also the first condition for the development and flourishing of literary criticism. Asfour states that the journal should be a venue in which authors can express their independent judgments and in which readers can engage with these judgments and opinions. 4. Ashour argues that Osman’s story “The Ocean of Passion and the Carnelian” (in Jonah of the Sea) effectively draws upon the Arabic oral tradition and on scriptural stories

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In her introduction to Jonah of the Sea, Osman argues that developing an innovative style in Arabic is difficult because it requires dispensing with certain fixed, exhausted forms in Arabic writing. She states that the field of literature must be stirred up, and she poses the question of how this might be accomplished: How can writing be new? The only answer is in the beginning of this matter that has no end. The writing itself. Willing, voluntarily, I place the noose of the question around my neck, and the noose tightens. The question slips away again, wittily and boisterously: How can you constantly maintain the child-like surprise at the sea of letters forever suspended between lightning and brilliance? (1987, 5)

Jonah of the Sea is divided into two parts, the first of which contains abstract stories written in poetic language and explores themes of loneliness and the struggle for connection between people and for existential understanding. These stories have the tone of a spiritual journey and, as Edwar al-Kharrat notes, are heavily influenced by the language and imagery of Sufism (1990, 7–16). In the second part, Osman further explores the notion of “child-like surprise” in several stories narrated from a child’s perspective as he develops an understanding of himself and the world around him. Both the title story and “The Sea Is Not Treacherous” evoke images from the Qur’an, Sufi writings, and popular tales as they explore issues of creativity and openness to a range of human experiences. The Boy and the Sea “Jonah of the Sea” revolves around the narrator’s reminiscences of boyhood experiences with Jonah (Yunus), a mysterious man who takes him out to a sea cave in his boat and becomes a focal point for the boy’s

of the first man to raise the issue of the tension between personal and social constraints on women’s knowledge and women’s innate desire for knowledge and exploration.

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expanding consciousness. The story begins with the statement, “It was you that took me to the sea, Jonah,” which is repeated throughout the second-person narration, as though the narrator is relating the events of Jonah’s life to Jonah himself. The boy-narrator describes his venture in Jonah’s boat as an experience that was both frightening and stimulating. “On the way you chatter away, relating rumors and gossip, the secrets slide from your face; a face broiled by the sea sun, yet the taut skin over your prominent cheekbones remains unaffected by all those secrets” (1987, 85; 1991a, 76). Throughout Jonah the perspective and identity of both the narrator and Jonah seem to shift. This ambiguity works to keep the reader in a liminal state, being unable to place easily either the narrator or Jonah. For example, Osman renders unclear the narrator’s gender for most of the story—a technique that she uses elsewhere.5 At first, it appears the narrator is feminine, because the narrative voice describes in appreciative detail Jonah’s vitality and masculinity, but betrays an apprehension about being alone with Jonah in the boat. However, the narrator’s subsequent reminiscences of playing in the streets with the other boys make clearer his identity. As al-Kharrat (1990) points out, despite the masculine narration, a feminine sensibility pervades the story and the entire book. The multiple identifications associated with Jonah also render his character ambiguous. Jonah’s association with the sea evokes in the mind of the reader the Qur’anic narrative of the prophet Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale but allowed to survive because of God’s mercy.6 This Qur’anic image is set against the description of Jonah as a man of strong masculinity and aggressive sexuality and whose sexual exploits seem to lead to his eventual expulsion from the village. However, Jonah is also characterized in supernatural terms. At one point the narrator refers to the demon driving Jonah’s behavior: “You looked in my direction and saw

5. For example, in “The Day the Madness Stopped,” originally published in Ibda‘ (September 1983): 66–67, and also in the collection Washm al-shams (1992). 6. Jonah is mentioned several times in the Qur’an, including the verses 37:139–48 and 68:48–50. Sura 10 carries his name. (Booth has translated Osman’s Jonah of the Sea into English [1991].)

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your own devil who had just emerged from his narrow-necked bottle” (1987, 86).7 The identification with supernatural creatures recurs at the end of the story, after Jonah disappears and villagers speculate that he was adopted as a brother by a jinni, while others speculate he was swallowed by a whale, like his namesake. Osman’s complex characterization of Jonah is evocative of several layers of Egyptian culture: detailed popular beliefs about the jinn; traditional stories including powerfully erotic male characters, such as The Thousand and One Nights; and the standard Qur’anic narrative of Jonah. The boy’s sea voyage with Jonah is a voyage into uncertainty—it stirs his imagination and growing consciousness of adult things. At the same time, the journey and the boy’s observations of Jonah are an exploration of sensuality. The narrator ruminates abut Jonah’s ubiquitous erotic presence and the stories of his sexual exploits with village women, who seem unable to resist him. As al-Kharrat notes, throughout this collection of stories, the sea represents erotic desire and experience and the youthful human drive for activity and creativity as opposed to sedateness and constriction (1990, 11). In the story “The Sea Is Not Treacherous,” Osman again employs the image of the sea and the sea journey to explore the issue of creativity and experimentation. However, in this piece she also incorporates elements from the Arabic folktale tradition to describe the dreamlike sea adventure of a child. The story begins with the child relating his mother’s warning not to play by the sea and his overwhelming desire to play in the sun and wind on the beach. Despite his mother’s warning about the sea and its treacherous waves, the child goes down to the beach early one morning and petitions the sea to carry him away to distant places, just as it did the mythical Sindibad. First crashing and then calm, the sea reveals a bewildered sailor who takes the boy on a hundred days’ journey in a day, to the “children’s island” (jazirit al-atfal). There the child encounters trees and flowers that resemble boys and girls, with arms, legs, and hair,

7. Here, as Booth notes, Osman plays on the popular belief that within every person is a devil that may control his behavior in various ways (1991, 89).

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and their companions, which are hoes and jugs of water. The child pursues his quest for knowledge by engaging the fantastic, hybrid creatures that inhabit the island. These plants-children befriend him and show him how they spend their days planting seeds and growing trees and vines from which they harvest sweet fruits, while at night they transform into knights on steeds and ride to the place where they obtain the seeds. The “children” show the boy how to plant the seeds in earth that laughs when it is dug into and absorbs the water with an audible sound. The child is initially perplexed by their play but eventually joins their activities. Upon nightfall, the companions transform into mounted knights armed with large sacks in place of swords, and they all ride into the night, taking the child with them. They come to a halt when they encounter two date palms, a mother and a father, between whom a scale is suspended. My friend the Narcissus came and, leaning over me with her emeraldgreen stalk and blonde locks, whispered in my ear: “In the mother’s pan are the seeds of summer, and in the father’s pan are the seeds of winter. Each scale is guarded by a sparrow day and night. We take sparingly from each, a seed from here and a seed from there. And however much we take the scale is never emptied. But if we lose a seed, the sparrow will flutter its wings, and so the mother knows, and the father knows, and the right or left side is tipped. And when the scale is out of balance, it does not give its seeds.” (1987, 58)

The child experiences joy once he has understood the importance of the scale’s balance and along with Narcissus fills his sack with seeds, taking care not to tip the scale. The two engage happily in this activity for some time, until finally the child feels content and decides to return home with his sack of seeds. His “return” is an awakening from a dream, after which he tells his mother about the gifts that he has brought home for her. In many respects, “The Sea” mirrors a subset of fantasy tales from the oral tradition that el-Shamy (1999) classifies as revolving around the relationship between mothers and children. In these folktales, the mother attempts to teach and protect her young one(s) and is presented as a source of protection, while the father is conspicuously absent. The tales may begin with the mother giving her young one(s) instructions in order

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to keep them safe from the potentially dangerous forces of the outside world. In the “mother and children” tales, as in other types of fantasy tales, human characters may be perceived as animals or things, and animals or things may be perceived as human. These tales may include the motif of a swallow guarding a precious tree and the reunion of the mother and child(ren) at the end of the story, sometimes with the child bringing the mother treasures acquired during an adventure away from her protective presence. All of these elements that are so prominent in motherand-children fantasy tales are present in Osman’s story. However, for the sea-journey part of her story, Osman draws upon adventure tales like the ones of Sindibad from the stories of The Thousand and One Nights. Like Sindibad, the child travels to an exotic island rich with plants and fruits and inhabited by strange and larger-than-life birds and other creatures.8 Characterization in “The Sea” also mirrors the strange or surprising nature of characterization in folktales, in which things and animals are described as though human, or where things readily change from one being into another. Osman describes the plants and trees as smiling and speaking (“ibtasamat zahrat narjis wa qalat shajara”) (1987, 56), and she describes the hoes and jugs becoming knights by using the phrase “iktasaw bi-malabis al-fursan” (they dressed in knights’ clothing) (ibid., 58). Osman achieves a tension between the folktale elements in the story and the nature of the prose itself. She narrates the story not in the descriptive colloquial Arabic of popular tales but—aside from a few colloquial words in the dialogue—in a spare, poetic prose composed of standard Arabic. Osman’s reliance on the Arabic storytelling tradition is strong in “The Sea,” but the story also evokes elements of the Sufi tradition, particularly the spiritual quest. Indeed, the central metaphor of the story is the quest for understanding of self and of the possibilities and limits of exploration. The character of the bewildered sailor who guides the child is also suggestive of the Sufi concept of hayra, or bewilderment, which functions

8. See, for example, the second journey of Sindibad in Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, translated by Dawood (1973, 122–28).

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as a stage on the path of spiritual development and understanding of the Divine. The child himself also experiences this productive bewilderment upon first encountering the island’s strange creatures but ultimately feels both contentment and joy with his increasing understanding.9 Sufi imagery emerges with more prominence in the title story of Osman’s second collection, Washm al-shams (Sun Tattoo). The narrator observes and describes in erotic terms the dance of Berber youths in the courtyard of al-Fana’ mosque in Marrakesh, but she is also positioned as a spiritual seeker. The narrative mirrors the paradoxical language of the Sufi text, which emphasizes the limitations of rational explanation and the awe that can be achieved through bewilderment.10 “The graceful young woman advances, unveils the tattoo of the crescent moons and veils them again, without speaking. For all discourse is a veil, except the discourse of emotion and passion. She looks and looks away. Her tattoo trembles and silently says: take me powerfully. The young man quivers, perplexed and bewildered” (1992, 160–61). Here Osman makes reference to the concept of the veil, an image that appears in the work of Sufi writers such as Ibn al-Arabi and al-Niffari, to represent the obstructions that stand between the spiritual seeker and his or her greater understanding of the Divine, of himself, and of the universe (Chittick 2000, 144–51).11 After watching the dancing and after her interaction with the fortuneteller, the narrator says, “In ignorance is bewilderment and in knowledge is bewilderment” (1992, 163). However, Osman does not merely replicate a type of mystical commentary in this story but allows the reader access to both the narrator’s liminal psychological state and the physical sensations and visual images that pass through her consciousness as

9. Osman describes the expanding awareness of a child in the context of a relationship in another story, “Bayt lana” (A House for Us), in Jonah of the Sea (1987, 49–52). 10. See Chittick 2000, 34–35, and al-Jilani 1992 on the limits of rational explanation. 11. For an example of the image of the veil in al-Niffari: “He stopped me in discovery and perplexity and he said to me, consider the veils, and I considered the veils and indeed they are everything that has appeared and everything that has appeared in what has appeared, and he said, consider the veils and what is of the veils” (Arabic text in Arberry 1935).

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she watches the dance. By weaving together the physical and spiritualpsychological experiences of the narrator, Osman achieves an integrated image of the woman. The body, which is the subject of the youths’ dance, and through which the narrator experiences the sights, sounds, and smells of Marrakesh, becomes defined as the “soul’s tattoo” (wa-l-jism qad sara washman lil-ruh). This integrated image of the woman is in turn mirrored by an integrated image of the geographical region. As Magdy Tawfiq notes (1994), Osman artfully draws together references to Sufism with references to indigenous art and practices of Morocco, pharaonic civilization, famous Islamic sites in Egypt (al-Ghoury mosque), Mecca (the well of Zamzam), and the Levant in order to create a universal image of Middle Eastern cultures that incorporates the dominant and marginal, the past and present. Osman’s reference to the integration of the spiritually advancing consciousness of the woman with her physical self and the simultaneous weaving together of the disparate and illustrious histories and cultures of the Middle East raises the possibility of a sense of wholeness and integration for both Arab individuals and societies. Sultana In Osman’s “Sultana,” we see the combination of several themes common to her other stories: childhood, the reliance on the folktale, and the personal quest of an individual to make her informed consciousness impinge upon her experience of the everyday world. However, here Osman evokes the figure of Shaharazad to explore the impact of women’s storytelling on children’s consciousness (1992, 23–37). Narrated initially through the voice of a child, this piece relates the story of “Auntie Sultana,” a motherly and mysterious village woman who teaches and entertains generations of children through her storytelling. Sultana’s stories are laced with references to supernatural beings, unjust rulers, and noble characters and are presented like riddles with no resolution. Osman evokes the storytelling milieu as she weaves Sultana’s tales into the narrative, only to be interrupted by the questions of the children as they try to understand the strange words and images that make up the stories. Osman introduces colloquial Arabic into the dialogue between Sultana and the children,

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thereby setting up a tension with her prose, which is largely formal Arabic and often poetic in nature, but she also captures poetic moments in this everyday language. Sultana winds up her story of the king with words that a mother might use to close a children’s story: “Tuuta tuuta, firghit il-hadduuta” (Tuuta Tuuta, the story is told out) (ibid., 34). Despite the children’s protestations, Sultana ends the story session without providing an ending, suggesting instead that the children tell what happens next. Thus, she privileges individual creativity and uncertainty over authority and convention. In the final lines of the story, this ethic leads the narrator, now a grown woman, to buck the authority of her own boss at the newspaper office where she works by refusing to submit writing on a mundane matter only because it is demanded by the daily production of the newspaper. As in “The Sea,” the imagination itself becomes an essential element in the individual’s ability to transform himor herself and to move beyond the confines of conventional expectations or ways of thinking. Like “Sun Tattoo,” this story works both at the personal or psychological level and at the level of society. As Latifa al-Zayyat notes (1994a), by juxtaposing the magical, mythical atmosphere of Sultana and her stories with the depressing reality of the grown narrator at the end of the story, Osman provides an effective commentary on the lack of justice and of individual freedom in Egypt and the “rule of falseness” pervasive in the media and in society more generally. Women Writing Between the Power of Reality and the Power of the Imagination In her capacity as a critic, Osman has also explored the role of the female imagination in Arab women’s writing. In her article “Al-khitab al-adabi al-nisa’i: Bayna sultat al-waqi‘ wa sultat al-takhyil” (Women’s Literary Discourse: Between the Power of Reality and the Suggestive Power of Imagination), Osman contributes to the debate in Egypt and the Arab world about whether there are definable characteristics distinguishing women’s literature, and she examines the manner in which women writers characterize women’s and men’s imaginative worlds as they pertain to the qualities and possibilities of women’s lives. Osman describes two characteristics that inform the “female consciousness” and literary

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production of several Egyptian women writers. The first is the focus on women’s alienation from their bodies, a theme that she analyzes in works by Nawal el-Saadawi, Alifa Rifaat, and Latifa al-Zayyat. Osman addresses Alifa Rifaat’s story “‘Alami al-majhul” (My World of the Unknown) (1981), in which a female protagonist relates the story of the strange passion that develops between herself and a snake that appears in the garden of her rural Egyptian home.12 Osman offers an analysis of the narrator’s fantasy relationship as “dispatching the erotic desires that Michel Foucault considers expressive of a type of wisdom and reason, and which are in their essence part of the system of nature” (1993, 16). She argues that Rifaat’s use of the imaginary world constitutes a rebellion against the power of reality and the factors that contribute to the woman’s alienation from her body. Osman suggests that other women writers such as Nawal el-Saadawi and Latifa al-Zayyat explore the emotional impact upon women of social conventions that emphasize their physical attributes over their intellectual or creative talents. Osman argues that both authors point out that women should be permitted to realize their complete humanity—the integration of physical, intellectual, and emotional aspects. According to Osman, a second important characteristic that appears in the work of Egyptian women writers such as Rifaat and Bakr is a challenge to the prevailing set of negative images of women in history and in popular stories and myths. This challenge involves taking refuge in that heritage itself and extracting from it “anti-myths” that represent positive or at least more nuanced images of women. Osman argues that in her 1987 novella, Maqam ‘Atiyya (‘Atiyya’s Shrine), Salwa Bakr constructs a semimythical figure of ‘Atiyya by weaving together contradictory images of women from the popular imagination—images of the woman as saint and images of the woman as manipulative or immoral. These images are conveyed by the primary narrative voice of a young journalist and the interviewees who offer their conflicting views on the deceased ‘Atiyya. As Osman observes, the interviewees “represent different social segments, presenting voices in the Bakhtinian sense of polyphony, a multiplicity

12. See Denys Johnson-Davies’s 1983 translation of this story (Rifaat 1987).

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of voices” (ibid., 19). The multiple narrative voices sometimes contradict and sometimes agree on the nature of ‘Atiyya’s personality and life, with interviewees describing ‘Atiyya as saintly, rather average, or vulgar and manipulative. Osman argues that in this story Bakr constructs a number of general systems of value, each one possessing its own relative truth, independently possessing its own guiding principle, while the writer abstains from subjugating these systems to a ruling system of values; leaving to the reader the right to assess this for himself and arrive at his own private judgments regarding the mythical woman that the imaginative world embodies. And thus building the literary text becomes a matter of equal participation between the numerous narrators on the one hand and the equally numerous readers on the other, both male and female. (ibid., 20)

Osman argues that when a woman writer presents a countermyth that is derived from existing myths or images of women, she assumes the position of a neutral observer who merely refers to existing elements of the popular imagination, such as the image of the woman who is raised to the status of local saint (ibid., 21). At the same time, by emphasizing the relativity of “truths” about women, women writers like Bakr and Rifaat suggest that these and other “truths” can be challenged. Elsewhere, Osman (1996) treats the historical novels of Radwa Ashour, arguing that in works such as A Warm Stone (1985), Khadiga and Sawsan (1989), and Granada (1994a), Ashour constructs a series of compelling, complex, and varied female personalities within the context of a wide range of historical realities. Osman suggests that women writers who achieve an understanding of the ways in which women are oppressed and who also master the forms of artistic production are in a position to use the power of suggestion and the imagination to valorize positive images of women in the Arab literarycultural heritage and to challenge those individuals that deny women’s humanity. In so doing, the woman writer may challenge “that external image [that] includes mental and social structures that impose upon the woman a marginal place and a lowly position on the social ladder, and also includes a noteworthy amount of created myths about the woman that contradict her humanity” (1993, 13).

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Conclusion My exploration of some of Osman’s creative and critical work suggests how her “poetic imagination,” in Friedrich’s sense (1996), works to analyze and synthesize her cultural tradition and to address her own artistic, intellectual, and social concerns. Much of her work focuses on the process of expanding consciousness, of children, of adults interacting with children, or of adults in new social or personal landscapes. Her short stories draw on the space of the imagination as a site for this expanding consciousness—the dream or imaginings about supernatural creatures and figures from fairy tales. Osman’s desire to startle readers’ perceptions into new awareness by means of strange images and language is part of an engagement with modernist poetics, and in this sense it echoes the poetry of T. S. Eliot. However, like Eliot, Osman is also concerned with unearthing layers of meaning and discovering some historical and ontological coherence in the various Egyptian contexts that she treats. Osman’s criticism of women’s literature has focused, among other things, on how women writers use the space of the imagination to evoke, question, and transform images from the popular tradition to suggest new ways of thinking about women’s psychology, intellect, and creative potential. Of course, Osman’s focus on the intellectual value of the imagination is hardly new in Islamic thought. Medieval philosophers such as Ibn Tufayl and Avicenna viewed the imagination as complementing the capacities of the rational faculties. These authors saw the imagination as central to achieving spiritual knowledge and progress, which would otherwise be unattainable because of the limits of human rational processes (Hughes 2004). This position mirrors the view of Sufi thinkers, who hold that the imagination alone can help man to make sense of contradictions and opposites and to understand the fundamental ambiguity of the universe.13 While Osman’s work draws on a long philosophical tradition that treats the imagination as a basis for spiritual growth, her own fiction is

13. Corbin 1969 and Chittick 1989 have written extensively on the importance of creativity and imagination in Ibn al-Arabi’s work.

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less explicitly spiritual and addresses issues of personal experimentation and desire, particularly of people who sit outside the dominant structures of power. Unlike many female writers of her literary generation, Osman does not always use a woman narrator to express this perspective. She often adopts the point of view of a child, sometimes a male child, to explore other less-empowered points of view. Literary figures raise social consciousness by sacralizing and desacralizing cherished beliefs and institutions and by generating new ways of looking at the past and the all-too-familiar present (Phillips 1987). I argue that Osman does precisely this by drawing on the many layers of Egyptian and Arab heritage, Sufi writings, the Qur’an, popular tales, and local belief about jinn and other supernatural creatures to reinforce a sense of cultural rootedness while inspiring an exploration of issues of personal freedom and desire and the reconsideration of personal and social realities. Although some of the writing strategies she adopts—finding a middle ground between poetry and prose, between standard and colloquial Arabic, between the written and oral traditions—are common in avant-garde Egyptian literature, the originality in her work lies in how she combines these techniques with the image of the Sufi search and the trope of the child’s experience. By combining the latter two elements in many stories, Osman draws an implicit parallel between the types of exploration and learning involved in the child’s experience of the folktale, in the Sufi spiritual search, and in the process of reading innovative literature. The critical response to her work indicates that her version of “new writing” has generated an interpretation of human experience that has been compelling to Egyptian critics and other readers.

Conclusion

In h is r ecen t assessmen t of Egyptian literary writing, Richard Jacquemond states, “Whether major or minor, avant-garde or arrière-garde, all, or nearly all [Egyptian] writers, seem to have been engaged in a kind of permanent effort to rewrite the Description de l’Egypte” (2008, 88). Jacquemond is referring to the continuing dominance of the realist paradigm in Egyptian letters despite recent experimentation with literary subjects and forms. Certainly, this descriptive aspect and its underlying ethic of “social responsibility” are present in the work of the authors discussed in this book. Some of the 1970s authors acknowledge the recording function of the writer: Ibtihal Salem describes her use of realism to illuminate those aspects of culture that should be discussed and transformed; Radwa Ashour emphasizes the recording aspect of writing as authors document and interpret events, dominant social mores, and major socioeconomic phenomena of a given historical period. However, I argue that these writers achieve much more than this descriptive function by crafting new linguistic and narrative forms to delve deeply into women’s and men’s consciousness and memory. The 1970s authors generate an interpretive record of individual subjectivities in the context of momentous changes in the social and political circumstances of their era, making a unique and innovative contribution to the Egyptian and Arab literary traditions. In this study I have adopted literary and anthropological perspectives to encourage a multifaceted approach toward reading Egyptian women’s writing. I have presented personal histories and writing philosophies of the 1970s authors with a view to generating a deeper understanding of how women function as active cultural critics within their own societies. 149

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At the same time, I have attended to the various literary techniques and strategies these writers employ in order to explore the complex ways that women use language to express their experience and social and political critiques. I explored their writing not just as politically committed narrative practice but as a multilayered approach to language and narrative forms that allows authors to explore women’s experience of and involvement in the complex web of social, political, and economic structures that shape turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Egyptian society. Furthermore, I have attempted to explore what Friedrich (2003) calls the “mysterious connection” between the mind of the writer and the symbolic and cultural systems with which she is engaged. That is to say, I have pointed to some of the specific elements of the Egyptian cultural system (past and present) that have drawn each author to artistic production. Certainly, multiple factors have led to each of these authors’ engagement with literature and social critique: a deep commitment to their society, access to an education and literary milieu that encouraged exploration of different literatures and genres, and a firm belief that literature can make a difference in the everyday world. Beyond these common factors, I have tried to identify the specific ways in which each author has drawn upon and experimented with elements of her social milieu, cultural tradition, and personal circumstances to generate “distillate insights into cultural values, and the variations, inconsistencies and feedback between those values” (ibid., 114). For Nemat el-Behairy, it has been a concern with the ways in which poverty and gender ideologies intersect to limit women’s options and to damage their psychological and physical health. For writers such as Salwa Bakr and Etidal Osman, it is language itself and its potential impact on human thought that drive their creative production. That language itself is the site of experimentation is important for this consideration of women as cultural critics. It has been one aim of this book to demonstrate the 1970s authors’ awareness of the centrality of experimentation with language and with aspects of the Arabic literary heritage to the crafting of a social critique that will garner the attention of critics and other readers, thereby allowing them access to the public social discourse of the day. Women writers experiment with the levels of the Arabic language, and as they do, they challenge the dominance and the

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prestige of that language. At the same time, their experimentation with the relationship between standard and colloquial languages is a sophisticated one that allows them both to demonstrate their competence with the standard language and to pose a new sort of authority that emanates from vernacular speech contexts and everyday modes of social action. This authority emerges from their portrayal of women using their savvy and often limited resources to accomplish the everyday tasks required of wives, mothers, workers, and citizens. The 1970s writers thereby challenge the formal language, modes of discourse within the literary tradition, and male hierarchy that they support, while at the same time using standard language and literary techniques to authorize their social and political critique. For Nemat el-Behairy and Ibtihal Salem, movement between the colloquial and the standard in narrative and dialogue helps them to raise and endorse a female point of view. The key to Salwa Bakr’s aesthetic lies in the commonalities between the two levels of the Arabic language. These commonalities are in turn used to suggest the shared experience of Egyptians whose worlds are otherwise set apart by differences in educational and economic backgrounds or religious perspectives. Although their approaches to language and narrative technique differ in significant ways, there are affinities in the way that this generation of writers responds to their historical reality. In this sense, their collective works constitute a coherent universe of discourse. As Radwa Ashour affirms, “This affinity is a sense of estrangement, a strangled dream, and the recognition of a kind of historical dilemma” (author interview, Cairo, November 30, 1992). The 1970s writers relate this estrangement to a complex set of factors that include poverty, political oppression, oppressive gender ideologies, and the losses and trauma of war. In some cases, they suggest that all these forms of oppression are exacerbated by colonial or neocolonial forces that help to shape or shore up the structures of power and authority in the Arab world. Most important to note here is that they do not simply attribute women’s oppression to men or patriarchal culture, but rather generate a complex critical discourse that illuminates how gender ideologies combine with political oppression and a host of economic issues (un- and underemployment, inflation, the housing shortage, and inadequacy of public services) to constrain the lives of women, to drive

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them to eccentricity, madness, or an alienated point of view. At the same time, they do not portray this alienated perspective as locking women into a condition of passivity but rather suggest that it may be the source of a new process of consideration. Far from portraying women as helpless, these writers represent women as actively addressing a range of issues that affect them, their families, and their communities. These actions may be as seemingly insignificant as giving insight to a child or as daunting as verbally confronting and resisting an agent of the government. The 1970s writers portray a world of female characters who have not rejected their society or its men, who are themselves often described as lacking economic or political power. Rather, they depict women as actively attempting to reenvision society and their relationships with their male partners in marriage, work, or friendship. The fact that the 1970s writers do not target men or an androcentric gender system as the sole source of women’s oppression perhaps affords them more success with the critical establishment than writers like Nawal el-Saadawi or Alifa Rifaat, who focus more specifically on male abuse of women and on the limitations imposed on women by patriarchal culture. The 1970s authors write to a critical audience that appreciates the successful fusion of sociopolitical critique with artistically innovative literary techniques, and they are fully engaged in this attempt to fuse commitment with creativity. An important part of their critique is a representation of how individuals respond to state discourses about what it means to be an ideal “modern” citizen and to the governmental bureaucracy’s (mis)handling of projects concerning public assistance, housing, and educational projects, among other things. However, they also respond to trends inspired by the Islamist opposition. In more general terms, they investigate the impact of religious difference and specifically the impact of religious intolerance—whether it be Christian or Muslim—upon the psyches of women, children, and men. However, this dual approach need not be read as a pandering to the critics. Rather, their exquisite interweaving of the issues affecting Egyptian women and men reflects a nuanced understanding of how individuals are impacted by a diverse set of social, political, and economic conditions. They explore how individuals craft a way of living through engagement with family and community, religion,

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or spirituality or simply by relying on the comfort of dreams and memory. They offer a particularly significant literary discourse as they attest to and engage the diversity of Egyptian experience, not only in the troubled present but also in ages past. In the introduction to this book, I posed the question of how these writers’ works generate new ways of thinking and talking about women. Although it would require a sociological study to examine their impact upon the public realm, I think that it is clear that the 1970s writers have opened new avenues of discussion and modes of expression in the literary realm. They have contributed significantly to the development of feminine writing in the Cixousian sense as they focus on language itself to explore women’s experience of their bodies and sexuality, their emotions, and even their unconscious minds. They have pursued this experimentation despite an increasingly conservative social environment that may discourage taking chances with new subject matter, especially subjects related to sexuality and nonorthodox ways of thinking about the spiritual. The 1970s writers clearly recognize the role that language plays in maintaining the structures of thinking that place women lower on the hierarchy of power and worth and that work in many ways to limit women’s lives. It is perhaps this clear realization that motivates them to inscribe their own understanding of women’s personal, social, and political experience into the Arab literary tradition and to contribute to recasting woman’s place in the sociosymbolic system. Their innovations have paved the way for a younger generation of Egyptian writers to explore women’s social, personal, emotional, and physical experience in different aspects and subcultural contexts. Women of the new Egyptian avant-garde delve deep into uncharted areas of women’s lives, as, for example, May Telmissany generates a novel-length exploration of an Egyptian woman’s physical and emotion experience of the loss of her child in Dunyazad (Dunyazad) (1997). Similarly, in Al-khiba’ (The Tent) (1996), Miral al-Tahawy develops a sensitive account of the complex web of family relationships in Bedouin society and of the imaginative worlds, personal desires, and emotional states of its girls and women. This reading of Egyptian women’s writing seeks to provide the reader with a detailed glimpse into the social and political concerns and artistic

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preoccupations of this group of perceptive social observers. It is my hope that any insights gleaned from this book may help the reader unfamiliar with the Egyptian and Arab literary context to appreciate these writers’ full engagement with the issues of their day and the range of artistic approaches by which they broach new subjects, including those subjects that are not generally accepted as legitimate topics for public discourse. Their writing exposes the rifts, fractures, and contradictions in Egyptian society. It raises more questions than it suggests answers. However, at the same time, this writing emphasizes the strength and resilience of Egyptian women as they shape their lives under constantly changing but consistently difficult circumstances.

. . .

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Index

Page numbers appearing in italics refer to photographs or illustrative material. Abd al-’Aziz, Malik, 6

al-’ammiya al-fasiha, xiii, xxviii, 3, 25–26

Abd al-Dayem, Medhat, 80

Anis al-jalis (magazine), 2, 5

‘Abdallah, Sufi, 6

anthropology, xviii, xxi, xxiv–xxxi. See also literary anthropology

Abd al-Sattar Hatita, 50

Al-’araba al-dhahabiyya la tas’adu ila al-

Abdel, Farouk, 27n6

sama’ (Bakr), xxiin5, xxxviii, 19, 28–36,

‘Abd el-Qadir, Farouk, 11–12, 34n9

123n7

Abu-Khalid, Fowziyya, xxxii Abu-Lughod, Lila, xxi–xxii, xxxi

Arabesque, xxviii, 28–29, 31, 33, 34

abuse, 6, 29, 34, 36, 53, 85, 152

Arab feminism, 1, 6–7, 9

al-Adawiyya, Rabi’a, 2

“Arabi” (Salem), 63–64, 64n7, 80

Ahadith jiddati (Qalamawi), 5–6

Arabic diglossia, xxiii, xxiiin6, xxxviii, xxxix–xl, 16, 62

Al-ahram (newspaper), 13

Arabic language, xiii, 4; gender and, xx,

Al-’a’ila (magazine), 2 “Akyas al-hilwa” (Salem), 69

xxiii–xxiv, 19, 24, 62; levels of, xxii,

“Alami al-majhul” (Rifaat), 145

xxiiin6, 24–25, 107, 108; patriarchal

Algeria, 114

nature of, xxxiii, 107–8; sacredness of,

Al-Ali, Nadje Sadig, xx–xxi, xxxiv–xxxv

xxxiii, 135; standard, xxiii–xxix, 24,

alienation: from the body, 6–7, 85, 90, 145;

151; transliteration, xiii–xiv, xviin1.

and the “other,” xiii, 20, 52, 78, 100;

See also al-’ammiya; al-’ammiya al-fasiha;

political and social, 56, 65, 71, 76, 77,

colloquial language; fusha/al-fusha

78–79; writing as relief from, 113–14

Arebi, Saddeka, xxvii–xviii, xxxii, 107

Alif (journal), 13

Armbrust, Walter, xxivn6

Alsanea, Rajaa, 61

“Al-’asafir tu’arriq samt al-madina” (elBehairy), 98–101

American University in Cairo, 133 Amin, Qasim, 4n1

Ash’ar al-nisa’ (al-Marzubani), 2

al-’ammiya, xiii, xxiii–xxiv, 24–26

Al-’ashiqun (el-Behairy), xxxix, 92–93

171

172

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Index

Ashjar qalila ‘inda al-munhana (el-Behairy), 105 Ashour, Radwa, xxxv–xxxvi, 109–29; activism of, 115; awards and grants

Badr, Liana, 136 Baghdad, invasion of, 70–71, 126 al-Bahrawi, Saeed, 104 Bakr, Salwa, xxxv–xxxvi, 12, 17, 17–55;

received, 111; biography of, 110–11, 113,

activism of, 21; on Arab society’s lack

114; comparisons to Bakr, xxxix–xl,

of self-questioning, 52n16; ‘Atiyya’s

116, 128; comparisons to el-Behairy,

Shrine, 19, 36–40, 123n7, 145–46;

128; comparisons to Salem, 57; cri-

biography of, 20–22; comparisons to

tiques of, 112, 127, 146; on feminism,

Ashour, xxxix–xl, 116, 128; com-

108, 116–17, 127; influences on, xxxii,

parisons to el-Behairy, 90, 93, 95;

113, 114; intellectual freedom, 136;

comparisons to Osman, 25, 131, 136;

“I Saw the Date Palms,” xl, 123n7,

comparisons to el-Saadawi, 34n9,

126n11; The Journey, 112n2; Khadiga

35–36; comparisons to Salem, 57, 62;

and Sawsan, 146; “The Man in the

critiques of, 15, 18, 34–36, 49–51, 54,

Garden Waiting,” 126n11; on Osman,

145–46; The Golden Chariot, xxiin5,

136n4; Osman on, 112n2, 118, 146;

xxxviii, 19, 28–36, 123n7; imprison-

“Safsaafa and the General,” 126n11;

ment of, 28; influences on, xxxii, 20,

spelling of name, xviin1; style of, xl,

21; “new language” of, xxivn6, xxviii,

111–13, 112n2, 117, 118, 120, 122, 127–28;

xxxviii, 18, 23–28, 38, 52, 57, 93; Osman

subjective histories, xvii, xxii, xxxix–

on, 145; “patriarchal binary thought,”

xl, 111–13, 120; themes of, 109–10, 112,

23, 23n4, 35, 38; personal style of, 18;

117–18, 121, 122, 125–26, 127; transla-

“poetics of disorientation,” 35; spell-

tions by, 111n1, 131n1; on US bombing

ing of name, xviin1; “That Beautiful

of Iraq (1991), 109; A Warm Stone, xl,

Voice,” 32–33; themes of, 18–20, 22–23,

117–22, 146; on writers and writing,

24, 26, 30–31, 39, 40, 53; “Thirty-one

109, 110–11, 113–16, 121, 128–29, 149,

Beautiful Green Trees,” 32–33, 123n7;

151. See also Granada (Ashour)

translations of works by, 22, 22n3;

al-Aswany, ‘Ala’, 101, 107

use of proverbs, 18, 26, 27; Western

“Atbaq fi-l-hilm” (el Behairy), 96–98

interest in, 54; on writers and writing,

‘Atiyya’s Shrine (Bakr), 19, 36–40, 123n7,

xxii, 23, 40, 46, 49, 54, 150; “Zinat in

145–46

the President’s Funeral Procession,”

Avicenna, 147

19, 26–28. See also Man from Bashmour,

Avierino, Alexandra, 2

The (Bakr)

‘Ayn Shams University, 21, 60, 89

Banat al-Riyadh (Alsanea), 61

Ayyam (Husayn), 21

Baraka, Iqbal, 7 Barghouti, Mourid, 111 Barghouti, Tammim, 111

Al-bab al-maftuh (al-Zayyat), xxxii, 6

Baron, Beth Ann, 5

Bab al-Sahah (Khalifeh), 12

Al-bashmuri (Bakr). See Man from Bash-

Badawi, el-Said, xxiiin6

mour, The (Bakr)

Index “Bayt lana” (Osman), 142n9

|

173

Booth, Marilyn, xxii–xxiii, 5, 6; on

beauty and femininity, 23, 29–30, 104, 106

el-Behairy, 99, 100, 101; on literary

el-Behairy, Nemat, 25n5, 84, 84–108;

censorship in Cairo, 100; on Osman,

awards and grants received, 104;

139n7; on Salem, 80–81, 82; transla-

biography of, 86–89, 93, 94; “The

tions by, 60n3, 63n6, 80, 111n1, 138n6;

Birds Disturb the Silence of the City,”

“writing the body,” xxx–xxxi, 99

98–101; breast cancer, 89, 102–4; cen-

Bourdieu, Pierre, xx

sorship of, 100; Chronicles of a Radiating

bread riots, 21, 117, 118

Woman, xxxix, 102–4; comparisons

breast cancer, 89, 102–4

to Ashour, 128; comparisons to Bakr,

British colonialism, 2–3, 4, 5, 8–9

90, 93, 95; comparisons to el-Saadawi, xxxix, 107–8; critiques of, 99, 100–101, 104–5; death of, 89; “Dreaming of

Cairo, 2, 9, 115, 117; clothing and style

Dishes,” 96–98; A Few Trees at the Bend,

in, 18; Hayy al-Zahir district, 58, 133;

105; Half a Woman, xxxix, 33, 90–92,

literary environment in, xx, xxi, xxii,

93, 95–96; The Infatuated, xxxix, 92–93;

xxiv, 10–16, 17, 80, 100

influences on, xxxix, 88; literary clas-

Cairo Atelier, 10–13, 17

sification of, xviin2; “The Quarter

Cairo University, 89, 110, 114, 115, 133

Without a Moon,” 93–96; “Sand

capitalism, xxxii–xxxiii, xxxix, 65, 75, 80

Dream,” 92; spelling of name, xviin1;

censorship, xxxv, 2–3, 76, 100–101, 106,

themes of, xxxi, xxxix, 84–85, 90, 94,

136n2; of street, xxxi, 62–63

95–96, 98–101, 105; use of colloquial

Chittick, William, 147n13

language, xxxviii, xxxix, 86, 92, 93,

Christianity, 40–51, 58, 69–70, 74, 133, 152

94–95, 96–97, 107–8, 151; use of poetic

Chronicles of a Radiating Woman (el-

prose, 86, 102–3, 105; use of proverbs,

Behairy), xxxix, 102–4

xxviii, xxxix, 92, 94–95, 97, 98; on writ-

circular narrative technique, 33, 34

ers and writing, 14–15, 17, 84–85, 96,

“City of Cardboard” (Salem), 64–65, 70

106, 107, 150

Cixous, Hélène, 100, 108; écriture féminine,

“Beirut decentrists,” xix

xiii, xxx–xxxi, 23, 23n4; “eternal assas-

bint fi-l-rada’a, 118n5

sination” of misogyny, 98; “feminine

“Birds Disturb the Silence of the City,

practice of writing,” 120, 153; “patri-

The” (el-Behairy), 98–101

archal binary thought,” 23, 23n4, 35,

Blue Windows (Salem), 60, 80

38; recovering female self, 112; simple

body (physical), 153; alienation from, 6–7,

oppositional thought, 34; “universal

85, 90, 145; beauty and femininity, 23, 29–30, 104, 106; breast cancer, 89,

battlefield,” 85–86 class, xviii, xix, xxi, xxxiv, 86; clothing

102–4; integrated image of, 143; patri-

and, 18; education and, 9, 13, 40, 59;

archal notions of, 120–23; “writing the

Egyptian Left and, 21; friendship and,

body,” xxx–xxxi, 83, 99, 103–5. See also abuse; desire; sexuality

32–33; reading and, 3–4 clothing, xiii, xiv, 18, 78, 78n11, 105–6

174

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Index

Cochran, Judith, 8 colloquial language, xxii; al-’ammiya, xiii,

desire, xxiv, xxviii, xxix–xxx, xxxii; childhood, 131, 132; cultural restrictions on,

xxiii–xxiv, 24–26; al-’ammiya al-fasiha,

6, 84, 86, 90, 95; marital context of, 7,

xiii, xxviii, 3, 25–26; Bakr’s “new

32, 81; scriptural stories of, 136n4. See

language,” xxiiin6, xxviii, xxxviii, 18, 23–28, 38, 52, 57, 93; el-Behairy’s use of, xxxviii, xxxix, 86, 92, 93, 94–95, 96–97,

also sexuality diglossia, xxiii, xxiiin6, xxiv, xxxviii, xxxix–xl, 16, 62

107–8, 151; levels of, xxiiin6, 24–25, 107,

digression, 27–29, 30–31, 33, 34–35, 136n2

108; Osman’s use of, 141, 143–44, 148;

Distant View of a Minaret (Rifaat), 7

Salem’s use of, xxiii, xxxviii, 62, 64,

divorce, 6, 14–15, 21, 22, 106, 106n6, 119

72, 74, 80; standard vs., xxiv. See also

“Dreaming of Dishes” (el-Behairy), 96–98

proverbs

dream-narrative style, 111–12, 118–19, 128

community, 35, 39, 81, 95n4

Dunya saghira (Salem), xxxviii, 33, 57, 68–70

conservatism, xxxi, 38, 99; clothing, xiii,

“Dunya saghira” (Salem), 33

xiv, 18, 78, 78n11, 105–6; opposition to

Dunyazad (Telmissany), 153

female education, 8–9, 8n2; opposition to women’s writing, 62–63, 153. See also Islamists consumerism, xix, xxiii, xxxii–xxxiii, 65, 75, 80

écriture féminine, xiii, xxx–xxxi, 23, 23n4. See also “writing the body” education, xviii, 4, 7–10; literacy, 9, 14,

cooke, miriam, xix, 85

62–63, 134; student demonstrations and

Coptic language and religion, xxxviii, 20,

protests, xviii–xix, 21, 28, 60, 115, 117

40–51, 42n14, 52, 53, 58 Corbin, Henry, 147n13

Egyptian Association for Literary Criticism, 12

Council of Egyptian Writers, 115

Egyptian Left, 21

cross-genre writing, xxxix, xl, xli, 7, 68,

Egyptian literature, xviin2, xxi, 1–16,

79; defined, xxii–xxiii, xxxii–xxxiii. See

149–54; history of, 1–7; “magical dual-

also specific genre

ism” in, xvii; marginal perspectives of, xix Egyptian University, 5

Dar al-Hilal (publishing house), 50 Dar Merit (publishing house), 12

Egyptian Writers Between History and Fiction (Mehrez), 37n12

Dar Sharqiyat (publishing house), 12

Eid, Mushira, xxiii–xxiv, 25n5, 28, 93

Dar Sina (publishing house), 12, 12n4

Eliot, T. S., 147

Darwish, Mahmoud, 77

Elsadda, Hoda, 15, 23n4, 34

debacle (naksa), xiv, xviii, 114

Emancipation of Women, The (Amin), 4n1

demonstrations and protests: food riots,

ethnography, xx, xxvi–xxix, xxxi, 20, 32,

21, 117, 118; student, xviii–xix, 21, 28, 60, 115, 117 Derrida, Jacques, xxvii

73, 73n10, 95 Evening Newspaper (Nadwat jaridat almasa’), 12

Index Family (magazine), 2 fantasy, xxii, 72–73, 74–75, 92, 140–41, 145. See also imagination Al-fatah (magazine), 2, 3 Fathi, Ibrahim, 15, 50, 105 Fawwaz, Zaynab, 4

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175

General Egyptian Book Organization (GEBO), 12, 61, 111, 130, 135 General Organization of Cultural Palaces (GOCP), 12, 61 genres. See cross-genre writing; specific genre

femininity and beauty, 23, 29–30, 104, 106

“Al-ghadab” (Salem), 69–70

feminism, xxi–xxii, xxvi, 15, 36–37; Arab,

Gharnata (Ashour). See Granada (Ashour)

1, 6–7, 9; Ashour on, 108, 116–17, 127;

Ghazoul, Ferial, xvii

publishing and, 12; Western, xxv, xxx–

al-Ghitani, Gamal, xxii, xxiin5, 37, 38, 136,

xxxi, 3, 23, 54 Few Trees at the Bend, A (el-Behairy), 105 fiction, as genre, xxii, xxix–xxx, 4–5, 12–13

136n2 ginn/ginni (jinn/jinni), xiii, 69n8, 75, 76, 139, 148

Al-fihrist (Ibn Nadim), 2

Girls of Riyadh (Alsanea), 61

Al-firdaus (magazine), 2

Golden Chariot (Bakr), xxiin5, xxxviii, 19,

folklore. See myth and folklore

28–36, 123n7

food, xiv, 21, 117, 118, 121

Gramsci, Antonio, xxvii

Foucault, Michel, xxvii–xxviii, 99, 136, 145

Granada (Ashour), 122–27, 123n7; awards

Fouda, Farag, xxvi

received, 111; critiques of, 146; inspira-

Friedrich, Paul, xxviii–xxix, 147, 150

tion for, 115; style, 73n10, 120n6, 122;

friendship, 14, 31–33, 71, 78, 152 fusha/al-fusha: Arabic diglossia and, xxiiin6; Ashour’s use of, 112; Bakr’s use of,

themes, xxii, xl, 122 Granara, William, 111n1 Gulf War (1991), 80, 109, 110–11, 114

xxiiin6, xxviii, 23–28, 38, 52, 57, 93; elBehairy’s use of, 91, 92, 93, 94–95, 96–97, 107–8; defined, xiii; Salem’s use of, 72 Fusul (journal), 13, 136, 136n3

Habbalin, Louisa, 2 Hadith, 9 Hadithat ightisab (Baraka), 7 Hafez, Sabry, 23n4, 37n12, 38

gender: Arabic language and, xx, xxiii–

Hajar dafi’ (Ashour), xl, 117–22, 146

xxiv, 19, 24, 62; as organizing prin-

al-Hakim, Tawfiq, 28

ciple, xxx–xxxi; US analyses of, xxx, 54

Half a Woman (el-Behairy), xxxix, 33,

gender oppression: first realizations of,

90–92, 93, 95–96

90; relationship to physical body and,

“Half a Woman” (el-Behairy), xxxix, 33

105; sexism, xxii, 29, 95, 124; war and,

Halim, Asma’, 6

80; Western interests in Arab depic-

Haqqi, Yahya, 25

tions of, 54; women as victims and

Hashim, Labiba, 4, 5

agents of, 35–36, 52, 85, 116–17, 118–19;

Haykal, Husayn, 4

women writers on, xxiv, xxxiv, 15, 53,

hayra, 141–42

146, 151–52

Hayy al-Zahir district (Cairo), 58, 133

176

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Index

“Al-hayy yakhlu min al-qamar” (elBehairy), 93–96 Heart of Man, The (Hashim), 5 Herzfeld, Michael, xxix higab, 105–6 Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts, 21 “Hilm al-raml” (el-Behairy), 92

2, 3, 106; Islamist attacks against, xxvi, 62, 99, 106; literary societies and salons, 2, 10–13, 17. See also censorship; social criticism Intimate Companion (Anis al-jalis) (magazine), 2, 5 Iraq, 42, 43, 43n15, 49, 77; el-Behairy in,

Hinds, Martin, xxiiin6

89, 93; Gulf War (1991), 80, 109, 110–11,

“House for Us, A” (Osman), 142n9

114; literary societies and salons in, 2;

Husayn, Taha, 21, 59

US invasion of Baghdad (2003), 70–71,

Hussein, Saddam, 70

126 “I Saw the Date Palms” (Ashour), xl, 123n7, 126n11

Ibn al-Arabi, 142, 147n13

Islam, 20, 40–51, 118n5, 143; history of

Ibn al-Baytar, 124, 124n9

Arab women writers and, 1–2; imagi-

Ibn Nadim, 2

nation and, 131, 147–48; Qur’an, 9–10,

Ibn Rushd, Wahhab, 27n6

27, 138, 138n6; Saudi female writers

Ibn Sina, 124, 124n9

and, xxviii. See also Qur’an

Ibn Tufayl, Abu Bakr, 124, 124n9, 147

Islamists, xxxi, 152; attacks against intel-

Ibrahim, Sonallah, xxxiv, 11–12

lectuals, xxvi, 62, 99, 106; censorship

Idris, Yusuf, 25, 59, 133

and, 100–101; defined, xxin4; increas-

“Ihda wa thalathun shajara jamila

ing influence of, xix, 62, 78, 101, 105–6

khadra” (Bakr), 32–33, 123n7 imagery, xxix–xxx, 69, 105, 145–46; Sufi, 132, 137, 142 imagination, xxix, xl, 28, 130, 139, 144–46;

Israel, xix, 72, 115, 134; debacle (naksa), xiv, xviii, 114; October War, 60, 66, 80, 114, 117 “Ithnan fi ‘urd al-nahr” (Baraka), 7

Islam and, 131, 147–48. See also fantasy ‘Imarat Ya’qubyan (al-Aswany), 101 Imra’a ‘inda nuqtat al-sifr (el-Saadawi), 6, 36 Incident of Rape, An (Baraka), 7 Incidents in Za’farani Alley (al-Ghitani), xxiin5 Infatuated, The (el-Behairy), xxxix, 92–93 al-infitah, xiii, 63. See also Open Door economic policy intellectual freedom, 99, 136, 136nn2–4. See also censorship intellectuals, xix–xx, xxi–xxii; as “conscience of the nation,” xxv; female,

Jacquemond, Richard, xx, xxv, xxxv, 63n5, 149 “Al-jalis fi hadiqa yantathir” (Ashour), 126n11 Al-jami’ (Ibn al-Baytar), 124, 124n9 Al-Jam’iya al-misriyya lil-naqd al-adabi (Egyptian Association for Literary Criticism), 12 jinn/jinni (ginn/ginni), xiii, 69n8, 75, 76, 139, 148 Jonah of the Sea (Osman), xl, 136n4, 137–42 Jordan, 76–77

Index journalism and journalists, xxv, 2–4, 11,

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177

lugha jadida, xiii, 24

12–13; as accepted role for women, 14, 134; censorship and intellectual freedom, 100, 136, 136nn2–4; “triangle of

MacLeod, Arlene, 51, 95n4

taboo,” 71, 99. See also specific journal,

“Madinat al-kartun” (Salem), 64–65, 70

magazine, or newspaper

madness, xxxii, 30, 34, 34n8, 123, 123n7,

Journey, The (Ashour), 112n2

152 magazines. See journalism and journalists; specific journal or magazine

Kalila wa dimna, 21

“magical dualism,” xvii

Kamal, Ihsan, 6, 35, 35n10

Mahfouz, Naguib, xxvi, 59

Kassem, Ceza, 37n11

Mahmoud, Madiha, 50

Al-Katiba (journal), 13

Mahmud, Zaki Naguib, 59

Khadiga and Sawsan (Ashour), 146

Malti-Douglas, Fedwa, xxx, 124n8

Khalifeh, Sahar, 12

al-Manfaluti, Mustafa Lutfi, 133

al-Khansa, 2

Man from Bashmour, The (Bakr), xxxviii,

al-Kharrat, Edwar, xxii–xxiii; on elBehairy, 104; on Osman, 137, 138, 139; on Salem, 67–68, 79 Al-khiba’ (al-Tahawy), 153 khula, 106n6

40–51; critiques of, 49–51; publishing of, 20n2, 50; style of, 50–51; themes, 20, 40 “Man in the Garden Waiting, The” (Ashour), 126n11

Al-kitaba (magazine), 13

Manisty, Dinah, 33n7, 34, 34n8, 36

Koran. See Qur’an

Maqam ‘atiyya (Bakr), 19, 36–40, 123n7,

Kuku sudan kibashi (Bakr), 19

145–46 Al-mar’a al-jadida (Amin), 4n1 marginalization, xxiv; religious, 40–41,

Layl wa nahar (Bakr), 19

48, 50, 53, 54; socioeconomic, xxviii,

Lebanon, xix, 2, 5, 21, 76–77, 79, 85

xxxix, 15, 28, 51–52, 53, 54, 84–85, 98; of

literacy, 9, 14, 62–63, 134 literary anthropology, xxiv–xxxvi, 51–53,

women writers, 14–15 marriage, xxxiii, 4, 5, 68, 152; arranged, 6,

149–54; approaches to, xxv–xxvi, 7–8;

41, 90–92, 119, 120, 121; living outside

creative production and, xxvii–xxviii,

of, 14–15, 20–21, 22, 32, 98, 100; “owner-

18, 19; as insight to given society,

ship” view of, 106; as salvation, 94,

xxix–xxx; reflection of core cultural

95–96, 107; sexuality and, 7, 32, 41n13.

values vs. individual interpretation,

See also divorce

xxviii–xxix; as source of ethnographic

al-Marzubani, 2

understanding, xx, xxvi–xxvii

medicine, 30, 103, 122, 123, 124–25,

literary critics, xvii, xx, xxxv, xl, 11–12, 14–15, 18. See also specific critic literary societies and salons, 2, 10–13, 17

124n8–9 Mehrez, Samia, xxii, xxiv, 37n11, 136n2 Mehta, Brinda, 107

178

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Index

Memoirs of a Female Physician (el-Saadawi), 124n8 al-Mihiyya, Sarah, 4 Modern Standard Arabic, xiii. See also fusha/al-fusha

news media, xiii, xxi–xxii. See also television newspapers, xxv, 13. See also specific newspaper New Woman, The (Amin), 4n1 al-Niffari, 142, 142n11

Morony, Michael G., 43n15

Night and Day (Bakr), 19

Moyal, Esther, 2

9/11, attitudes toward Arabs after, xviii

Mubarak, Hosni, 46

niqab, xiv, 78, 105

Mudhakkirat tabiba (el-Saadawi), 124n8

Nisf imra’a wa qisas ukhra (el-Behairy),

muhajjaba/muhaggaba, xiii, 18

xxxix, 33, 90–92, 93, 95–96

mulukhiyya, xiv, 121

Nour (publishing house), 12

“My Friend the Patriot” (Salem), 80

al-Nowaihi, Magda, 35

My Grandmother’s Tales (al-Qalamawi),

“No War, No Peace,” 60

5–6

nushuz, 107

myth and folklore, xxiii, xxxiii, 27–28, 71, 140–41, 145–46; jinn/jinni and, xiii, 69n8, 75, 76, 139, 148; language of, 74–81 “My World of the Unknown” (Rifaat), 145

“Ocean of Passion and the Carnelian” (Osman), 136n4 October War, 60, 66, 80, 114, 115, 117 Open Door, The (al-Zayyat), xxxii, 6

nadwa adabiyya, xiv, 10 nadwat al-sahafiyyiin, 11 Nadwat jaridat al-masa’ (Evening Newspaper), 12 Nadwat suq al-hamidiyya, 11–12 al-nahda al-nisa’iyya, xiv, 3 naksa (debacle), xiv, xviii, 114 narrative styles and techniques, xxii; cir-

Open Door economic policy, xiii, xix, 31, 68, 71, 72, 81, 94 oppression, xix, xxxi–xxxii, xxxviii, 15, 70–71, 151–52. See also gender oppression; religious oppression oral tradition, xxvii, xxviii, 9–10, 136n2, 136n4, 140–41, 148 Osman, Etidal, 130, 130–48, 150; on

cular, 33, 34; digression, 27–29, 30–31,

Ashour, 112n2, 118, 146; Ashour on,

33, 34–35, 136n2; dream-narrative,

136n4; on Bakr, 145; biography of,

111–12, 118–19, 128; pastiche-style, 37;

132–33, 134–35; comparisons to Bakr,

polyphony, xxii, 79, 118, 122, 145–46;

25, 131, 136; comparisons to Salem, 131;

polyvocal, 36–37; stream-of-conscious-

comparisons to Tawfiq, 131; critical

ness, 57, 65, 111–12, 117, 120, 127–28

writings by, xxxv–xxxvi, xl, 129, 131,

Nasser, Gamal Abdel, xviii–xix, 7–8, 26,

144–46, 147; critiques of, 137, 138, 139,

30, 81, 100, 114

139n7, 143; cross-genre writing of, xxiii;

Nawafidh zarqa’ (Salem), 60, 80

“A House for Us,” 142n9; imagination,

Nawfal, Hind, 2, 3

xl, 130, 131, 139, 144–46, 147–48; influ-

Al-nawrus (Salem), xxxviii, 63–68, 80

ences on, 133; Jonah of the Sea, xl, 136n4,

Nenedakis, Andreas, xxix

137–42; on Rifaat, 145; on el-Saadawi,

Index

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179

145; “The Sea Is Not Treacherous,” 137,

9; publishing of, 13; story-poems, 62,

139–42; Sea of Passion and the Carnelian,

66, 68, 69–70, 72, 73, 79–81

131, 131n1; spelling of name, xviin1;

polyphony, xxii, 79, 118, 122, 145–46

Sufism, xxiii, xxxiii, 137, 141–43,

polyvocal narrative technique, 36–37

147–48; “Sultana,” 9, 131, 131n1, 143–44;

Port Said, xxiii, xxxix, 63, 64, 66, 67–68

Sun Tattoo, xl, 9, 131, 131n1, 142–44;

postcolonial experience, 76, 113–17,

“Sun Tattoo” (Osman), 131, 131n1,

125–26, 128, 134, 151

142–43; themes of, 131, 133, 137, 143, 145;

poverty, “dailiness” of, xix, 19, 80, 85

translations of works by, 131n1, 138n6,

prison life, 28–36

145n12; use of colloquial language, 141,

“Prison of My Own, A” (Kamal), 35n10

143–44, 148; use of poetic prose, xl, 132,

prose-poetry. See poetic prose

135, 137, 141, 144, 147, 148; on writers

protests. See demonstrations and protests

and writing, 14, 15, 131, 133–34, 135,

proverbs: Bakr’s use of, 18, 26, 27; el-

144–46; on al-Zayyat, 145 otherness, xiii, 20, 52, 78, 100

Behairy’s use of, xxviii, xxxix, 92, 94–95, 97, 98; oral tradition of, 9–10; Salem’s use of, xxiii, xxxiii, 81 publishing industry, xxxv–xxxvi, 12–13;

Palestine, 72, 77, 110, 111, 114, 126

growth in attention to women’s writ-

Paradise (magazine), 2

ing, xvii, xxxv; history of, 2–6; intel-

pastiche-style narrative, 37

lectual freedom, 99, 136, 136nn2–4.

“patriarchal binary thought,” 23, 23n4,

See also censorship; journalism and

35, 38

journalists; specific publisher

patriarchy, 118, 128–29, 151–52; Arabic language and, xxxiii, 107–8; écriture féminine and, xiii, xxx–xxxi, 23, 23n4;

al-Qadhafi Mas’ud, Mohammad, 52n16

women’s body as tool of, 120–23. See

Al-qahira (journal), 13

also gender oppression

al-Qalamawi, Suhayr, 5–6

Phillips, Herbert, xxvi–xxvii, 51

“Qalb al-rajul” (Hashim), 5

plays, xl, 4

Al-qanun (Ibn Sina), 124, 124n9

“poetic imagination,” xl, 147

qissa-qasida, 68

“poetic indeterminacy,” xxviii–xxix

“Quarter Without a Moon, The” (el-

poetic prose: el-Behairy’s use of, 86,

Behairy), 93–96

102–3, 105; cross-genre writing and,

Qur’an, 9–10, 27, 138, 138n6

xxiii, xxxii–xxxiii, xxxix; Osman’s use

Qur’anic Arabic, xxiiin6, xxviii, 24–25, 28,

of, xl, 132, 135, 137, 141, 144, 147, 148;

116, 135

Salem’s use of, xxxii–xxxiii, xxxviii– xxxvix, 55, 62, 68, 72–73, 79–81 “poetics of disorientation,” 35 poetry: classical Arabic motifs in, 125n10; history of, 1–2, 3, 4; oral tradition and,

“Ra’aytu al-nakhl” (Ashour), xl, 123n7, 126n11 racism, post-9/11, xviii

180

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Index

radio, 13, 58, 61, 63, 96, 104

Salem, Ibtihal, 25n5, 56, 56–83, 105, 106;

“Rage” (Salem), 69–70

accessibility to works of, 61; “Arabi,”

realism, xxxv, 5, 6, 7, 149; critics of, 40;

63–64, 64n7, 80; awards and grants

magical, 74, 75, 79–80, 92

received, 60; biography of, 57–60,

refugees, 76–77

133; Blue Windows, 60, 80; “City of

religion and spirituality, xxxiii, 20, 37,

Cardboard,” 64–65, 70; comparisons

40–42, 131, 147–48, 152–53. See also

to Ashour, 57; comparisons to Bakr,

specific religion or practice

57, 62; comparisons to Osman, 131;

religious fundamentalism, 65, 137, 141–43. See also Islamists religious oppression, xxxviii, 20, 40,

critiques of works, 67–68, 79–81, 82; cross-genre writing of, xxiii, xxxii– xxxiii, xxxix, 68, 79; influences on,

46, 50, 52–53, 70, 122. See also specific

57–61, 66; “My Friend the Patriot,”

religion

80; “Rage,” 69–70; “Sacks of Candy,”

Rifaat, Alifa, xxxix, 7, 54, 85, 145, 146, 152

69; The Seagull, xxxviii, 63–68, 80;

riots, 21, 117, 118

significance of, xvii; A Small Box in the

Risalat Hayy Ibn Yaqzhan (Ibn Tufayl), 124,

Heart, xxxviii, xxxix, 69n8, 70–81; A

124n9

Small World, xxxviii, 33, 68–70; spell-

Roberts, Nancy, 42n14

ing of name, xviin1; themes of, xxii,

Romaine, Barbara, 111n1

56–57, 65–67, 68, 70, 79–81; translations of works by, 60–61, 60n3, 63n6, 80; use of colloquial language, xxiii,

el-Saadawi, Nawal, 136; Bakr com-

xxxviii, 62, 72, 74, 80; use of poetic

parisons to, 34n9, 35–36; el-Behairy

prose, xxxii–xxxiii, xxxviii–xxxvix, 55,

comparisons to, xxxix, 107–8; death

62, 68, 72–73, 79–81; use of proverbs,

threats against, xxvi, 62, 106; Memoirs

xxiii, xxxiii, 81; on US invasion of

of a Female Physician, 124n8; Osman on,

Iraq, 70–71; on writers and writing, 61,

145; themes of, 6, 36, 85, 99, 107, 145,

62–63, 81–82, 106, 121, 128–29, 149

152; Western interest in, 54; Woman at

Saliba, Therese, 80

Point Zero, 6, 35–36

salons, literary, 2, 10–13, 17

“Sacks of Candy” (Salem), 69

al-Samman, Ghada, 85

Sadat, Anwar, 100, 115, 117. See also Open

“Sand Dream” (el-Behairy), 92

Door economic policy Sadiq, Zaynab, 6 “Safsaafa and the General” (Ashour), 126n11 sahra, xiv, 76, 77 al-Sa’id, Amina, 6 Said, Edward, xxv Sa’idi culture, 20 Sakina, 2

al-sard al-sha’bi, 27 Saudi Arabian women writers, xxvii– xxviii, xxxii, 107 Seagull, The (Salem), xxxviii, 63–68, 80 “Sea Is Not Treacherous, The” (Osman), 137, 139–42 Sea of Passion and the Carnelian (Osman), 131, 131n1 sectarianism, 49, 50, 70–71

Index secularism, xxi–xxii, xxin4, 7–8, 78, 100, 110 Selim, Samah, xxxi–xxxii sexism, xxii, 29, 95, 124

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181

Sufism, xxiii, xxxiii, 137, 141–43, 147–48 “Sultana” (Osman), 9, 131, 131n1, 143–44 Sunduq saghir fi-l-qalb (Salem), xxxviii, xxxix, 69n8, 70–81

sexual abuse, 29, 36, 53, 85

Sun Tattoo (Osman), xl, 9, 131, 131n1, 142–44

sexuality, xxx–xxxi, 41, 54, 92, 98, 153;

“Sun Tattoo” (Osman), 131, 131n1, 142–43

alienation from body and, 6–7, 85, 90,

Al-sutur (magazine), 13, 129, 135

145; breasts as symbol of, 104; in myth

Syria, 2, 4–5, 41, 42

and folklore, 138–39; in old age, 79–80; “triangle of taboo,” 71, 99 Al-sha’b (magazine), 101

al-Tahawy, Miral, 153

“Shadow Puppets” (Salem), 79–80

Tahrir al-mar’a (Amin), 4n1

el-Shamy, Hasan, 140

Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, 58,

short stories, as genre, 4, 5–6, 12–13 Showalter, Elaine, xxx

74, 125, 139, 141 al-Tamburiya, Ubaida, 2

Sidqi, Gadhibiyyah, 6

Tawfiq, Magdy, 143

“Sijn amlikuhu” (Kamal), 35n10

Tawfiq, Sahar, xxiii, xxxvi, 131

silencing, xxiv, 87, 90, 99, 106, 114, 117. See

Taymour, Mahmoud, 59

also censorship Small Box in the Heart, A (Salem), xxxviii, xxxix, 69n8, 70–81 Small World, A (Salem), xxxviii, 33, 68–70

el-Taymuriyya, Aisha, 2 television, xxv, 61, 63, 104; feminist views in, xxi–xxii, xxxi; novels dramatized on, 13; use of fusha/al-fusha in, xiii

“Small World, A” (Salem), 33

Telmissany, May, 153

social criticism, xvii, xix–xx, xxv–xvii,

Tent, The (al-Tahawy), 153

xxxii, xxxv–xxxvi; Ashour and, 110–11,

Thai writers, xxvi–xxvii

114; Bakr and, 40, 46, 49, 54, 150; el-

“That Beautiful Voice” (Bakr), 32–33

Behairy and, 84–85, 96, 107, 150; Salem

“Thirty-one Beautiful Green Trees”

and, 61, 81–82, 115, 121, 128–29, 149

(Bakr), 32–33, 123n7

standard language, xxiii–xxiv, 24, 151. See

time, language of, 71, 72–74

also fusha/al-fusha stereotypes, xviii, xxxiv, 128 story-poems, 62, 66, 68, 69–70, 72, 73,

“triangle of taboo,” 71, 99 “Two in the Midst of the River” (Baraka), 7

79–81 storytelling, 58, 71, 72, 125, 127, 141, 143; language of, 74–81. See also myth and

al-ukhra (journal), 13

folklore

“Ummi” (Darwish), 77

stream-of-consciousness narrative style, 57, 65, 111–12, 117, 120, 127–28 student demonstrations and protests, xviii–xix, 21, 28, 60, 115, 117

United States: Ashour in, 110–11; feminist criticism in, xxv, xxx–xxxi, 3, 23, 54; Gulf War (1991), 80, 109, 110–11, 114; interest in Arab women writers, 54;

182

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Index

United States (cont.)

women writers and writing: approaches

invasion of Iraq (2003), 70–71, 126; lit-

to looking at, xxxii–xxxvi; categori-

erary critics in, xxiv; notions of gender

zation of, xxxi–xxxii, xli; class and,

in, xxx, 54; Salem in, 60

13; écriture féminine, xiii, xxx–xxxi,

University of Chicago, xxv

23, 23n4; framework of contexts for,

University of Massachusetts–Amherst, 110

xx–xxi, xxxii; history of, 1–7; importance of anthropological and literary perspectives, xviii; individual and

Waqa’i’ harat al-za’farani (al-Ghitani), xxiin5 war, xix; “dailiness” of, xix, 85; debacle

group functioning of, xix–xx; linguistic obstacles, xxxiii; marginalization of, 14–15; personal histories and, xxxi–

(naksa), xiv, xviii, 114; effects of, 66–67,

xxxvi, 149; social and cultural factors

68; gender oppression and, 80; Gulf

affecting, xx; social function of, xix–

War (1991), 80, 109, 110–11, 114; October

xx, xxv–xxvii, xxxv

War, 60, 66, 80, 114, 115, 117; US inva-

“writing the body,” xxx–xxxi, 83, 99,

sion of Iraq (2003), 70–71, 126. See also

103–5. See also écriture féminine

specific country el-Wardani, Mahmoud, 50–51, 53 Warm Stone, A (Ashour), xl, 117–22, 146

Yacoubian Building, The (al-Aswany), 101

Washm al-shams (Osman), 9, 131, 131n1,

Yawmiyyat imra’a mushi’’a (el-Behairy),

142–44 Western society, xiii, 18, 100; British colonialism, 2–3, 4, 5, 8–9; feminist

xxxix, 102–4 Young Women (Al-fatah) (magazine), 2, 3 Yunus al-bahr (Osman), xl, 136n4, 137–42

criticism in, xxv, xxx–xxxi, 3, 23, 54; interest in Arab women writers, 54; literature of, 59, 88, 133, 147; self-

Zaat (Ibrahim), 11–12

questioning aspect of, 52n16. See also

al-Zahir district (Cairo), 58, 133

United States

Zaynab (Haykal), 4

Whorf, Benjamin, 135

Al-zayni barakat (al-Ghitani), 37, 38

Williams, William, xxvii

al-Zayyat, Latifa, 25n5, 108, 136; on Bakr,

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 135 Woman at Point Zero (el-Saadawi), 6, 36 women’s language, xxiii–xxiv, 19. See also colloquial language women’s movement, xiv, 21, 106; Arab feminism, 1, 6–7, 9

34; The Open Door, xxxii, 6; on Osman, 144; Osman on, 145 Zeidan, Joseph, xxxiii “Zinat in the President’s Funeral Procession” (Bakr), 19, 26–28 Zubaida (queen), 2