Ignu Reads

             

                      “Let me speak. Do not interrupt me. I have no time to listen to you,”

 

 

The story of firdaus is a remarkable one, it represents the hardships women go through in Egypt as many middle Eastern countries and patriarchal societies. Firdaus’s storytelling is moving, heartfelt, and honest. A story of victim of capitalism, patriarchy and oppressive regime of Sadat.

Nawal Saadawi is an Egyptian Anarcho-feminist, doctor, novelist, and leftist revolutionary, if you want to know more about her ( click here ) .  Saadawi was conducting a study on the effects of prison on female prisoners when she came across Firdaus in Qanatir Prison. She heard of Firdaus from a doctor who believed that Firdaus is incapable of killing a man and thus unworthy of a death penalty. Firdaus refused to see anyone, she barely ate, but after repetitive appeals from Nawal to meet her, she finally agreed to tell her story a day before the judgment .

Firdaus’ struggle is to claim her body as her own. Since her childhood, decisions concerning her were never hers to take, her parents cut off her clitoris at a young age. Her uncle took her away when her parents died, and then he did whatever he pleased with her fragile body, eventually he forced her to marry a man so old when she was only 19 of age. Men in the street look at her as if her body existed only for them, to please them.

Firdaus comes from a poor family, she got to school and had a high school certificate, but she never made it to the university. First reason, her uncle was a man of religion, a scholar, and for him it was shameful to his honor to send his niece to a mixed university where she will be seated side by side to men. Second reason, her uncle saw her dowry could help him, and make him get rid of her. Firdaus wanted to finish her studies, she liked to read, it gave her room for imagining a bigger greater world where she can escape.

Women in the story all suffer from imprisonment, an invisible cage designed to trap women. All females that Firdaus encountered are living in illusions, weather it is marriage, work, religion, or respect. Firdaus did every role a woman is destined to do in a patriarchal society, she did the housewife, the daughter, the student, the worker, and the prostitute, and she came up with the conclusion that all of these only imprisoned her. All men in the story sought of Ferdaus as a territory made for them, her father to beat her, and everyone else to abuse her sexually, literally all men she met.

She was never expected to have an opinion on things, until she escaped the marriage. She was surprised and confused when she was asked weather she prefers oranges or tangerines. Nawal Saadawi took it that far to accentuate the extent women are not allowed to have a taste of their own, to not have a choice.

Firdaus embraces death. For her it is liberating, it is freeing. Death alone can save her from her misery, and her destiny of a woman. She believes that women whatsoever their class, or status are suppressed, are not free from male dominance, and she wants to escape her destiny.

I Believe that this is a must read for feminist from all over the world, it is relevant, poignant, and moving. The storyline is relatable for women from all regions of the world. Plus it is a short but powerful read.

 

 

 

“ I just wept, and called out to my mother for help. But the worst shock of all was when I looked around and found her standing by my side. Yes. It was her, I could not be mistaken, in flesh and blood, right in the midst of these strangers, talking to them and smiling at them as though they had not participated in slaughtering her daughter just a few minutes ago.”
 The Hidden Face of Eve, Nawal el Saadawi. 

Nawal el Saadawi is a medical doctor, Egyptian feminist, campaigner against Female Genital Mutilation, she has written fifty books in her lifetime and she was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature. she contributed a great deal in the revolution that took place in Egypt, she was surrounded by thousands of young revolutionaries, she shared her knowledge and wisdom with them. Her major characters are ordinary women, through her books she shock, question, and provoke. Nawal el Saadawi has liberated generations of women from the oppression or brainwash they were subjected to, not only in Egypt but throughout the Arab world.

Nawal el Saadawi was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1931, back in the days she was lucky enough to get educated, although her parents wanted to wed her at the age of ten but her mother stood out for her when she refused to get married, she was as all young girls back then circumcised, it is a very painful childhood memory for her. Nawal el Saadawi was good at school, she was acing her classes which allowed her to get into med school unlike her older brother who was lazy and spoiled. Nawal el Saadawi worked for the Egyptian Government as director General for Public Health Education, she also founded a magazine, “Health”, but she lost both of them in 1972 after her public statements and criticism of social norms, and the political regime of the president Sadat.

Nawal el Saadawi’s first book “Women and Sex” was censured, and attacked by fundamentalists and Egyptian society in general. The book brings to light two main topics, female genital mutilation, and   virginity. In the rural areas of Egypt FGM was performed in unsafe conditions which put thousands of young girl’s lives at risk,  in general Nawal el Saadawi expressed her anger and rage toward these inhumane and patriarchal traditions that women pay the price for every day, she cited scientific references concerning clitoris and condemned stripping women of their sexuality with the removal of the clitoris. Moreover, the book also discusses in great length the topic of virginity, which is in the East the thermometer of purity of girls, in Egypt and other Arab countries, girls can get killed if they were not virgins at their wedding night, it is considered to be  disgraceful to the honor of the family. Nawal el Saadawi challenged these traditions on a scientific basis, she shows in her books all kinds of hymns, and how some girls are born without virginity, while some of the others lose it not necessarily through sex since hymns are very fragile in nature, she also attacks these norms. Women And Sex was censured in Egypt, but students and intellectuals specially women found a way to smuggle it and read it secretly, it was a revolution or a turning point on how women perceive themselves, and how they reacted to patriarchal oppression in their environments.

  Nawal el Saadawi is very engaged politically. She was imprisoned,  exiled, and received death threats. She was imprisoned for three months for crimes against the state based on her outspoken political views and criticism, in these months she wrote a book on  a roll of toilet paper with a eyebrow pencil smuggled by a prostitute, the book was titled “Memoirs from the women’s prison”, in 1993 she fled to the US after series of death threats, and during the Arab spring she lived her dream, she said she had dreams of revolution since she was a kid and in 2011 she made the revolution happen along many many other intellectuals, a lot of young Egyptians used to gather around her to learn and debate with her; after the Arab spring a group of young women, most of them are big fans of her writings, founded sort of a book club in which they organize meetings to talk about her books in great length, and she never missed a meeting.

Nawal el Saadawi is called the “ the white demon” amongst fundamentalists. Nawal el Saadawi advocates secularism, specially in her book, “God Resigns in the Summit Meeting”. She believes that all religions, specially monotheistic religions, oppress women, and she considers the revival of Political Islam as a threat to what feminist has fought for in the middle east.

Regarding veil, she said that women don’t chose, it is imposed on them through a process of socialization, she believes that veil is offensive to women. “"What do we mean by choice? It is pressure, but it is hidden pressure – she is not aware of it. I was exposed to different pressures from my sisters. We are all the products of our economic, social and political life and our education. Young people today are living in the era of the fundamentalist groups."

Nawal el Saadawi was married three times, and she lives alone in an apartment in Cairo, not near from Maydan Tahrir. Regarding her first husband she said, “No, no, that’s the problem. My first husband was a great man, my colleague in the medical college. He was fascinating, and he was the father of my daughter. My father didn’t want me to marry him because he had gone to Suez to fight the British. But then [after Suez] the guerrilla fighters were betrayed, many of them imprisoned. This crisis broke him, and he became an addict. I was told that if I married him, he might stop his addictions, but he didn’t. He tried to kill me, so I left him.”.
about her second husband, “He was a man of law, very patriarchal.
I am not really fit for the role of a wife, you must be sure of that.”
Regarding her third husband whom she loved and lived with for long she wrote, “My third husband [Sherif Hatata], the father of my son, was a very free man, a Marxist who’d been imprisoned. I lived with him for 43 years, and I told everyone: this is the only feminist man on earth. And then I had to divorce him, too. He was a liar. He was having relations with other women. oh, the complexity of the patriarchal character. He wrote books about gender equality, and then he betrayed his wife. Ninety-five per cent of men are like that, I’m sure.”

Nawal el Saadawi was at the center of international attention last year after she was nominated for a Nobel Prize In Literature, but she had been invited to lecture in the US, England and Germany as well as other European and Arab countries, she was even offered asylum, but she refused. She insists on fulfilling her role as an intellectual in her beloved country, Egypt. She is a fighter, a brave women, and a radical activist.

The following article is an introductory insight on Nawal el Saadawi, and it is the beginning of a series of readings of Middle Eastern, North African and Arab Feminists and writers, next one is an analysis of Nawal el Saadawi’ s book “Women At Point Zero. Stay tuned.

Constructive criticism is highly welcomed. 

Before his first day at school, scared Charlie decides to reach out through letters to an anonymous “Friend”, he feels the receiver will understand what he is going through. Charlie is an observer, he is distant, and closed on himself to the degree that he couldn’t share how he felt about his only close friend’s recent suicide. High school is hard, specialty if you’re going through it alone, so that’s one way to see how necessary for Charlie to have someone to talk to, to get things out of his mind about teachers, about his parents weird behavior, and his wanna be an adult sister, as well as his successful college football player brother.




“I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn’t try to sleep with

people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist.

I think you of all people would understand that because I think you of all people are alive and

appreciate what that means. At least I hope you do because other people look to you for strength

and friendship and it’s that simple. At least that’s what I’ve heard.

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to

figure out how that could be.”




So basically Charlie starts high school on a very bad note, his favorite person, his aunt Helen, as he described her is dead, and his best friend committed suicide because of problems at home, in other words adults selfish unfathomable behavior, so this “Friend” is the only alive person who he can trust. Charlie’s letters are honest, unfiltered, and melancholic, the whole concept of letters is intimate, you get the feeling that you’re a voyeur reading someone else’s secret thoughts, or diary.




Charlie throughout the book goes through different experiences and difficulties. Charlie has to confront death, and bullying, as well as a past sexual molestation, and he also has to figure out who he is, and about his own sexuality since he used to kiss boys when he was a kid and he even kissed Patrick not just once. he learns how to masturbate, how to get high, how to keep a secret, and how to say goodbye to those he loved.




While reading The Perks Of Being A Wallflower I laughed, I remembered my own experience both in college and high school trying to fit, and finding who I am, just like Charlie all of us get lost between running away from everything or putting all our energy to participate. Adolescence is a sensitive period of our lives, if we stuck in the wrong addictive habits, we might carry those habits for the rest of our lives, if we keep beating ourselves, or underestimating ourselves , it will be harder to adapt to people treating you good, you might take the wrong decision and block your potential from unfolding, and you might as well end up developing Impostor Syndrome. Remember “we accept the love we think we deserve”, so always keep reaching for new lights to see yourself.




One of the things I really loved about the book is how I rather of hating some characters, I felt sympathy and sorry for them. Chbosky gives us a glimpse of the world of young adults in the 90s, and how lost can they get trying to mimic adults, or trying to escape the difficulty of such period.





My favorite characters are basically Mary Elizabeth (Which is weird), and the teacher Bill. I can totally see their storylines rewritten for how much they are so independent as characters. For me Mary Elizabeth represents the Third Wave Punk feminist, but Chbosky was brilliant in writing her character, she is smart, opinionated, upfront about others, and one of the strongest female characters in Postmodern literature, although a lot of people might disagree (Specially those who only watched the movie), but Mary Elizabeth is a good friend to Sam, she was a good girlfriend to Charlie, it wasn’t her fault that he couldn’t get himself to talk back, she is half as obnoxious as recent YA overwritten female characters who are supposed to represent strong women. In Addition, Sam, Charlie’s sister, Susan, and Charlie’s brother’s girlfriend are also strong female characters who are independent in facing past and present issues like Sam’s sexual abuse past, Charlie’s Sister’s abortion, and violent boyfriend, or Susan who represents the pressure put on female to look beautiful to get accepted, in a way Susan is one of the ignored characters in the book who leave an impact deep down on our hearts, she is just trying as hard as everyone else to find who she is, and be accepted although if that meant pretending, which can be very alienating, in other words, those famous kids, or bullies are also trying to fit in, to be accepted, to leave an impression on people even if it was bad, to be noticed, and most of all to feel important. so from a feminist perspective, Chbosky got an A writing female characters.




My second favorite character is Bill, the cool hipster teacher, who was so necessary to the evolution of the main character Charlie, his mentoring through the honest conversations with Charlie, as well as giving Charlie different books on different essential themes such as sexuality, drug, and the inevitability of adulthood. Bill kind of reminds me of Holden Caulfield, of them grew up in the same era also known as the lost generation where it was even harder to fit in, or gracefully grow up, therefor he keeps helping Charlie, as well as the audience, all you need to do it read the book references.




Another thing that Chbosky got a straight A for is the gay characters he introduced to us in the novel, as well as giving us glimpses of how it was for gay people through the grandfather who avoids hugging males in general, even Charlie described it as odd and challenging to hug his own grandfather fearing he might not get a chance to say good-bye, and the father who was so relieved to know Charlie has a girlfriend that he gives him both a sex lesson, and a condom to practice it; Charlie belong to the 90s generation which is more tolerant towards LGBT rights, so Chbosky is sort of showing us the evolution of the American society throughout the twentieth century, he even refers to Harvey Milk. Patrick and Brad are both gay in the book, Although Patrick is quite/very open about his sexuality, Brad is very afraid of his sexuality being exposed.




The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is a perfect book to understand the shift from the lost generation, to a more lost and virtual generation. In the book, we see the rise of new mediums of communicating one’s thoughts and feelings, like mixtapes, nowadays it’s more developed so it’s a harder experience for young adults to find a “friend” who would understand them then Holden Caulfield, or Charlie. Yet, the issues the book deals with are still relevant, and even more relevant than before, the scale of drug use, suicide, depression, and alienation young adults deal with is still overwhelming.




Stephen Chbosky made The Perks Of Being A Wallflower such a remarkable work of fiction through his realist, not exaggerated style, and his tangible characters who make us contemplate our own lives, and future.




If you ever feel depressed, lonely, or misunderstood just reach out for a friend like Charlie did.




Finally, your suggestions, comments, and criticism are highly welcomed!