Nawal el Saadawi

"my mother's name - Zainab - disappeared in history; disappeared"

Nawal el Saadawi @Southbank, London - 15 April 2010

These words sum up much about our patriarchal world. Aspects too that I have thought about myself - and felt at times alone and almost mad in these tumbling reflections. There was a time that I changed my own name upon the turn of them. Yes, I have not always been Caroline Watson! For some that know this fact about me, it is an amusing anecdote - and for me I too laughed (and continue to) at the linguistic, cultural, societal conundrum that I was trying to weave my way through (the process is ongoing... and not resolved... ). That story is for another day - for today belongs to Nawal el Saadawi: born in Egypt (1931); Feminist; Writer; Activist; Physician; former Presidential candidate; former Prisoner; Woman.

Tonight, Nawal el Saadawi raised a standing ovation. Sprung by her force, her smile, her positive composure, her clarity, her bravery, her resiliance, her politics and wisdom, we had absorbed something of her formidable spirit.

Her achievements, and her radicalism and stridency, are extra-ordinary. She spent 50 years campaigning in Egypt against female genital mutilation - for which she was punished. In 2008, the practice was finally outlawed. Most remarkable in this, is her breaking through language - for language is a matrix in which we are all held. Imagine taking words used to name and describe sex organs and sexuality at a time and in an atmosphere where they were unspoken, and for which almost everyone would spit on you for doing so - and writing about them. Publicly.

She has suffered recrimmination for her writing, for her ideas, and - ironically and powerfully (since we are talking about his-story and her-story) - for what her daughter has written. In 2007, her daughter Mona became the target of contraversy when she wrote an article on Mother's Day, and undersigned it absorbing her mother's name "Nawal" into her own. She was making a point of gratitude, connection, respect - visibility - to her mother (and also a legal point). Two years of prosecution for heresy ensued. The case led to a new law for the rights of the child, giving children born outside marriage in Egypt the right to carry the name of the mother.

Nawal el Saadawi had much to say:

"writing is like breathing;
it is very natural,
it is like talking.
We are all born writers"

"What is feminism?> Feminism means that you become angry when they treat you unjustly"

"I became a feminist when I was a child"

"veiling and nakedness [ref. women] are two sides of the same coin"

"when you become creative, you become dissident"

"when/if you challenge, you win;
if you are afraid, you lose"

"we live in a world that separates everything;
but everything is connected"

(all quotes are from tonight's event at London's Southbank, where I had a front-row seat and Nawal spoke directly into my eyes)