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She appeared at three events. Wearing a brightly colored dress and beautiful silver hair, she would raise her hand. Each time she would ask a difficult, penetrating question in a spritely, musical voice that challenged an author on a PEN World Voices Panel. This time about the role of government, that time about writing and dreams. She always carried herself with dignity and smiled warmly at her neighbors. I kept wondering to myself, who is this woman?

I soon found out at the Freedom to Write Lecture at NYU’s Cooper Union. For she was stepping onto the stage with the Ghanaian Kwame Anthony Appiah, President of PEN America and professor at Princeton. The woman was Nawal El Saadawi.

Dr. El Saadawi is an Egyptian medical doctor and activist who championed causes of freedom of religion and gender equality. She was raised in a small village outside Cairo and distinguished herself as a student at a young age. She has written several dozen books of fiction and non-fiction, including God Dies by the Nile, Woman at Point Zero, and The Hidden Face of Eve. Her fervent campaigning has led to exile and imprisonment, although she has held positions in the Egyptian government and the United Nations.

An Unusual Conversation

It was an unusual conversation. El Saadawi, passionate and fiery, Appiah reserved and cross-legged with an Oxbridge accent. The thrust of El Saadawi’s ‘lecture’ varied considerably, but some themes emerged. She was deeply distrustful of both religion and the state. She also felt that the West itself had been hoodwinked into believing life was free, but repression was more subtle. She discussed the implications of the veil in Islam and outside of religion. “Make up is, I call it, the post-modern veil.” The ‘choice’ of women to wear a veil, to dress risqué, or to walk around naked was not really freedom. “This is not freedom.” She implied that what we perceive to be choices are actually culturally defined, or imposed by authority. In the U.S., she said, “censorship is more dangerous because it’s embedded and invisible.”

Letter to God

Dr. El Saadawi’s first memory of writing as personal expression occurred after she had complained of the disparate treatment between girls and boys to her parents at age 10. Unsatisfied with their answer, she promptly wrote a letter to God. “If you are not just,” she penned, “then I am not ready to believe in you.” Her parents encouraged her to be skeptical of ‘given’ answers, and to think for herself. Writing led to her personal development, creating a strong core that allowed her to engage the world.

Death and Courage

Dr. El Saadawi’s courage was further emboldened by medical training, which permitted her to accept death at an early age. Anatomy class led her to connect ‘life to death’, and no longer fear it: “We are brutal to be afraid of death. This is part of religion.” Religion appropriates the power of death, according to her view, but the acceptance of death by writers would give them the “the courage to write what they think.”

Colonies of Language

A further point of El Saadawi’s was the degree to which colonialism had infiltrated language. She disliked terms such as ‘The Middle East’, for it was a geographical designation that reflected a British world view. In response, she likes to call Europe “the Middle West.” This was part of a larger complaint about powerful nations, that their utter silence and passivity in the face of former dictatorships such as those in Egypt helped support them. Doing nothing gave these regimes power.

Skepticism of Religion

El Saadawi fervently attacked the value of religion. She felt that religion is foisted upon children at a young age, such that even if they claim to abandon it while older, their earlier faith will dominate their world view. Her 10 year study of the great books: the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita, confirmed her suspicion that these texts were not about freedom, but about dominance, blood, and fear of the outsider. She was not only suspicious of Islam but all religion.

Two Ships Passing

The conversation with Appiah took a marked turn at this point. Indeed, much of the last portion of the proceedings were occupied by a discussion of religion. Appiah suggested that a total indictment of religion was not fair, since some people of faith had given of themselves to causes of justice. Quakers and some missionaries had contributed more good than violence to the world. El Saadawi refused to qualify her assessment, and it soon emerged why: in Egypt she felt there was a total lack of separation between religion and state. “Religion is confusing,” she said, “It makes everything ambiguous.”

To Read

By the time I heard Dr. El Saadawi, I was biased. She had already charmed me at all the other PEN World Voices panels when I didn’t even know who she was. She is a woman of limitless courage who has suffered for her convictions. I hope to recommend a book of hers soon, in my final post for this conference.

Meanwhile, look out for a fiery woman with silvery hair at the next panel you go to. Open your ears.