March 28, 2021

Abstract

The first time I met Nawal—at least I think it was the first time—was at a women’s studies conference here in the United States sometime in the early 1980s. All I remember about that conference today was a conversation between Nawal and the woman who had invited her there, a conversation that, for some reason, I was party to. In the course of it, Nawal’s host—I’ll call her Ms. A.—was telling Nawal that she was not to speak about such and such issues. Nawal’s instant response was astonished outrage. “You’re telling me, Nawal El Saadawi,” she said, “what I can and cannot speak about?” This, obviously, was absurd, given that Nawal was famous for having gone to prison for saying and writing exactly what she thought. I joined her in her protest and Ms. A. soon backed down.The author of more than forty books, Nawal was a dynamo of intellectual and imaginative creativity, forever generating new ideas, new books, new novels, new forms of writing. She was an innovator as a writer, too, and had the gift, among other things, of being able to write—often compellingly, even mesmerizingly—in both her fiction and her nonfiction.In addition, she continually challenged not only patriarchy but all systems of power and oppression, wherever she saw them. Her primary targets were often, at least through the first decades of her career, the cultural practices and beliefs of Egypt, the Arab world, and Islam. More recently she was often also incisively critical of problems elsewhere, and her work consequently is of relevance well beyond the region from which she hailed. It would be a mistake to ghettoize her as relevant only to Islam and the Arab world.Nawal was a force of nature, a global figure and global thinker. Her thought and body of work, consistently critical of systems of power, raise questions about many aspects of our lives and world today, in whatever culture or country we find ourselves.Am I therefore also saying that I always agreed with Nawal about everything, or even that one should always agree with her about everything? Of course not. In fact, one doesn’t typically agree or disagree with forces of nature—the wind, the sea, or people of the extraordinary vision, creativity, and imagination of Nawal El Saadawi.My sense of loss at this moment, with Nawal’s living presence and living voice now gone from this world, is acute and personal. We’ve been colleagues and fellow workers in relation to women in Islam, as well as warm and cordial friends, over these many decades. I will miss her voice, and miss learning from her typically insightful perspectives on whatever is going on in our world. It was a great honor and privilege to have known her, as well as a wonderful gift and a pleasure.