Mona Eltahawy pulls no punches in this spectacular essay, one of the few UD‘s seen worthy to be read alongside the essays of George Orwell. Eltahawy and Orwell share an incandescent anger which lies unsteadily under hyper-controlled prose. This latent, labile, anger sustains the riveting tension and clarity of their unsettlingly poised voice. After you read Eltahawy, read Orwell’s How the Poor Die. The same outrage, the same strange, meticulous composure; and of course the same focus upon a large segment of hated humanity.
(Eltahawy makes me think, too, of D.H. Lawrence, for she begins her essay with an excerpt from a modern Egyptian short story that captures the crushing nihilism of a cruel marriage; and that same thing plays out in Odour of Chrysanthemums)
What hope can there be for women in the new Egyptian parliament, dominated as it is by men stuck in the seventh century? A quarter of those parliamentary seats are now held by Salafis, who believe that mimicking the original ways of the Prophet Mohammed is an appropriate prescription for modern life. Last fall, when fielding female candidates, Egypt’s Salafi Nour Party ran a flower in place of each woman’s face. Women are not to be seen or heard — even their voices are a temptation — so there they are in the Egyptian parliament, covered from head to toe in black and never uttering a word.
And so women able to utter speech must utter it with a vengeance.
June 8th, 2012 at 5:46PM
[…] attacked Mona Eltahawy’s article as […]
June 10th, 2012 at 10:01AM
A powerful essay about a thoroughly depressing situation. In a lot of countries, the ‘Arab Spring” will result in life being worse for women, rather than better.
And I am reminded of Netanyahu’s speech in Congress, when he said, “Israel is what is right about the Middle East, not what is wrong with the Middle East.”