She Spoke the Unspeakable imagine...

Hello.

Welcome to Egypt.

THEY SPEAK IN ARABIC

Ah... Everything is changed.

When I was here, no buildings were here.

It was all trees.

He reads my articles.

It's very good,

Madame Nawal El Saadawi.

HE SPEAKS ARABIC

He says that we love her, we love her.

Nawal El Saadawi, the pioneering Egyptian author and feminist.

Nawal first moved into this flat in the 1960s.

"I was covered in dust and pieces of brick as I lay on the floor.

"It seemed as though we were cornered."

'She hasn't lived here for over 20 years.'

Well, you've still got electricity.

'She fled in the face of fundamentalist death threats.'

'A decade before that, the police came here to arrest her.'

We have to put the light...

-RADIO:

-...was detained in a sweeping operation.

It is a purge.

Ah.

This is where I wrote most of my work.

On this small desk, you know?

I sat here for years, 30 years, on this desk.

"I was six years old,

"all I remember is a rasping metallic sound

"and a hand seeking something buried between my thighs."

This is my bed, my small bed.

Because all my life I said, "I have my own bed."

I never share a bed with a husband.

Never. I must have my own bed.

I never go and live with the husband.

The husband comes and lives with me, you know?

And when I don't need him, I make him go away.

SHE LAUGHS

That's the independence, you know?

Nawal has recently been attacked on Egyptian television.

Here was a voice from the Islamic world,

a woman who'd had lots of hands-on experience.

Her books were banned in Egypt.

She lived some of her time

outside of the country.

So she really did stick her neck out. That had consequences,

because there's nothing authoritarian regimes hate worse

than divergent voices.

I think her life has been one long death threat.

At a time when nobody else was talking about it,

she spoke the unspeakable.

When you were arrested, what happened?

They rang the bell.

I looked here.

People, many men.

And they said, "We are the police."

I said, "But you don't have police clothes,"

and I told him, "What do you want?"

He said, "We want just to inspect the house."

I said, "Inspect for what? Am I a criminal?"

So they left for half an hour.

They brought a permit to break the door.

They brought soldiers.

I looked from the window. I found many police cars.

Out there?

Down, yes, waiting, as if they are going to arrest a gang.

-Right.

-Because they were afraid of me.

We were about 1,650 prisoners.

I was the only one who did not open the door.

I am a bit stubborn.

It was in London, last summer, that we first met Nawal El Saadawi.

She's a global legend,

a doctor-turned-writer who's published over 50 books,

widely translated.

Happy birthday...to me?

-To my brother.

-Ah, to your brother.

Now 85, at the age of six, she was subjected to FGM,

female genital mutilation, and has pioneered the fight against it.

She's still a fighter today.

I've been writing 72 years.

APPLAUSE

Almost all my life.

And I started writing when I was a child, 13 years.

And I published just Memoirs of a Child Called Souad,

and it just came in English, and now I'm recognised, you know?

People think that if you don't write in English, you don't write.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

You mentioned why you didn't like the term "Middle East".

-Yeah.

-Tell me something about that.

I hate the word Middle East, I don't like it.

Middle to who?

LAUGHTER

Because we were named "Middle East" relative to London,

because we were colonised by the British.

So they called India "far east" because India far,

relative to them, far east.

LAUGHTER

And we in Egypt, we became the Middle East.

So when I come to London, I say "I'm coming to the Middle West."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

When I go to the United States I go, "I am going to the Far West."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

How did you come to become a doctor, though?

You studied at the University of Cairo medical school.

-Medical, yes.

-So you became a doctor in what, 1955?

Unfortunately I went to the medical college,

yes, because my father told me,

"Nawal, Nawal, never - don't be a writer.

"You will have no career.

"You will go to prison, in exile, you will die poor.

"Be a doctor, to be rich."

So I followed my father's advice.

I was not convinced,

and especially in Egypt -

most of the people who come to the doctor,

who go to the doctor, they don't have the money to pay.

Even for the medicine.

I have to go to the government.

So I worked with the government, but then they fired me after some time.

And what did you do then, at that point?

When they dismissed me I was happy. I was like a bird, flying.

So I started writing, I started travelling.

I gained my freedom.

If there is such a thing as time,

it is the time that I create by writing.

I bring back the things I lived in that city of mine.

It is as though life for me is beginning here and now,

with the movement of the pen between my fingers,

the movement of the air in and out of my chest,

and the movement of the hands around my watch.

The present moment is the only reality in my life story.

"It is an infinite moment which stretches from birth to death.

"My only desire in the whole wide world

"is to live long enough to complete my novel."

We arranged to meet Nawal in Cairo.

This is the area where she lives now.

After the arrest and then the death threats,

Nawal left her other flat and came here.

It's not where you might expect to find a world-famous author,

the winner of numerous international awards.

She clearly hasn't made a fortune from her books.

Or is she simply determined not to join the elite?

She's been politically active since the 1950s -

the days of Nasser,

who overthrew the monarchy and nationalised the Suez Canal.

She's still very much in the news.

We were shocked to hear she'd been subject to threats

just before we arrived.

Nawal El Saadawi?

-El Saadawi?

-THEY SPEAK IN ARABIC

It's 26.

KNOCK AT THE DOOR

DOORBELL

Hello?

Hello again.

Hello, how are you? Nice to see you.

CALL TO PRAYER ECHOES

Oh, that's the air, we'll be sitting here in the balcony.

What a view that is of Cairo.

Oh, that's amazing.

It's a nice place, yeah.

Today is Friday, that's why they are preaching to the people.

Since Sadat, since Sadat.

So it was quite secular here before Sadat?

Secular, yes, before Sadat.

Because Nasser was...

Nasser was secular, and Egypt was secular.

And he dismissed the Muslim Brothers because they tried to kill him.

You know, they tried to kill Nasser.

-Yes.

-So he put them in prison.

When Sadat came, he released all of them, gave them a lot of power,

and gave them a lot of money, everything.

And that's... We ended by this.

I'm going to give us some peace.

Ah, it's paradise.

When you close, it's paradise.

I hear you're writing, you're going back to your childhood.

Yes, yes. Here is my photograph when I was three months.

No!

That is amazing.

I'm looking at you now.

-Yes, yes.

-I'm seeing this,

this curious, slightly intimidating child.

Yes, this little child.

I was just on my body, on my stomach.

Wow.

I could not stand, I could not stand.

We were in the house of my grandfather, who was rich.

Big house.

He was a military man.

Very, very reactionary.

Horrible man.

And my grandmother, the mother of my mother, sitting, veiled,

very oppressed and sitting and looking at me.

And all the family there and my mother.

And she was a bit negligent.

She threw her socks, her shoes, because she was spoiled, you know,

like rich people. So this little infant,

me, crawling, crawling and bringing the shoe of her mother,

putting the sock in the shoe and bringing the shoe

so that her mother would never lose her shoe among this many people.

It was very important, my childhood.

You cannot imagine.

I go back to my childhood all the time,

to be inspired.

Memory is never complete.

There are always parts of it that time has amputated.

Writing is a way of retrieving them,

of bringing the missing parts back.

This is my grandmother, the village woman.

The peasant grandmother. Is that the one...?

Yes, the mother of my father.

She was working in the field with her hands, producing her food...

..and challenging the mayor.

And she was tall and strong and revolutionary.

I inherited her, in fact, the mother of my father.

And the mayor used to insult her and tell her,

"Why are you revolting?

"You don't know God, you poor, illiterate woman.

"You didn't read the Koran."

So she told him, "Who told you that God is the Koran?

"Who told you? Who told you that God is a book?

"God is justice, and we know him by our mind."

My father listened to his mother.

So when I was young, he told me, read the Koran...

..but then think by your mind,

and believe your mind only.

-That's my father.

-You were lucky, weren't you?

I was lucky.

But you had to go through the ritual of cutting,

of female genital mutilation.

-Yes.

-So why was that, when you have this quite sophisticated family?

Because it was a very deep-rooted habit.

It had nothing to do with religion.

It was done to everybody

automatically, without thinking.

My father and mother were believers, but they were very open-minded.

But they inherited this cutting of children.

Though banned in 2008, FGM is still the norm for young girls in Egypt,

which has one of the highest rates in the world.

We've spent one and a half hours in the road now. Not bad, not bad.

You will see my village.

What's that? I can't recognise it.

These buildings are preventing us from seeing the river.

Now, just a second, let's see

where to go to the Nile.

The Nile disappeared.

The minute I see the trees, I feel I am going back to childhood.

You see the students, they are veiled.

'In school, I was very naughty.

'So all the teachers said, "You are like a devil, you will go to hell.

'"You will be burned."

'So I went to my mother, crying, and tell her,

'"I will be burned, in fire."

'She said, "What fire?"

'I told her, "Fire!"

'She said, "There is no fire."

'So in fact I was lucky, as you said.'

Do we go right or left?

Both right and left is the Nile.

Ah, look at the Nile.

Now we can see my Nile. This is my Nile.

Ah!

So I used to come here and walk by the Nile and...

..inspired by the Nile.

But people were village people.

Now it's like a city.

Like a bad city.

HORN

THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE

-TRANSLATION:

-How are you doing?

-How are you, lady?

I'm Doctor Nawal El Saadawi.

You're welcome. You have lit up Tahla and everywhere round here.

-Is this your daughter?

-No, it's my son.

'I loved my peasant grandmother.

'But I hated her when she said a boy is worth 15 girls, at least.

'Girls are a blight.

'With a boy, the family household is kept running.

'But girls get married and go off, leaving the father's house,'

and their children carry the name of the men they marry.

I would stamp on the ground and shriek,

"I will never marry! Never, never, never, never!"

My grandmother would laugh until the tears flowed from her eyes.

"Marriage is your destiny, like all girls.

"It's God's will, daughter of my son."

I first encountered Nawal El Saadawi when I was about 13 years old.

It was the first time I'd seen an Egyptian woman speak so honestly

about problems that we have in Egypt.

I felt at that time,

"Why is this Egyptian woman telling

"all these western people what's wrong with Egypt?"

And so, you know, it was an early lesson in -

this isn't about telling the outside world our secrets and that we have

to keep all these things, you know, hidden away,

it was more like you need courageous voices,

you need people who will break away from all of that and tell the entire

world, not just the West,

who will tell the entire world that this is wrong,

that you can't treat women like this.

-TRANSLATION:

-Hello, who are you, then?

I am from El Deeb's family, next to you.

Oh, El Deeb, my mother's family.

The village has changed a lot.

Everything's changed.

-What's your name?

-Rama Eshraf.

How old are you?

-I'm 13.

-Right.

I used to be just like her, in this village, long ago.

I used to sit by the Nile thinking, "What should I do with my life?"

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a doctor.

Like me!

Yes.

'I never dreamt of being a doctor.

'When I was a child, I dreamt to be a dancer.'

And this is in school.

The theatre, they chose me to act Isis, the goddess.

And all the village called me Isis after that.

I should have done something with music, dancing, singing.

But my parents, they don't accept that.

When all that was blocked,

all my energy went to writing.

The minute the sun rises, she sees the green plants

shine under its golden rays as if they are dancing.

She glimpses Sabry from the window,

hitting the ground with the pickaxe,

or watering the plants and moving his hands in the water of the canal,

or running after pigeons as he moves his arms and legs in the air.

She fidgets as she sits at her desk to study.

Her feet and legs do not move. They are fixed under the desk as if they

were in metal chains.

Nothing moves in her body.

Her mind also does not move.

When Souad sleeps,

she sometimes dreams that she is flying in the air.

Her body floats in the universe like a free, unhindered bird.

That was from the story she wrote at 13.

Her teacher gave her zero marks for it.

One of the things that I appreciate the most about her,

of course it's her feminism, it's her activism,

but more than anything it is her creative expression,

it's her artistic expression and how she chooses to use her artistry as

an instrument for social change.

She's contagious and she is dangerous

because she does make you realise you can do anything you want.

And you should, and that you should disobey,

you should question,

you should challenge,

you should not accept what's been handed to you

just because the generation before you said,

"Ah, that's fine, accept it.

"Accept it. You're a woman, it's OK.

"You're brown, you're black, you're whatever, accept it.

"It's just what you people are supposed to do."

She says, "No, thank you."

This is me and my brothers and sisters in 1938.

I was seven.

They preferred my brother, my brother who was one year older.

And he failed in school

and I was the top of school, so I was angry.

Why he had all these privileges?

They said, "Because you're a girl and he's a boy and that's it."

I said, "No, it's not 'that's it.'"

And then they said, "That's what God said."

That's why my first letter was to God.

I told him, "Dear God, you created me a girl

"and you are supposed to be justice.

"So why do you prefer my brother?

"If you are not just, I'm not ready to believe in you."

She is seven years old and the month of Ramadan starts.

Fasting seems to her like a new, exquisite game.

The best thing about it is the times for sleep and waking

are turned upside down

so that the night, which is for sleep,

becomes for waking and eating.

"Why do people fast, Father?"

"Because God wants them to feel hungry

"and know how the poor suffer."

Souad thanks God because he loves them

and did not create them poor beggars in the streets,

like the limping old man

that she sees on her way to school and is afraid of.

She imagines that God hates the poor

because he did not give them anything.

Then why does he want us to love them,

and give them from what he has bestowed on us?

Why does God order that the poor fast

when they feel hungry for the rest of the months

and have no food to give away?

Her father remains silent for a while and then says, "Fasting,

"my daughter, serves many purposes, and this is God's wisdom."

She manages to connect us to what the true struggle is.

The inequality that is rooted in the structures of patriarchy

and the structures of, in her words, capitalism,

colonialism and also religious fundamentalism.

Not just in Egypt, but across borders.

She's so brave,

regardless of the fact of this state throwing her into prison,

that religious leader putting her on a death list,

all this nation finding her to be obnoxious,

she has still remained true to herself.

My mother used to tell me

about her sisters being beaten by their husbands.

And she thinks that I am a child, I don't understand.

But I have a memory.

I have a memory.

I sat with the dolls around me and told my sister stories about them.

When the bridegroom beat the bride to death, she wept bitterly.

Then we covered the dead body of the bride with a white sheet

and caught hold of the bridegroom to punish him.

This was the custom of the village.

Every husband had to beat his bride on the wedding night

before he did anything else.

Nowadays, Nawal invites young people

to discuss feminism and politics in her flat.

-TRANSLATION:

-There are no men's rights.

Do you understand me, Doctor?

Why women's rights?

Why do we state only women's rights?

Why do you place woman in a position of weakness

and then leap to defend her?

Who wants to answer?

He's a bit outnumbered.

That very day, an Egyptian MP had called for girls applying to college

to be subjected to virginity tests.

He's also an ardent advocate of FGM.

-TRANSLATION:

-He said that we're a nation of impotent men -

if we stopped cutting women,

we'd need strong men and we don't have men like that.

So he's insulting men.

It's terrible, even worse than virginity tests.

Don't be offended, but most married women are sexually dissatisfied.

That's why he demands women be cut, to curb their sexual desires,

instead of admitting it's the men who have the problem.

That's why women should be circumcised.

To accommodate the sexually weak men?

To accommodate the weakness, the sexual weakness of men.

Ever since 1968, when Nawal wrote Woman And Sex,

which was banned in Egypt, she's been raising questions about FGM,

desire and virginity.

Arab society still considers that the fine membrane

which covers the aperture of the external genital organs

is the most cherished and most important part of a girl's body,

and is much more valuable than her eyes or an arm or a lower limb.

An Arab family does not grieve as much at the loss of a girl's eye

as it does if she happens to lose her virginity.

In fact, if the girl lost her life,

it would be considered less of a catastrophe

than if she lost her hymen.

My mother was a prisoner of motherhood...

..because she was very ambitious.

She wanted to be like Madame Curie,

to ride horses, to travel, to invent.

But all her dreams were aborted.

That's why she encouraged me.

She told me, "One day, Nawal, maybe Nawal,

"you will realise my aborted dreams.

"Maybe."

Sometimes my mother used to weaken under pressure

and then in addition to struggling with my father and grandmother,

and all my aunts and uncles, I had to struggle against her.

There was hatred in their eyes when I stood up to them.

All except my mother - her eyes would shine with pride.

If it were not for her, I would never have continued my education

and become a medical student.

"The Faculty of Medicine?"

"Yes, medicine."

The word had a terrifying effect on me.

It reminded me of penetrating eyes

moving at an amazing speed behind shiny, steel-rimmed spectacles,

and strong, pointed fingers holding a dreadful, long, sharp needle.

And this is in the dissecting room of the medical college.

And on the table, we have the head and neck of a dead person...

..and we are dissecting the brain.

And that's you in the middle of the picture?

I am the one, yes, who is dissecting.

The other girls are timid.

You know, sitting like little kids,

and then the one who is dissecting, you know?

Fearless.

Medicine inspired respect, even veneration,

in my mother and brother and father.

I would become a doctor, then,

wear shiny steel-rimmed spectacles,

make my eyes move at an amazing speed behind them,

and make my fingers strong and pointed

to hold the dreadful, long, sharp needle.

I'd make my mother tremble with fright and look at me reverently.

I'd make my brother terrified and my father beg me for help.

Nawal, who'd managed to escape being married off as a child,

now chose to marry a fellow medical student.

He, too, was an active anti-colonialist.

At that time, during the '50s,

young people were encouraged by the government

to go to the canal to fight the British.

I wanted to go, but they didn't accept women.

But he went.

They were betrayed by the government,

who left young people to be killed by the British...

..so he came back broken.

I trembled whenever I heard him whisper in the night,

"When I believed in God, in country and in love,

"I was living three illusions, Nawal!"

He used to stay awake all night, inject himself with drugs,

then write one sentence -

"God, country, love, all three just illusions" -

cross it out and write it again.

The marriage couldn't last.

Nawal went back to her village

to work in one of the health units

that the new government, led by Nasser,

was building around the country.

Slowly, I can't find the unit.

Just a minute.

It looks like the unit.

-TRANSLATION:

-No, it's not the health unit.

Let me see, I'll come down.

Be careful.

-TRANSLATION:

-We are looking for the health unit where I used to work.

It's further down.

Can you lead us to it?

-Yes.

-You lead and we'll follow.

-Well done.

-I conquered. I conquered everything except age.

Ah, this is it.

This is the hospital.

SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

I used to sleep in a house here.

The house of the doctor.

It was all surrounded by green, green fields.

Now I cannot recognise it.

THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE

Here is the health unit.

I used to come here and to examine the patients.

And they used to stand here in queues.

Men and women. At the beginning men said, "No, never!

"We'll never have a woman to examine us."

And then the queue of men became longer than the queue of women.

All society's tragedies came into my surgery.

All the results of deception and deceit lay before me to be examined.

Upstairs it was the in-patients.

I used to make operations up there.

The bitter truths which people constantly deny were stretched out

on the operating table under my probing, cutting hands.

This is where I worked, 60 years ago,

in 1956.

How many of the stories in your books

came from the women you treated?

Oh, many.

Many of the patients who came here, men and women,

they were mentioned in my work.

Did the patients who come here... Would FGM be done here as well?

I never did it in my life.

Never, to boys or girls.

Since I was a student, in the medical college, I was against it.

The minute I saw children being cut, in front of my eyes,

I decided I'd never do it. I never did.

I was six years old, that night,

when I lay in bed, warm and peaceful.

I felt something move under the blankets,

something like a huge hand,

cold and rough, fumbling over my body,

as though looking for something.

Almost simultaneously, another hand was clamped over my mouth,

to prevent me from screaming.

They carried me to the bathroom.

All I remember is that I was frightened

and that there were many of them.

I screamed with pain, despite the tight hand held over my mouth...

..for the pain was not just a pain,

it was like searing flame that went through my whole body.

I didn't know what they had cut off from my body.

I did not try to find out.

I just wept and called out for my mother for help.

But the worst shock of all was when I looked around and found,

standing by my side.

Yes, it was her,

I could not be mistaken.

In the 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 moments ago.

Oh, my God. See, even reading it after all these years, is just...

Wow.

I remember I read that page

and I couldn't read the rest of the book for a couple of weeks.

I remember thinking,

"But this is what's happened to myself and millions of...

"hundreds of millions of other girls," you know?

And I think it was that moment I realised,

if we are going to be tackling FGM, especially in the UK,

because the UK was having a very political correctness conversation

around this subject, I said, "What we're not doing here -

"we're not naming it for what it is.

"And we're not describing what this practice actually is."

So I remember coming round in the middle of these campaigning groups,

saying, "Actually, one thing we're not doing -

"we're not calling this child abuse.

"Because I notice from your documents,

"you keep referring to this as a cultural practice,

"as a religious practice."

And you know, a lot of the campaigners themselves were quite

horrified at my response to me, and they were saying,

"Ah, Layla, you can't say this.

"You're going to upset people. You're going to offend people."

And I thought if Nawal, you know,

felt this was the right thing to do back then, I'm sorry,

we have no excuse. Nothing's changing.

Why did you finally leave the village and the clinic?

I used to go to the houses of the patients,

and I used to go with my paramedical group

to do health education.

So the local government stopped me.

They said, "You shouldn't educate people."

I tell them, "I should health educate them."

I wanted to change their mind and they didn't allow me.

-Why not?

-They told me,

"Your work is to examine the patients and do operations.

"That's it. Why should you go to the homes of people?

"You are creating revolution."

I started the Health Education Association and then they closed it.

And I edited Health magazine, and then they closed it.

That's why I don't believe in government.

They are against the people.

For Nawal, there's always a push and pull

between the political campaigner and the quiet creator.

This novel is tormenting me.

I've freed myself completely to write it,

letting everything else go for its sake.

It's intractable, like unattainable love.

It wants me, my entire being, mind and body,

and if it can't have that,

it will not give itself to me at all.

It wants all or nothing.

It's exactly like me.

To the extent that I give to it, it gives to me.

It wants no competition for my heart and mind.

Not that of a husband, not a son or daughter,

nor preoccupation with work of any sort.

Not even on behalf of the women's cause.

Your second marriage lasted only three months.

I married him just for marriage,

because people were pushing me.

Pushing. Society has a lot of power.

I was very attractive and was a successful doctor and writer.

So this man came to marry me.

He was a judge, he was kind.

He told me, "You will be free to write,"

he made everything, made promises.

After I married him he changed and what he hated is my writing.

The title of one of my stories was My Husband, I Do Not Love You.

-Did he read it?

-He read it and all his colleagues,

all his colleagues read the story.

Right!

So he came to me, and said, "Nawal,

"you have to choose me or your writing."

I told him, "My writing."

Straightforward.

But after that he didn't want to divorce me, you know?

He wanted revenge.

I told him, "You give me the divorce, now.

"Go and bring the paper or you will be killed, with my weapon."

And I brought the weapon from my bag, my medical...

I was a surgeon at that time, a chest surgeon.

So I told him, "I open the chest of people so I can open your chest."

And he was trembling!

I'm not surprised he was trembling!

Because I was serious.

So he lost - he lost because he was afraid.

But if he was brave enough and stood and said, "Kill me,"

I will never do it, you know?

So, it's a matter of power.

When, later, she visited the women's prison,

while researching women's mental health,

Nawal met a woman who really had killed a man.

She was the inspiration for Nawal's best-known and most powerful novel.

Every single man I got to know filled me with but one desire -

to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.

She was a remarkable woman.

I never forget her eyes.

The killer, you know?

She was a prostitute who had killed her pimp.

Yes - but she is not a prostitute and is not a killer.

-Right.

-To my mind.

-Yeah.

Because I could have been like her, if I lived her life.

I could have killed the pimp, exactly like her.

I was about to kill my husband.

She killed the pimp to save her life.

She was a very...

A woman who kept her word, very straight, very honest.

She never told lies.

But she was forced to be a prostitute.

The woman had been abused by her uncle

and married off to a violent old man.

At first, prostitution was a liberation.

I knew that my profession had been invented by men

and that men were in control of both our worlds -

the one on earth and the one in heaven.

That men force women to sell their bodies at a price,

and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife.

All women are prostitutes of one kind or another.

Because I was intelligent,

I preferred to be a free prostitute rather than an enslaved wife.

But this, too, ended in violence.

The doctor of the prison brought her a paper and pen and told her,

"Write to the head of the state to forgive you."

But she never wrote.

She said, "Never. I write the president?

"No!

"I don't want to live any more."

Suddenly the door was thrown open, revealing several armed policemen.

They surrounded her in a circle

and I heard one of them say, "Let's go, your time has come."

I saw her walk out with them.

I never saw her again.

But her voice continued to echo in my ears, vibrating in my head,

in the cell, in the prison, in the streets,

spreading fear wherever it went.

The fear of the truth which kills, the power of truth,

as awesome as death

yet as simple and as gentle as the child

that has not yet learned to lie.

And because the world was full of lies, she had to pay the price.

I got into my little car, my eyes on the ground.

Inside of me was a feeling of shame.

I felt ashamed of myself, of my life, of my fears and my lies,

and at that moment I realised that she had more courage than I.

And still, today, there are cases which are not dissimilar.

Things change very slowly,

and especially cultural attitudes change very slowly,

so that shouldn't really surprise us.

What probably should surprise us is that the book was written at all.

Nawal went on to marry for a third time.

This time it lasted for 40 years.

When they met, her husband had been imprisoned for 15 years.

He, too, was a writer and activist.

When Israel invaded Egypt in 1967,

Nawal volunteered to go to the front with a group of doctors.

I heard a sharp, long, drawn-out piercing noise,

followed by an explosion.

Then the explosions seemed to multiply.

The wall of the hospital crumbled and flames shot up.

I could hear my mother's voice saying,

"Throw Nawal into the fire and she will come back unhurt."

It seemed to me as though

I was the only person in the shelter still alive

and that it was my turn to die next.

The Israelis had in fact overrun the whole of Sinai

and reached the Suez Canal in five days.

It seemed as though we were cornered,

that they would not stop until they had finished us off.

I was covered in dust and pieces of brick as I lay on the floor.

There was a table with a TV on it which continued to broadcast.

I could glimpse a woman belly dancing,

or a man singing soulful love songs.

It was like a dream, or a nightmare.

Nasser's successor, Sadat, took over the country in 1970.

He made peace with Israel.

Nawal and Sadat were always at loggerheads.

She came to his notice when she was Secretary General

of the Medical Association.

He hated me.

He made a meeting with us and with the intellectuals in Egypt...

..and Sadat came almost three hours late,

and he started to give us a lesson about 'time is so precious.'

Can you imagine? So I stood up, I said, "I want to speak."

My boss, he said, "Nawal, shut up! Nawal, shut up!"

Then I said to Sadat, "You came late, you didn't apologise.

"And then you tell us how time is so precious?"

You had the nerve to say that?

I had the courage...because I was angry.

He hated me for that.

-ARCHIVE:

-The president's formidable security force moved in

to detain religious leaders.

Opposition newspapers were closed down

and journalists and politicians detained in a sweeping operation.

It is a purge.

The police put the people who were politically active,

and my name was not there.

So when they took the list to Sadat,

he said, "Where is Nawal El Saadawi?

"Give me a pen." He added my name with his writing!

When you are really in danger, you don't feel it,

because you become part of danger.

So you are part of the fear.

But after that you become frightened!

You know?

"Where did the officer go?" I asked the guard.

"Don't you know what's going to happen next?"

The man replied, "These things all happen by God's hand.

"You no longer have control over your situation,

"someone else does.

"There is no point thinking,

"there are people who are doing your thinking for you."

The key turned in the door three times,

and the silence, like a single continuous scream, invaded my ear.

Had I fallen to the bottom of a well?

So you were sharing a prison cell with 20 other women?

Ah, yes. Islamic fundamentalists and Marxists, and myself,

the independent writer!

So there really was this split

-between fundamentalists and Marxists?

-Yes, yes.

Did you have discussions?

Of course, we had debates all the time.

I spent three months, only -

three months, but it's like 30 years.

The richness, I advise you to go to prison!

Really, I advise you.

It's a world of difference.

And it's so deep.

You see the other face of the coin.

You see the other face of life.

The other face of death, of the whole world.

I wrote one of my best books in prison, on toilet paper.

-You wrote it on toilet paper?

-On toilet paper -

with the eyebrow pencil of a prostitute.

Prostitutes were allowed toilet paper, we were not allowed -

the political prisoners -

because they were afraid we would write on it.

Yes.

The jailer comes every day to me and tells me, "If I find paper and pen,

"it's more dangerous than if I find a gun."

Suddenly the warden called out, "Have you heard the news?"

"What news?" "Sadat - they've shot him."

Everyone breathes the question in unison - "And he died?"

"I don't know."

"If he's alive," someone shrieked, "we'll all be butchered.

"He'll take his revenge on us."

Sadat had been killed by fundamentalists in his own army.

And if Sadat had not been killed,

you could have spent your life in jail,

-you could have been just killed.

-Until today.

We could have stayed until today.

Mubarak was beside Sadat when he was shot,

and then became president himself for nearly 30 years.

I ran against Mubarak in 2005, but the police stopped me.

-They wouldn't let you run against Mubarak?

-No.

Mubarak wanted to use us as candidates to say to the world,

"We have democracy."

I wanted to believe him.

Of course I didn't believe him, but I said, "OK, let me test it."

I entered just to say a woman can do it.

A woman can do it.

I just made a point.

In 2011, revolution broke out on Cairo's Tahrir Square.

It brought down Mubarak.

Nawal links the consciousness of her generation to a younger one.

For many of them she is a beacon.

Six years on, despite disappointments,

young people she met on the square are keeping the fire smouldering.

They have started a forum, a monthly public meeting,

to discuss ideas which Nawal pioneered.

Just two weeks before this meeting,

a writer was killed by Islamic fundamentalists in Jordan.

Accused of blasphemy, he was shot on the steps of the court.

SHE SPEAKS IN ARABIC

-TRANSLATION:

-When I'm warned that I'm threatened with death,

I say that's normal.

It's good that I wasn't killed a long time ago.

It's normal.

Because when you challenge society's values like this,

you constitute a danger.

But what if no-one did anything?

We must all have this courage.

At these meetings, members of the audience come up to give testimony.

-TRANSLATION:

-I went through a lot.

Family violence.

And I felt I was not a human being with the right to say yes or no.

I've read many of your works.

They empowered me in many ways.

Problems arose when my daughter turned 15,

and was forced to wear the hijab.

She told me that she feels she's 30.

I said, "Take it off and don't tell your father."

And I refused to wear the hijab, too.

My mum told me to put it on again.

I said, I made the scarves I used to wear into a blouse.

APPLAUSE

'I wrote from my own research,

'and my rebelliousness and anger at a society that cut me.

'Through my anger I wanted to say something to society,

'so that girls in the future get some protection

'from this symbolic as well as real killing and rape.

'All my writing stemmed from my childhood.

'From the shocks I suffered during childhood.

'Awareness comes from shock.'

For the girls, and boys, of the future,

Nawal has helped build a library in her village.

-TRANSLATION:

-This is the library I spent five years building.

This was my dream. Come.

-TRANSLATION:

-I was once in your place in this village

and used to dream of having a library in town,

so that boys and girls like you would come to read.

Now, that dream's come true.

That's why reading is important -

it forms the mind.

Well done. And I hope when you grow up you'll remember me.

Thank you. Let's go home.

Let's see the garden.

It's nice.

It's very beautiful.

SHE SPEAKS IN ARABIC

Time is precious, you should go to have lunch and study.

Who's leaving first?

THEY CHEER

Off you go, run!

Are you very disciplined about how you write,

-or do you just write when you feel you want to write?

-When I feel.

But I feel I want to write every day!

I write almost every day -

and sometimes the whole day.

Even when I am talking to you, I'm writing -

because I'm remembering, remembering, remembering.

So it's full-time, writing is a full-time job.

HE SINGS IN ARABIC