Egyptian Feminist Nawal El Saadawi in Cairo’s Tahrir Square

[ismnotwasm]

Egyptian Feminist Nawal El Saadawi in Cairo’s Tahrir Square: The City in the Field
This English language version is a Women’s Media Center exclusive.]

Now, almost age 80, I have lived to witness and participate in the Egyptian Revolution of January 25, 2011.

I am writing this Sunday morning, February 6. For 12 days and nights now, millions of Egyptian women and men, Muslims and Christians, people of all ideologies and beliefs–the Egyptian people—have continued to unite under the banner of spontaneous popular revolution. They unite against the existing corrupt, tyrannical system, rotten from the head to the feet of the modern Pharaoh. His throne is sticky with the blood of the people, as his ruling party releases thugs to kill the young and Parliament’s deputies forge fake laws, while trading in land and women, drugs and bribes. His so-called educated elite long ago sold its pens and conscience, misleading public opinion, all for the interests of positions in government, large or small.

But this revolution has launched young women, men and even children from their homes, driving them forward, protecting each other. So the old order is falling, and with it falls what the police call “security,” and with it falls the elite controlling information and culture, and with it falls the self-appointed “Committee of the Wise Men” who are linked to wealth and power. And party leaders, even those in so-called opposition who nevertheless opportunistically supported the regime covertly and overtly for more than half a century, all are falling.

These were the forces that wreaked chaos under the name of security, dictatorship under the name of democracy, poverty and unemployment under the name of development and prosperity, prostitution and harassment and misogyny under the name of freedom of choice or tradition, and subordination and servile colonialism under the name of partnership and friendship or the peace process. They imprisoned women like myself, owners of voices and pens, trying to silence us inside their cells, or isolate us and distort our reputation, or expel us to exile outside and inside The Homeland.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/02/07/egyptian-feminist-nawal-el-saadawi-in-tahrir-square-i-saw-with-my-own-eyes-the-barbarism/