 Welcome to the British Library and tonight's digital event be your own hero celebrating the feminist icon, Noelle L. Sadawi. And friends of the British Library who come to our events regularly will know our brilliant chair, Khadija Sisei who's brought together an expert panel, all of whose lives connect in different ways to Noelle and her huge legacy. We welcome comments and suggestions and questions. Please put your questions to our expert panel into the into the platform here. You can also give audience feedback and we really do appreciate that. We love to hear from you. You'll also see that it's a very special offer from Noelle's generous publishers so if you use the code below you can buy the books related to this event at a generous discount and you could even donate to the British Library. But in the meantime enjoy the event and over to you Khadija. Good evening everyone and thank you for joining us for this special event to honour Dr Noelle L. Sadawi who sadly passed away on the 21st of March this year, just seven months ago. She would have been 90 years old on the 27th of October. Noelle was last in UK in December 2018 when I arranged for her to give a talk at City University. Those were the kind of things that I would arrange for Noelle. This evening we are joined by women who Noelle admired, who do amazing work themselves and they're going to share with us some memories that they had of Noelle. We worked with her and met her across the globe. We will hear reminisces but just as importantly by the end of the event we will be talking and thinking about what is happening with the situation of women in Egypt today and reference that to the ways that need to be addressed regarding violence against women. And so I'd like to talk to Omni Amin in Abu Dhabi where she teaches at the University of Abu Dhabi. Robin Morgan in the USA was renowned internationally renowned feminist and award-winning author and activist including the classic anthologist sisterhood, Shireen El-Fekhi, an expert on issues of sexuality in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly of male sexuality. And also she's an award-winning author and she's based in Canada. And Amel Fahmi, the director of Tadwen, a gender-based studies group and organisation in Egypt that seeks to bring about change that promotes gender equality and will also be sharing information with you through the evening and you can see it on on the chats that will be of interest to you so please check that out. So I'd like to start with you Dr Omnia. Dr Omnia Amin I'd like to start with you as you had a special relationship with Noelle. Apart from being one of her translators in later years you became her spokesperson if you could not attend an event. How did that relationship develop and what was it like to work with Dr Noelle? Hello everyone and I'm glad that we're honoring such a beautiful woman who passed away as you said on the 21st of March which in Egypt is Mother's Day. So it couldn't have been more ironic that we lost a mother on Mother's Day. To speak about how I met Noelle, I think we've all met Noelle at one point or so in our lives. You meet her through her writings, you meet her through conferences, you meet her in class, you meet her as a guest of honour at the university, even people meeting her in the street and my relationship with her just developed. Of course I met her first through woman at point zero where I was reading her novel and then by coincidence if anything is a coincidence I was attending the one and only time that Nawal Sadawi was ever invited to give a talk at Egyptian University. It was a conference on comparative literature hosted at Cairo University in the year 2002 and amazingly she just defied everything like she walked in there. The first thing she said was that she's 71 years old. She also spoke about creativity, courage, the need to be yourself and she wasn't liked among the audience. I just simply slipped after the talk and introduced myself and lo and behold she asked me over to her place. That was it. It just needed no introduction and I'm sure that each and every one of you here when you met Noelle it was just like so smooth and I said before that knowing Noelle and loving Noelle between us we don't need any introduction like just someone says I love reading Noelle Sadawi or I met her this is the introduction that I need and if anything I would like to say that meeting Noelle is because she this woman had the gift of giving. She gave, she gave not just talking she opened her heart she opened her mouth, she opened her door. She was just there for everyone who came across her in the streets, in the taxis she spoke to taxi drivers so it was just a very natural way of kind of like becoming close to her. I think she's close to herself this is why she's able to be close to others and if anything I've learned from Noelle it is kind of like be yourself. She liked one thing and she loved one thing and she looked for it in people it's are you being you or are you imitating others and this is how we became close because she told me you don't imitate anyone and in fact I don't I love Noelle but I don't imitate her and this is what brought us together more than anything else and made her believe in me so it was just a natural friendship that developed and it had nothing to do with age when I met Noelle I was half her age exactly half her age and it had she looked beyond age gender religion you name it she broke all borders and just looked at the human being in front of her and I am ever so grateful that I met her in person and I'm ever so grateful that we still have all these videos and talks that I can hear her over and over and over again and still read her books they still sound new every time I book I pick up a book that I read before I find something that speaks to me and this is what I call the gift of giving. I love that photo with you with her in the kitchen because that just was so natural with her in the kitchen at the beginning that was really great but as well like you said she wanted you to be your own person which is why I called it be your own hero because I made that mistake too of saying Noelle you're my hero she goes no I'm not be your own hero everybody should be their own hero so for me that is something that's stuck out but resonated quite a lot but also Omnia could you also maybe say a bit about like I said people knew no while as a public figure for about equality and justice and particularly for women and and but how does her body of work her body of written work reflect some of this because you knew her intimately also through her writing okay well since you're speaking about written work let me share with you what she says about writing she says writing lifts a man above what is called manhood and lifts a woman above what is called womanhood writing lifts a human being above all the differences that prevail between us if one act was very important for Noelle and changed her life and made her whom the person we need to speak about after she passed away it's the act of writing she saw in the act of writing salvation not just the salvation for her as an individual of course starts with the person but it's the salvation for her whole generation and for generations to come because through the act of writing she told me that writing needs courage you cannot pick up a pen and write if you do not have the courage to say what's inside and to believe in what you're saying so this is why she said that the act of writing is the most dissident act you can carry out because for her dissidence is not just about going against the current if the current is what is wonderful and is just and guarantees your rights she goes with the flow but the act of writing comes out of a need to say that something is not in its right place and Noelle wrote about what she thought wrote about her life her life is one of a long a life long militancy everything this woman said everything this woman did was just like about change and for her change is revolution do you know what kind of book she enjoyed reading I'm sure they would have been about you know every time I visited her she was reading a different book she read in Arabic she read in English and she actually wished that she knew more languages to read things in their original writing but she read philosophy she read history she read she read novels I think she enjoyed a novel the most when she in Dubai I remember she told me who are the new writers go and bring me some books and to receive a book it was the greatest gift that you could ever gift a woman like her so she always told me you can change the world through the act of reading the act of writing and engaging with others in dialogue when I asked her how would you like me to introduce you you know in a recent conference and she basically said tell people that the word that lives forever is the word that carries the truth and my words carried the truth I'm not sure if you're not getting there I'm not sure if you got that last little bit of you there because you were cutting out but if we get some little time we're gonna come back to that because I think I'm sure people like to know what the kind of things that know well read too but I'd like to speak up Robin to maybe speak to a little bit about this now as well because you also knew her it through her writing because she contributed to your anthologies but you know but you would have met her at conferences as well and as I did went to some conferences with her what was she like give us another aspect of her international feminism first of all Khadijah thank you for organizing this event it really means a great deal to those of us who loved her passionately and thanks to the British Museum as well um I first met Nawal I knew her for a very long time and I first met her in the late 1970s when I was compiling my anthology sisterhood is global and there was one obvious evident person to do Egypt and that was El Sadawi and because Hatshepsut was no longer with us to do Egypt so we had a settle for Nawal she she agreed I wrote her she agreed she wrote the piece she gave it to her typist because she wrote a long hand and the next day she was arrested by Sadat oh my god so you know she was afraid that her typist would somehow be implicated by possessing this incendiary manuscript about women's rights so she got word somehow to her typist to destroy the manuscript which her typist did so I was in double despair I was not very worried about Nawal and I was very worried about the piece on Egypt um but my friend and colleague Gloria Steinem had recently been to Egypt as a tourist and because she was a celebrity she had been invited to meet those in power including the Sadats which neither Nawal nor I being mischievous types ever would have stooped to meet but she met them um and so I leveraged Gloria uh to uh to call Madam Sadat because she had been given her private number so we were on um extension phones and she called Madam Sadat uh and to our we thought it would be for her assistant but to our shock she picked up the phone herself so we immediately both pled for Nawal's release we pled for her ill health we diplomatically stayed away from politics we didn't deny them but we stayed away from them we just talked about her ill health um and of course Madam Sadat she apologized and she said there was absolutely nothing she could do and then the very next day Nawal was released pillow talk so uh she rewrote the entire piece uh and it still shines like glory in the anthology and then we became very good friends for many many many decades um we sometimes argued over whether it was patriarchy or whether it was capitalism that was to blame for absolutely everything that was wrong with humanity um but whenever she came to New York we we had dinner we laughed we cried we embraced we argued we agreed we adored each other we we recognized each other as mischief makers um and we said we used to say that nobody had really lived until they'd been in jail uh so when I went to Egypt and route to Palestine to work with women there I stayed with her both in Cairo and then her then not yet finished Little House and country on the Nile where she even cooked for me not well but she cooked for me she said I do not pride myself on being a cook but it was delicious and the interesting thing to me there was that when we went for a walk village women came running up to her and tugged at her sleeve and her garments and said dr. Nawal dr. Nawal and it was great love because she even though she was a world-renowned figure to them she was dr. Nawal she was the person who delivered a baby that's you about we're going to ask you about how how people drew to her yeah she she she she was the person who would set a broken bone if one of their kids had a broke a leg or an arm she was their friend so we we did that uh and I was amazed at the the intimacy with which they addressed her and of course she responded um and and then in Cairo we played tourist for a few days we wrote camels which I had never done and which Nawal had never done either um and uh and I realized when I after I was in Egypt only then did I realize that it was she inevitably argued the contrary wherever she was in other words they're fiercely defending feminism to Marxist and then fiercely defending Marxism to me so the years came and went and husbands came and went um but the politics and the friendship they did and the politics and the friendship continued and and in fact Deepin we talked about health we talked you know when you're young you talk about lovers and politics and when you're older you talk about doctors and politics and when Tahrir Square blossomed with the temporary democracy we phoned each other and we were just ecstatic um and and in fact the last time that I saw her we did a woman of the world um conference together for which Nawal um uh insisted that I was her partner for the conversation and interview her because as she put it we made good mischief together and we did we made very good mischief together she she was breathless over Tahrir Square with excitement in that way that she would get with her wonderful mane of white hair flying at you Robin Robin they put me and here I am I'm in almost 90 they put me in in a motorcycle they rode me around the square and sheared for me um and and how she spent the night there in a tent in Tahrir um and how she yeah I mean she she look the planet is drab and drearier without her because she radiated magnificence that's what she did and her work remember there was her work demonstration in the UK when she came here once and she was due to she was due to go to the airport but they said oh there was a demonstration for something and it's in century because well I have to go to the demonstration first I said oh yeah well you don't have time oh yeah I don't know I want to demonstrate everything stop because you had to go do that immediately yeah and her writing her writing will live um uh long past her and and we'll sing on the page uh as writers we used to complain to each other there's never enough time for writing when you're on barricades you feel guilty that you're not at your typewriter or your computer and when you're and vice versa um but we loved that complaint and we did both because you you what you poured onto the page was meaningless unless it was the voice of women unless you were a vehicle for that and uh and she always has been and her work will live and and be as magnificent as she was yeah I miss her so I think so because even when people were were joining us for said they were going to join us for this session people are just discovering some of her work and some of us are looking like but we've known about this for a long time but the the joy that other people are now having to discover her work is great you know you just almost wish you could rediscover that work yourself and have that same joy but you know that these people are going to be absolutely you know exuberant once in randomly read her work there's any other kind of special memory that you have of her that you you want to share with us oh well there's there's just many especially good I I really like yeah I'm sure but yeah especially I remember people the way that she drew people to her well well she she she came at one point and um Ms magazine held a reception for her and she didn't want to take up there were only a few chairs so she sat on the floor we sat on the floor together um you know I mean there was a complete lack of pretension about her um in fact she she was much more grounded um than I in my somewhat flighty excessive political um not political correctness but political obeisance was when when we went to um the this village women in Egypt and on the Nile and she's on the Nile she said um when we when we went to visit them uh it's many of them were living in very poor circumstances uh and she they brought they had one chair that they brought out you know for her and she said no no no no no no no no and they insisted and she sat in the chair and then they brought another chair for me and I said no no no no no no no and she said take it and I didn't and I sat on the ground with them and afterward she said to me you for the first time acted like an American and I said oh god help me what did I do she said uh you sat on the floor and you are going to come away scratching and I did I'm when I when I when I cross the border nor went into Palestine I had lice yeah so she was very she was a doctor you know she never forgot she was a physician as well as a fine first-rate writer um and she's she she doused me in the shower she put stuff on my head she did all the rub and rub and rub and you have to do this um there was no brooking her there was no there was no standing in the way of this force measure that that she was as well as being the essence of elegance at the same time she was a woman totally and of women and of the people absolutely thank you thank you so much for that thank you shireen I'm going to come to you now because um it's no while introduced us but we're like I mean no and no I'll introduce me to um you and Robin as well but how um but how did you meet Noelle so I knew I knew about Noelle long before I had ever met her in person or read her works my father is egyptian he's a neurosurgeon and he studied at chiro universally medical school in the 1950s and my father would talk about his solid days and how he had this really close coterie of friends he met um effectively over a corpse in the dissection room and he would talk about their escapades and this is a lifelong professional and personal connection and I asked him dad were there any women in your group and he said yes they were if there were a few they were a year older than us because it was thought women were less mature than men strangely by the system he said and there was this one girl and she was so bossy and she was always saying her friends could be done better and in particular she was always saying how we the men could improve well no surprise there it was Noelle and what's interesting is that you know Noelle we know was a deft hand with a scalpel I love the story of her uh ultimate him to her uh second husband for those of you are not familiar with it the long story there he chucked her manuscript out a window she left out after it she was pregnant at the time the pregnancy terminated there was a drama to that but essentially she asked him for a divorce and he said I think something to effect uh my dear you will as soon as you see the stars uh midday then you will get a divorce from me and then she basically went out with a scalpel it was a combination of midnight stars at midnight at high noon and she got exactly what she was but and I love I know I love the stories because actually she was she was the mistress of dissection not just literally but also figuratively because if you look at her work and given my work on sexuality in our region I've been most engaged in her writings on sex uh including a women in sex and hidden face of he you see her lay out the the issues in in really anatomical detail in the regulation of female sexuality whether it's through FGM or the primacy of virginity in all the reflections of the power of patriarchy and how this is mirrored in repressive laws around inheritance and marriage and polygamy and of course the the issues of sexual violence and what I think is most interesting about her writings on this and it's really shocking is because the issues that she laid bare 50 years ago are alive and kicking in Egypt and across the Arab region today I'll I'll just give you one example if that's okay Kedija great so essentially it's just long passages on the hymen and it's basically hymen 101 right you know what is why it doesn't you know always bleed and you know the different you know the all the colors and the rainbows of the hymen basically all right and you you press forward to today and that that lack of insight and knowledge and the primacy of the hymen is is still there and to give you one example my work focuses on HIV AIDS and I was once out with an outreach group in Casablanca and fantastic group they're trying to prevent HIV they were handing out condoms we're going into bars talking to female sex workers and we met these two young two young hairdressing students and they were turning tricks for pocket change to buy clothes and mobile phones and all that and these fantastically dedicated outreach workers trying to give them condoms and these girls said no no no no we don't need condoms we will never get pregnant because we want to get married and therefore we only do anal and oral sex so we are virgins so what's interesting about this at so many levels is effectively what Noelle was speaking to and what is still present in the region is the gap between appearance and reality this is one example this is virginity defined by a piece of anatomy rather than by a state of chastity and what's interesting about that is that I think in Noelle's writing she tried to bring the two closer together and and that is key not just in our private lives but also in public life and political life across the Arab region because if you don't close the gap on the one the other will not necessarily follow they have to go in in sync and so what Noelle really did I think is take these private whisperings and broadcast them and practically shout them out and and what you see today and and my friend and colleague can speak much more to this is really that you see these conversations continuing but of course they're taking place on social media on the internet and you find that the the voices are being heard but perhaps in in these sort of meta spaces that exist somewhere in the no woman's land between public and private life the challenge of course is that the conversations are proliferating but the difficulty is translating a talk into action and to my mind that that that is one of the limitations of I think Noelle's legacy really right to use a medical metaphor I think she was much stronger on diagnosis than she was on prescription for a lot of the ills that she laid bare and in my experience sometimes her scalpel could be replaced with a sledgehammer I chaired an event in London in which she was the star attraction and it was full of young people young women and young men and they were clearly star struck and hanging on her every word and a young woman stood up she was Mojave she was wearing her head was covered and she asked a question about Noelle's work and Noelle basically dismantled her because she was wearing Higab and you know this was a symbol of oppression and how could this young woman be so deluded and it was shocking actually and it was interesting I talked with a number of young women in the audience after that and they were you know frankly God's not because for them there was this cognitive dissonance about of a woman whose ideas spoke to their dreams of freedom and yet she had difficulty really conceiving that their notions of fulfillment might be different to her own so I would say in this sort of looking back on Noelle you know she was I don't I don't think I think she had many fans and she had many followers but I don't think she catalyzed she started she didn't create a movement but but that being said I mean she was a catalyst for action I was there in her salons that she had in the wake of the uprisings in 2011 and I saw the young people as in the event in London I mean clearly transfixed and if you have a moment I'll just tell you one interesting story of how how her presence I mean her her her her just just the sheer force of her to bringing all these people together was a catalyst for action because I was there in this meeting it was packed you know it was in Shubra I think and it was just packed to the gills and it was 95 female and they were basically disemboweling the patriarchy there was this one chap who was nodding you know energetically at all the critique of manhood and I talked to him afterwards he was a student and he said you know what I'm 21 years old and I am expected to effectively be the guardian for my sister who's 25 I have to go out with her everywhere even when she's with her fiance and frankly you know I have to stay up and wait for her when she comes home yeah this is not what I want I want to live my life I think she should live her life but you know what this this being a man in this society it's a privilege but I can tell you it's a huge pressure now what's interesting about that is I got me thinking because so much of the research I had done around sexuality I had heard mainly women's voices and it's it's not because I didn't try to talk to men it's just that they didn't have things that were particularly interesting to say and it couldn't it just wasn't space to really hear about men's views about their intimate selves about how they saw themselves as men and how they saw their roles changing in relation to the changing roles and rights of women his masculinity studies at the time was not really developed in in in the region so fast forward a couple of years later I joined with a group called Promundo which is a leading NGO which is engaging with men and boys on gender equality and thanks to UN women and the Swedish government we launched this huge study about 15,000 you know almost 15,000 now participants men and women in seven countries including in Egypt talking about what is it to be a man today uh and you know the findings that we have both uh confirm but also confound much of what Noelle observed and that came effectively from being in Noelle's presence for being in that intellectual foment that she created and so I'll stop there because I'm going to hand off to Amal who has been a you know as I said a friend but also a collaborator on this work on men and masculinities and she has some fantastic findings from the field and how the world's observations connect to the reality in Egypt today so yeah it'll be great to hear from her because I I'll then put in something in terms of that kind of thing that's happening in the UK when when we would have uh when she'd speak to me when they came to her events so it'll be good to hear what uh Amal has to say yes please Amal. Amal is the director of Tajwend the gender center in Egypt. Thank you Hadidah and I'm really happy to be with this amazing crowd in a very special day I I did meet Noelle in several meetings I never had the honor to talk to her in person but but of course her writing has affected me tremendously and when I started my career and I I like to start from the end not from the start and in March when Noelle died this year this year I mean before she died there was a tweet from her official site on Twitter it says I will die and you will die the important thing is how you how you lived your life until you die and I thought that is brilliant it's just it's just there are a lot we can see how Noelle have affected we can see the critiques by feminist Egyptians as well as Arab Egyptians to Noelle you can see claims that Noelle was more famous and celebrated in the west than her own country Egypt we can talk about how Western media and academia often like over emphasized her influence but we also can we can talk that and that's debates that is there as Shirin said but also we can talk about um how uh when she died unexpectedly personally to me how what what there has been a really huge argument over social media by young feminists who is defending her how she affected them her really roles and how she really guided them through their being starting their careers or starting being knowing about like being feminist young feminist and reading her books and it was really interesting that that we might not see um her um like creation of a movement um but we could see um like other like other feminists but we could also see how her ideologies her writings as Umnea has said have really shaped a lot of young Egyptians um girls and it was really interesting for for some of you who might have followed debates on the Egyptian social media after her death um and the the statement and the stories that come from the young from the younger generation of how she influenced them for me I want to talk a little bit about what we do in Tigrin but also how some of Noelle work earlier work had influenced us Noelle have wrote on on FGM which I think is it's uh I think it's one of the earliest pieces uh that that a feminist Egyptian feminist writer would talk about FGM she she wrote in 1971 uh in her book Woman and Sex about FGM and um and and the patriarchal oppression and how it's uh how the control of woman sexuality then in her book in 1977 the hidden face of Eve Noelle told her own Christmas story of circumcision and she talked about her being subjected to FGM she have described undergoing the practice in the bathroom floor and where her mother had been overlooking her which was for for me personally has been traumatizing the experience she's putting her heart into writing such an experience about FGM was very inspiring to me and uh from from the day I read the story till first forward 25 years after even more I have been working on FGM and I've been one of the like I don't know but I I consider myself and and the organization I founded is one of the major player on FGM in in Egypt and before I've also I've been with the WTO working on FGM on at an international capacity so it's just the words voicing the words talking about this and the experience have really inspired a whole years and years of work on FGM in in my home country Egypt um I want to talk about um how some of the things you have said earlier like in in 50 years ago are um she voiced them and we still struggled until date when Noelle talked about FGM in particular and I want to I want to single out the female genital mutilation and whoever listening right now don't know that it's a practice that's widely practiced in 30 countries including Egypt. Egypt is one of the highest country that practice female genital mutilation with more than 93 percent of ever married women have undergone the practice and because we are 120 million Egyptians half of them are women we have the highest uh women population for heroin who have undergone the practice and FGM in Egypt is practiced among girls at the age at average age of of 10 years old and when Noelle first voiced um or her own experience and also advocated against FGM um if that was in the 70s we didn't have a law we didn't have um a religious the fatwa or or an announcement denouncing practice and she struggled alone and talking about FGM is a taboo after years and years of her like voicing out in FGM and feminist organizations and activists work in FGM now um we have a law against FGM we have um uh an Islamic fatwa against it we have a lot of interventions against it but still what she have mentioned early in 50 years ago about how FGM is very really tight or very strongly connecting to female sexuality is still an issue that we're struggling with in the work that have been done over years in Egypt on FGM it's rarely seldomly touched upon issues of sexuality in FGM it's always talked about it as a medical issue so now we have medicalization it talked about it at culture and practices all this religious teaching never never been touched upon about issues of sexuality and controlling female sexuality in relation to FGM which is to uh surprisingly like this is something Noelle voiced out 50 years ago and still here um now after 50 years in Egypt we just say if we don't address FGM from a sexuality and controlling sexuality of women and oppressing women's uh like ability and right to pleasure these are the main issue this is the core heart of the problem so this woman have been ahead of us many years 50 years ago I mean it might not have created the way we wanted but the knowledge was there she voiced it and right now after 50 years we are just saying and echoing which she have been saying uh long long time ago all that time so so I actually think um that she has very much contributed to a lot of the the things we are really working and still struggling with she has been definitely a woman ahead of her time yes we do know um we do know the limitation of the discourse and we know a lot of the challenges but we need to acknowledge also her um really really great impact on younger generation and and especially what I've seen I've seen it the last few months after her death I hope she somehow she would have felt all the love that all the young women have been spreading around all social media uh thinking about her putting pictures if they have met her writing words and quoting her there have been a kind of a celebratory moment over internet after her death right I think not only just the young women but also young men as well I'll leave that to Shireen yeah but no in terms of when she would gather uh youth to her apartment to discuss she really wanted to get involved and know that the youth movement was going on and and a couple of her assistants at some time that she introduced me to them were young women as well because she was really when we were talking about FGM she was also really against um you know boys being circumcised and she would talk about that and when they would come men would come and discuss things at events at least in a UK as well she would always you know she'd like to call people up onto the stage so she could have a one-on-one with them almost and inside that group she would always include men and she always wanted to know what was going on for them as well um you know because of course we have to consider and make sure that they know what young women are going through as well if we're going to get going to get through this this violence that is happening globally I mean against women it's so interesting to hear what is going on in Egypt and it's really great for you to let us know what her how her how she's impacted um especially like young people because of course the next generation but just even in terms of what young people and what women are thinking in Egypt now um and how we're going to get through this and the work that you're doing I can imagine she would have to know that you know that you inspired her to do this would have been great you know and sometimes we need people like that just to inspire other people so one of those people not everybody can do everything so if she was there and she can inspire people oh but then we know she also oh I remember in South Africa she had to get up for breakfast because she wanted to meet all of us before breakfast and she said okay we have to have an organization where there's um African women sub-Saharan African women writers and Arab women writers why are we not doing things together and you all now need to sort it out now that I've brought you together we had to do that before breakfast we really didn't know we're going to do that but this is what no alcohol experience is going to do so we did it you know I don't think the person who who was nominated to do it actually did it but she was really intent that because we were there and we had the ability to be together and discuss this she wanted to motivate and inspire us to do that so it's and it's so like I said in in terms of it's not often we will get to hear what is really going on on the ground in Egypt so we really thank you for that but I've just got one question before we throw it out to the uh to um people who are listening and really it's drawing on again um on linking with Noelle's legacy and the work that's been going on um and that was to ask you about how do you think Noelle's legacy of activism in in the work can be directed positively in the future which you've kind of spoken to a bit to Amel but no how do you think her legacy of activism going on in the future can be directed positively what can we do what else can other people do to work towards the problem of violence against women um and I know that's a like a bit of a heavy question but what do you think is one of the I'll throw it to Amel first what do you think is one of the main things that we need to either consider and and to do uh I I think Noelle have always engaged um in her work on issues of women she have just engaged male domination class domination new colonization I mean I would I would add now new liberalism but I also think the way she engaged um religion um has been a little bit of a controversy um and I think we need to to revisit that I mean there have been like um and Serena touched a little bit about about them I mean we we just have to really kind of engage to to widen how she had the views and in her recent she had been very much critiqued in her recent views about um religion and I know some some might not agree with me but but also I'm talking about the reality in Egypt at the ground we have to be very very conscious of what's happening and how the young people are are are really um relating to that so I would definitely take from what you have built and really re-engage re-engage discussion on how the religion what people have like how the religion is really um overarching the issues of women woman sexuality I in my work I always try shy away from religion there's have been very very tough subject for a working with FGM but I think we really re-engage we need to re-engage with it in this era and and and kind of listen and kind of see how the younger generation are really an open discourse around it and and that what I would take I will take that a further further work on on on these issues on on issues of religion and discourses around religion in particular that that is in my my personal take from from a wonderful work. Thank you. Thank you. I'll just encourage people who are listening to please send your questions we're going to come to you in a moment so Omnia I know you've been sitting there since we've started and you started us off what would you think in terms of Noel's work in terms of the activism work what do we need to do to take that forward positively? Well if we are to um take one slogan from all of what Noel has done I think the best that represents her is lifting the veil of the mind though she always said try and lift the veil of the mind and as much as this one simple sentence has been misinterpreted to say she's against hijab she's against this she's against whatever whatever but Noel always was very aware of how manipulation and thought enslavement and was embedded in everything like media and in the political agenda in world economy and all of this she was just like away and she said just be aware don't take things for face value always see what is behind things and I she's one of those very few people who saw the whole picture because when she spoke about this she would say look at things from the very beginnings so she would tie things with history like historically how things started patriarchy politics global economic system it's somehow all tied together and especially religious ideologies so she really never left anything unturned and I she was advocating at the very end the same very same things since she started I think Amal also touched upon this but she's she always said I'm asking that there should be equality between men and women in the family court and this is something we still have to work on and she said men and women should be equal in the constitution and we're still working towards this and then she always also called for the constitution should be secular to include everyone and 50 years after she started with all these things we're still in the same vicious circle the work is not done so I love to see that she said that the real revolution is a revolution that starts with the self and that a real revolution is one that is not organized by any party but it is one that comes from lifting the veil from the mind of the masses and they walk together towards what they want so I'm gonna stop you there thank you and I would like to add one small thing in agreement with Amal if that's possible absolutely I'm coming to you yes yes okay Amal I couldn't agree more I you know her about the link with sexuality it was in fact that her pointing that out that she got fired as minister of health do you remember that's what did it it was the link with sexuality because of the power inherent in a woman's sexuality and a woman's enjoying herself in a woman being a full human being but I see I think that we have we're not just in the same place I think it sometimes seems that way because it seems like we're going in a circle but it's isn't a circle it's a spiral you know and I think it's really different I don't think she was necessarily writing for her own time because and of course naturally she would ruffle feathers oh boy did she ruffle feathers among feminists among non-feminists everybody's feathers ruffle ruffle but I think she was writing for the young today and for the young in the future and for the young at a time when in fact religion will not be such an incendiary inflect conflagration um I think she was she had cast her sensibility so far afield with such cornucopic generosity um that she couldn't stop it you know I mean it was going to go on giving and giving and giving and that was that uh and I I think that was the heart of her of her genius yeah I really do and I think her work will be alive for a very long time I really do even though it might have driven some people including me at different times bananas in the now that doesn't doesn't matter at all yeah I agree with you there because I know she was really insistent on what she really wanted to do was to get her written works onto tv because she realized for young people that is where they were going to access it was going to access the young Robin the young you don't understand the yes yes yes but let me throw that we haven't even got to the questions I've got here but let me throw that same question to Sharim because I think you'll also know around Noel's work so you can really talk to this really interesting one about this same question please I'd love to but I am also concerned that we're we've talked it's been a fascinating conversation perhaps there were questions from the audience I'm more than happy yep okay come back a bit later because I do want to hear from everyone yeah yeah I know we just need more time well this is a question that maybe one person can answer what is the uh what do we know from Noel's early life you're breaking up the life it's hard to understand because you hear me now is this better yeah okay her early life what was there in her early life that highlighted that she was going to become a powerful significant person let me just say something here because I translated her first memoir ever when she she wrote it when she was 10 years old and it's called Diary of a Child called Soad and it would have never come to light if it wasn't saved somehow and she took the pen name of Soad she called herself Soad and just wrote about her everyday life through this character called Soad and reading the diary in Arabic I was like so amazed that that that young girl was 10 at the time is the Noel the Noel who's sitting in front of me um I don't know if it was years later like 50 years later uh with the same ideas with the same critical um eye to see that there's you know the child in her the child always sees the truth and what is the title of that book again I'm sorry I'm just pointing in here because of the time but just tell us the title of that book again because then people can read that to know Diary of a Child called Soad Soad okay that's great so that's the book people need to get to answer that question that's really good okay there's another question here um but maybe I'll be best to answer some um what is the best way to honor the memory of Noel El Sadawi who would like to maybe very quickly say one thing read her read her read her own words because one of the things that happens when you become a world figure uh is that other people interpret you and sometimes they're right sometimes they're spot on and sometimes they're really spot off so just let her own word speak for what she stood for what she believed and the passion with which she believed them spills out across the page her books are still fortunately in print they're in translation uh they're all over the world get those books the novels the non-fiction books and read her read her own voice yes as you say that her books so if people can see we can't see it right now but you should be able to see it both of her publishers in the uk are offering discounts for her books so take advantage of that and get as well be said by her books and read them that is that is how you can best honor her yeah and and get to know her through there charene would you like to make a comment about that please uh in terms of her legacy and and how to take it forward in a positive direction yeah so uh it's there's been a lot of discourse I mean again I'm you know I was once I was once asked by um a Moroccan uh eminent Moroccan uh sociologist am I a feminist and this was a decade ago when I started working on sexuality and I come to this through a background of hiv through public health so it really threw me the question um I can now say confidently in large part through uh the work and you know being acquainted with the Noelle Elsa Dowie's work and of course working with Amal I am a feminist but I'm what I call a leapfrog feminist I went from no feminism to working with men and boys and so in looking at that I would say that in terms of all that she was talking about in terms of the power of the patriarchy it is absolutely now key to engage with with with the other side of gender if if you like and it's it's become very fashionable and it was fashionable for a time to talk about how this you know why do they hate us and you know see about this sort of culture of hate that Arab men were perceived to have but actually Noelle wrote about this very tellingly and and I just it really stuck with me and he said the tragedy of the Arab men however or rather for most men the world over is that they fear women and yet desire her and I think that's very interesting the fear element and it is through the she also spoke to the power of women and how this posed a threat to to men and I think that what we're seeing now on the ground and then certainly we talked about the young men who gravitated to her salons and were inspired by her work is that we we are seeing men coming to the table to address a lot of these issues particularly as they relate to sexual violence and I think that that in combination with the point that Amal made about religion because again Noelle talked a lot about how Islam and conservative interpretations of religion box in women what we don't talk about as much about is how narrow interpretation Islamic fundamentalism if you like also box in men in putting them into a space with this idealized vision of manhood you know for the prophet peace be upon him which never actually existed so I mean I love is that it is is all of this in in the in your in your book all of these as this come after your book what you're discussing now just because I can direct people to what to read um I would suggest they have a look at www.imagesmena.org which is the work that we've done with Pramando Amal and myself on men and masculinity across the region that's great I'd just like to direct people to as I said look at whatever is in the chat in inverted commas for different links there that you can be directed to Amal's work um and if you we only had a couple of lines bios for everybody but everybody here all the women here Robin Morgan, Omnia Amin, Amal Fahmi, Shirin Al-Fekhi, myself we're all doing great work so please check out what they're doing in terms and you can see just how much we're related to what Noel does um and there's also a general email address there if you missed anything you can email and you can follow up on that I'd like to thank you all so so much first of all you know Noel introduced me to you which was great which is why I contacted you but you've all spoken from different aspects but again in some ways directed the same thing the world there almost as an icon directing us and well directing different people directing young people to what she saw the important thing needs to be done and she trust those important things in terms of literature and science and religion she brought them all together and and was able to was able to deliver on that in writing and in her work so thank you so much for this evening and I just hope everybody's enjoyed it um from the comments we had comments which I wasn't able to read out but we had more comments than questions just about how much Noel has influenced people and how they wish that like us they could have met her as well I saw you didn't but we but thank you all again and thank you thank you bye bye bye bye thank you