A Tribute

I met Nawal in the late 1970s, when I began compiling my third anthology Sisterhood Is Global. Since Hoda Shaarawi and Inji Efflatoun (not to speak of Hatshepsut) had long departed, clearly the person to write the piece on Egypt was Nawal El Saadawi. She agreed, drafted the essay, gave it to her typist—and the next day was arrested by Anwar Sadat. Afraid that her typist would be implicated by being in possession of this “incendiary” article on women’s rights, Nawal got a message to the typist to destroy the manuscript—the only copy. I learned this and then despaired on two counts, since I was very worried about her being in custody. My friend and colleague Gloria Steinem had recently been in Egypt as a tourist, but, being a celebrity, she had been invited to meet the folks in power (to whom neither Nawal nor I had ever deigned...