Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.

They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.

All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.

Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honour as a woman. 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.

She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.

Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.

I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die.

أعتقد أن المرأة مهما بلغ جمال جسمها فإنها تفتقد الأنوثة إذا كانت غبية أو ضعيفة الشخصية أو متصنعة أو كاذبة.

If you are creative, you must be dissident.

My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly.

Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows.

Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.

Everybody has to die. I prefer to die for a crime I have committed rather than to die for one of the crimes which you have committed.

I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master.

Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful.

Revolutionary men with principles were not really different from the rest. They used their cleverness to get, in return for principles, what other men buy with their money.

اليس هذا المجتمع الذي يذيع أغاني الحب والغرام هو نفسه المجتمع الذي ينصب المشنقة لكل من وقع في الحب والغرام؟

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 to it, of making it more holistic.

ليس من العقل ان أطيعكَ دائماً

ليس في الخطأ ضعف أو غباء ولكن الاستمرار في الخطأ هو الضعف والغباء *

كيف يكون الفرد مستقلا .. فى وطن غير مستقل

But I feel that you, in particular, are a person who cannot live without love." "Yet I am living without love." "Then you are either living a lie or not living at all.

Who said to kill does not require gentleness?

I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one.

I hope for nothing I want for nothing I fear nothing I am free.

quote by feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi in bright red. “I speak the truth and the truth is savage and dangerous,

How many were the years of my life that went by before my body, and my self became really mine, to do with them as I wished? How many were the years of my life that were lost before I tore my body and my self away from the people who held me in their grasp since the very first day?

You poor, deluded woman...do you believe there is any such thing as love?...You're living an illusion. Do you believe the words of love they whisper in the ears of penniless women like us?

Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.

Ever since I was a child I used to hear my father say: ‘If the price we pay for freedom is high, we pay a much higher price if we accept to be slaves.

Interviewer: What would you say to a woman in this country who assumes she is no longer oppressed, who believes women's liberation has been achieved? el Saadawi: Well I would think she is blind. Like many people who are blind to gender problems, to class problems, to international problems. She's blind to what's happening to her.

Now i had learnt that honor required large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one's honor. An infernal circle whirling round and round, draggng me up and down with it.

إننا لا نعرف الصواب إلا من خلال الخطأ، ليس في الخطأ ضعف أو غباء ولكن الاستمرار في الخطأ هو الضعف وهو الغباء.

Here the oppression of women is very subtle. If we take female circumcision, the excision of the clitoris, it is done physically in Egypt. But here it is done psychologically and by education. So even if women have the clitoris, the clitoris was banned; it was removed by Freudian theory and by the mainstream culture.

She replied that it was precisely men well versed in religion who beat their wives. The precepts of religion permitted such punishment. A virtuous woman was not supposed to complain about her husband. Her duty was perfect obedience.

For truth and death are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them. And truth is like death in that it kills. When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife. That is why they are afraid and in a hurry to execute me. They do not fear my knife. It is my truth that frightens them.

There is a proverb that says, ‘Talk so that I may know who you are.’ But I say, ‘Show me your eyes and I will know who you are.

و تضاءلت علة الجسد إلى جوار علة الروح *

My work is not worthy of respect. Why then do you join in it with me?

Something I tried to hold onto, to touch if only for a moment, but it slipped away from me like the air, like an illusion, or a dream that floats away and is lost. I wept in my sleep as though it was something I was losing now; a loss I was experiencing for the first time, and not something I had lost a long time ago.

اما رئيس الدولة، فهو غير مسئول عن الشر. انه مسئول فقط عن الخير.

What we require is not a formal return to tradition and religion, but a rereading, a reinterpretation, of our history that can illuminate the present and pave the way to a better future. For example, if we delve more deeply into ancient Egyptian and African civilisations we will discover the humanistic elements that were prevalent in many areas of life. Women enjoyed a high status and rights, which they later lost when class patriarchal society became the prevalent social system.

ثلاثون عاماً من عمري دون أن أعرف الحقيقة، ودون أن أفهم الحياة، دون أن أحقق ذاتي، وكيف كنت أحققها وأنا لا أفكر إلا في أن آخذ وآخذ وتحقيق الذات لا يكون إلا بأن أعطي وأعطي، ولكن كيف كان يمكنني أن أعطي شيئاً ليس له عندي وجود ؟

Writing: such has been my crime ever since I was a small child. To this day writing remains my crime. Now, although I am out of prison, I continue to live inside a prison of another sort, one without steel bars. For the technology of oppression and might without justice has become more advanced, and the fetters imposed on mind and body have become invisible. The most dangerous shackles are the invisible ones, because they deceive people into believing they are free. This delusion is the new prison that people inhabit today, north and south, east and west...We inhabit the age of the technology of false consciousness, the technology of hiding truths behind amiable humanistic slogans that may change from one era to another...Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned.

كان لا مفر لي من أن أخوض التجربة، أخطر تجربة في حياة المرأة، تجربة اختيار الرجل، تجربة البحث عن الحب.

كلما فرغت الدماغ من الأفكار .. أصبح الجندى أفضل

الغرور يصنع من الرجلَ مخلوقاً غبياً

I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy.

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.

إن الإنسان يولد عارياً ويموت عارياً وما تلك الأثواب التي يلبسها إلا زيف يحاول أن يغطي به حقيقته.

Motherhood goes back in history to a time when a father had no way of knowing his children. Fatherhood only became known when class patriarchal society had established itself and imposed monogamous marriage on women. Motherhood is like sun and rain and plants, a quality and product of nature which does not require laws or systems in order to exist.

للنساء تاريخ غير .. مكنوب تتناقله الألسنة .. جيلا بعد جيل

A successful prostitute was better than a misled saint. All women are victims of deception. Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows.

الأجانب والحكومة المصرية .. لكلاهما تاريخ أسود .. يتعاونان فى الباطن ..وفى الظاهر يتبادلان العداء.. مصالحهما تتلاقى أو تتعارض .. إلا أن عدائهما للشعب المصرى واحد

My heart faltered, overcome by its frightened, almost frenzied beating because of something I had just lost, or was on the point of losing for ever. My fingers grasped at his hand with such violence that no force in the world, no matter how great, could take it away from me.

إن حريتي لا أستمدها من خلايا ضعيفة من خلايا جسدي، وإن قيودي لا تنبع من خوف على عذرية واهية تمزقها خبطة عشواء وتوصلها غرز العلم، قيودي أضعها بنفسي حين أريد القيود، وحريتي أمارسها بإرادتي كما أفهم الحرية.

كانت المرأة أعرق من الرجل معرفة وقدرة، كانت المرأة أقوى بعقلها وذكائها من الشيطانوكانت تنتصر دائماً بمعرفتها وحكمتها على الشياطين والآلهة معاً فقد انتصرت حواء على الإله وجعلت آدم يطيعها هي ولا يطيع الإله.

فى كل أزمة يمر بها الوطن . ويهب الشباب للتطوع والفداء تحدث المأساة.. يتحول الفدائيون من أبطال وطنيون إلى مطاردين من البوليس.. يدخلون السجون أو يهربون أو يهاجرون ، إلا من يستسلم منهم ويدخل حظيرة الحكومة أو السلطة الحاكمة

قالت : ولماذا تدخل في حزب الله وحزب الشيطان معا ؟ قال : أؤمن بوجود الله وبوجود الشيطان, وأخافهما الاثنين ,وقلت آمن شرهما وأدخل حزبيهما قالت : أنت تعيش في خوف الى الأبد

الأمومة الصحيحة هي منح الأطفال كل فرص النضوج والاستقلال ومنحهم من الحنان والحب القدر المطلوب حتى تكتمل صحتهم النفسية.

الأحرار لا يتحدثون عن الحرية ، لأنهم يعيشونها ، فاقد الشئ يتكلم عنه طوال الوقت .

الحب يسبق اللغة فى التاريخ.. الإدراك الجسدى يرتفع فوق العقل ..تفسد الكتابة لحظات الحب.. القلم مثل المشرط .. يقتل اللحظة ويمزق الجسد

لم أتصور أن الطبيبة يمكن أن تكون امرأة جميلة *

For during life it is our wants, our hopes, our fears that enslave us.

Now I realised that the least deluded of all woman was the prostitute. That marriage was the system built on the most cruel suffering for women.

How is it possible to live? Life is so hard?’ ‘You must be harder than life, Firdaus. Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.’ ‘But you are not hard, Sharifa, so how do you manage to live?’ ‘I am hard, terribly hard, Firdaus.’ ‘No, you are gentle and soft.’ ‘My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite deadly.’ ‘Like snake?’ ‘Yes, exactly like a snake. Life is a snake. They are the same, Firdaus. If the snake realises you are not a snake, it will bite you. And if life knows you have no sting, it will devour you.

Inciting women to rebel against the divine laws of Islam.’ This became the accusation that was leveled against me whenever I wrote or did anything to defend the rights of women against the injustices widespread in society. It followed me wherever I went, step by step, moved through the corridors of government administrations year after year, irrespective of who came to power, or of the regime that presided over the destinies of our people. It was only years later that I began to realized that the men and women who posed as the defenders of Islamic morality and values were most often the ones who were undermining the real ethics and moral principles of society.

You can't ban books, people will find them

لماذا نسب الإثم والشر إلى حواء مع إنها هي التي كانت صاحبة المعرفة وهي التي قادت آدم إلى شجرة المعرفة، ولولا معرفة حواء ما جئنا نحن وما جاءت البشرية كلها.

Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies

Thus, after a period of about two thousand years the greatest crime became to worship a god other than the God of Moses, whereas injustice became a minor sin. I began to ask myself how this change had come about. Was it linked to a new order in which the female goddesses had been replaced by one male god?

Badreya whispered in her ear, “The price of freedom is high, Bodour, and there is no writing without freedom. Break your chains, Bodour, break free of your prison and reach out for the forbidden tree. If you eat from it, you will not die, for knowledge leads you to life and not to death. You will live forever.

I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die. I want nothing. I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. Therefore I am free. For during life it is our wants, our hopes, our fears that enslave us.

One day when I woke up I found him reading my papers. It was as though he were violating my body. Maybe if he had violated my body it would have been less painful. I said: ‘Those are my papers and you have no right to read them.’ His answer was to pick up the pile of papers and throw them out of the window. I jumped out of the window thinking I would be able to save them from being lost. I would have killed myself, broken my head on the tarmac road. It was not a moment of madness. I was perfectly aware of what I was doing. I had worked on my novel day and night for months, and then had covered three hundred pages with my handwriting. To me, rescuing the novel was like saving my life.

و من هو المجتمع؟ أليس هو رجال مثل أخي ربته أمه منذ طفولته على أنه إله؟ أليس هو نساء مثل أمي ضعيفات عاطلات؟

You poor, deluded woman...do you believe there is any such thing as love.

If you are creative you must be dissident.

The mask of secularism may differ in thickness, may be less visible, but religion is always there hidden under hallowed big beautiful words

But in love I gave all: my capabilities, my efforts, my feelings, my deepest emotions. Like a saint, I gave everything I had without ever counting the cost.

Knowledge is the highest form of worship for a Muslim believer.

I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master. I saw from the expression in his eyes that he feared me as only a master can fear his slave, as only a man can fear a woman.

I knew that successful politicians cannot bear to accept defeat within themselves. A human being cannot stand up to a double defeat. That is the secret of their continuous attempt to rise to power. They draw a feeling of supremacy from their power over others. It makes them feel victorious rather than defeated. It hides how essentially hollow they are inside, despite the impression of greatness they try to spread around them, which is all they really care for.

I came to realize that a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life. An employee is scared of losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute’s life is in fact better than hers. And so she pays the price of her illusory fears with her life, her health, her body, and her mind. She pays the highest price for things of the lowest value. I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one. I also knew that if I lost my job, all I would lose with it was the miserable salary, the contempt I could read every day in the eyes of the higher level executives when they looked at the lesser female officials, the humiliating pressure of male bodies on mine when I rode in the bus, and the long morning queue in front of a perpetually overflowing toilet.

الحب لا يمكن أن يقوم على علاقة يشوبها استغلال، أو يشوبها احتياج للحماية من أي نوع. الحب لا يقوم لأن الإنسان يريد أن يأكل ويشرب أو يتناسل. الحب لا يقوم لأن الإنسان يريد أن يحصل على حماية أو وصاية. الحب ليس هروبًا من مشاكل الحياة، وليس رغبة في الحصول على المأوى أو الأمان أو الضمان الاجتماعي. الحب ليس تبادلًا للمنفعة، وليس بحثًا عن الراحة في الحياة أو التكيف المريح معها. الحب ليس هروبًا من وحدة أو ملل أو فشل. والحب ليس امتلاكًا، ولا سيطرة، ولا شعور من طرف واحد مهما كان هذا الشعور.

I wanted a perfect man like the one in my imagination and a perfect love and I wasn’t going to abandon either of these goals, however long it meant I had to be alone. ‘All or nothing’ was my abiding principle and I’d never accept half measures.

God was just and that the head of the state in Egypt wielded his power fairly. If God deprived a child of family or wealth, He might bless him with intelligence, music, or the love of God and the homeland. A poor person might still be morally rich.

Throughout the thirty years of our life together the authorities have given us no respite. They were after us all the time. If we published a magazine, they closed it down. If we started a project they prevented us from carrying it through. If we established an association they told us we were breaking the laws and banned its activities. Now they were driving us out of the country.

My father was no different from a king except for one thing." "And what was that?" "He never taught me to kill. He left me to learn it alone as I went through life." "Did life teach you to kill?" "Of course it did." "And have you killed anybody yet?" "Yes, I have." He stared at me for a brief moment, laughed and then said, "I can't believe that someone like you can kill." "Why not?" "Because you are too gentle." "And who said to kill does not require gentleness?" He looked into my eyes again, laughed, and said, "I cannot believe that you are capable of killing anything, even a mosquito." "I might not kill a mosquito, but I can kill a man.

When they pronounced the word 'patriotism' I could tell at once that in their heart of hearts they feared not Allah, and that at the back of their minds patriotism meant that the poor should die to defend the land of the richt, their land, for I knew that the poor had no land.

he explained to me that refusing a Head of State could be looked upon as an insult to a great man and lead to strained relations between the two countries. He added that if I really loved my country, if I was a patriot, I would go to him at once. So I told the man from the police that I knew nothing about patriotism, that my country had not only given me nothing, but had also taken away anything I might have had, including my honour and my dignity.

الحب لا يمكن أن يقوم على علاقة يشوبها استغلال، أو يشوبها احتياج للحماية من أي نوع. الحب لا يقوم لأن الإنسان يريد أن يأكل ويشرب أو يتناسل. الحب لا يقوم لأن الإنسان يريد أن يحصل على حماية أو وصاية. الحي ليس هروبًا من مشاكل الحياة، وليس رغبة في الحصول على المأوى أو الأمان أو الضمان الاجتماعي. الحب ليس تبادلًا للمنفعة، وليس بحثًا عن الراحة في الحياة أو التكيف المريح معها. الحب ليس هروبًا من وحدة أو ملل أو فشل. والحب ليس امتلاكًا، ولا سيطرة، ولا شعور من طرف واحد مهما كان هذا الشعور.

In no country in the world has it happened that women have achieved equal rights with men simply because they have been given their political rights. All the clamour of voices on radio, television and in public meetings, all the oral and written statements, all the clash of cymbals, the beating of drums and the floating of banners, all the throbbing speeches on democratic rights and the freedom of women cannot change the fact that, as long as feudalistic, capitalistic and paternalistic systems persist, the votes of women will very often be used against the real interests of women, in exactly the same way as the votes of the workers and peasants are very often used against their interests.

Bir manda bile Kafr El Teen'deki insanlardan çok daha akıllıdır.

كنت سجينة الخوف ، حتى عرفت الوحدة فوجدتها جميلة موحية .

In our country we use different words [than feminism] which mean the liberation or the emancipation of women. Of course I believe in the emancipation of women. It will change a lot of things in society for the better. But, you know, the class patriarchal system under which we live oppresses men too and the discrimination from which women suffer is not good for the life of men. Don’t you think so?

I am speaking the truth now without any difficulty. For the truth is always easy and simple. And in its simplicity lies a savage power. I only arrived at the savage, primitive truths of life after years of struggle. For it is only very rarely that people can arrive at the simple, but awesome and powerful truths of life after only a few years. And to have arrived at the truth means that one no longer fears death. For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them. And truth is like death in that it kills. When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife. That is why they are afraid and in a hurry to execute me. They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them. This fearful truth gives me great strength. It protects me from fearing death, or life, or hunger, or nakedness, or destruction. It is this fearful truth which prevents me from fearing the brutality of rulers and policemen. I spit with ease on their lying faces and words, on their lying newspapers.

I was like a woman walking through an enchanted world to which she does not belong. She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it. She experi-ences the rare pleasure of having no ties with anyone, of having broken with everything, of having cut all relations with the world around her, of being completely independent and living her independence completely, of enjoying freedom from any subjection to a man, to marriage, or to love; of being divorced from all limitations whether rooted in rules and laws in time or in the universe. If the first man who comes along does not want her, she will have the next, or the one after. No need to wait any longer for just one man. No need to be sad when he does not turn up, or to expect anything and suffer when one’s hopes are razed to the ground. She no longer hopes for anything or desires anything. She no longer fears anything, for everything which can hurt her she has already undergone.

But when I was a prostitute I protected myself, fought back at every moment, was never off guard. To protect my deeper, inner self from men, I offered them only an outer shell. I kept my heart and soul, and let my body plat its role, its passive, inert, unfeeling role. I learnt to resist by being passive, to keep myself whole by offering nothing, to live by withdrawing to a world of my own. In other words, I was telling the man he could have my body, he could have a dead body, but he would never be able to make me react, or tremble, or feel either pleasure or pain. I made no effort, expended no energy, gave no affection, provided no thought. I was therefore never tired or exhausted.

In no country in the world has it happened that women have achieved equal rights with men simply because they have been given their political rights. All the clamour of voices on radio, television and in public meetings, all the oral and written statements, all the clash of cymbals, the beating of drums and the floating of banners, all the throbbing speeches on democratic rights and the freedom of women cannot change the fact that, as long as feudalistic, capitalistic and paternalistic systems persist, the votes of women will very often be used against the real interests of women, in exactly the same way as the votes of the workers and peasants are very often used against their interests.

I read love stories and love poems. But I preferred books written about rulers. I read about a ruler whose female servants and concubines were as numerous as his army, and about another whose only interests in life were wine, women, and whipping his slaves. A third cared little for women, but enjoyed wars, killing, and torturing men. Another of these rulers loved food, money and hoarding riches without end. Still another was possessed with such an admiration for himself and his greatness that for him no one else in the land existed. There was also a ruler so obsessed with plots and conspiracies that he spent all his time distorting the facts of history and trying to fool his people.I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their deaths, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy.