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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Ayam Al-Dimoqratiya: Al-Nisa' Al-Misriyat wa Homoum Al-Watan (Days of Democracy: Egyptian Women and National Elections), Ateyyat El-Abnoudy, Cairo: Kassem Press, 1999. pp197
Monthly supplement
Light on the underground
A quoi rêvent les loups (What Wolves Dream Of), Yasmina Khadra, Paris: Julliard 1999. pp274Into the abyss
Yasmina Khadra
All in the detail
Masters of the Trade: Crafts and Craftspeople in Cairo, Pascale Ghazaleh,1750-1850, Cairo Papers in Social Science Volume 22, Number 3, Fall 1999. pp157A serious spinster
Passionate Nomad, Jane Fletcher Geneisse, London: Chatto and Windus, 1999. pp402Written by camera
Ayam Al-Dimoqratiya: Al-Nisa' Al-Misriyat wa Homoum Al-Watan (Days of Democracy: Egyptian Women and National Elections), Ateyyat El-Abnoudy, Cairo: Kassem Press, 1999. pp197Bizarre, perhaps
The Bazaar, Markets and Merchants of the Islamic World, Text by Walter M. Weiss and photographs by Kurt-Michael Westermann, London: Thames & Hudson, 1999. pp256All about Egypt
Egypt: Nile, Desert, and People, Wolfgang and Rosel Jahn, Trans. by Manuela Kunkel and Ian Portman. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press 1999. pp191 + 300 colour illustrationsThrough the mask of Yasmine
Layali Okhra (Other Nights), Mohamed El-Bisatie, Beirut: Al-Aadab Publishing House, 2000. pp180Photohgraphs of Egypt and the Holy land, Francis Frith, Zeitouna Publishing, 1999 --see caption--
To the editor
At a glance
A shorthand guide to the month compiled by Mahmoud El-Wardani* Hikmet Al-Missriyeen (The Wisdom of Egyptians), introduced and edited by Mohamed El-Sayed Said, Cairo: The Cairo Centre for Human Rights, 1999. pp273
* Ashr Sanawat maa Farouq (Ten Years with Farouq), Karim Thabit, Cairo: Al-Shorouq, 2000. pp472 (Adel Hammouda and Me), Ahmed Fouad Negm, Cairo: Zeinab Publishing House, 2000. pp108
* Mirayat Al-Dhat Al-Okhra (Mirror of the Other Self), Sabri Hafiz, Cairo: General Organisation for Cultural Palaces, Aswat Adabiya Series, 1999. pp365
* Moqarabat Al-Abad (Nearing Eternity), Gamal El-Ghitani, Cairo: Nahdit Misr Publications, 2000. pp96
* Al-Kotob: Wighat Nazar (Books: Viewpoints), monthly magazine, issue no. 13, February 2000 Cairo: The Egyptian Company for Arab and International Publication
* Al-Fonoun Al-Sha'biya (The Folk Arts), a specialised periodical, issue no.58-9, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation
* Al-Osour Al-Jadida (New Eras), monthly magazine, issue no. 5, February 2000, Cairo: Sinai Publishing House
* Nizwa, quarterly magazine, issue no.11, Oman: The Oman Institution for Journalism, Publication and Mass Communication
* Al-Hilal, monthly magazine, issue no. 2, February 2000, Cairo: Al-Hilal Publishing House
Books is a monthly supplement of Al-Ahram Weekly appearing every second Thursday of the month. We welcome contributions and letters on subjects raised in this supplement. Material may be edited for length and clarity; and should be addressed to Mona Anis, Books Editor, Al-Ahram Weekly, Galaa St., Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt; Faz: +202 578 6089; E-mail: m.anis@ahram.org.eg
For advertising call +202-5780233; Fax +202 394 1866To see other book supplements go to the ARCHIVES index.
Illustrations courtesy of International Commitee of the Red Cross
"Folk drawings and tales", Cairo, 1996
Written by camera
Reviewed by Nadia Abou El-Magd
The documentary filmmaker Ateyyat El-Abnoudy has defined the documentary as a genre with "no script, no actors, no direction. The cameraman or woman follows the subject." Days of Democracy, which exists as both a film documentary and as the present book, is no exception to this minimalist definition, and takes as its subject 33 of the 89 women who were candidates in the 1995 Egyptian parliamentary elections with the author taking very much a secondary role in telling their stories. The book, produced to complement a film released in 1996, was written, El-Abnoudy says in her Preface, as a statement of faith in the importance of documentary. "Like my Ancient Egyptian ancestors," she says, "I believe in documentation. I chose documentary filmmaking to 'write' about ordinary people and their lives." And the book is designed to give additional information in this writing process, the kind that cannot be conveyed through images alone.
Of her 23 documentary films, Permissible Dreams (1982), Responsible Women (1994), Girls Still Dream and Rawya (1995) deal with women's issues such as women's personal status and their relationships, especially with those who take the most important decisions in their lives. "Are you doing this film on women only because you are a woman?" El-Abnoudy recalls being asked by a young man in Upper Egypt while filming Days of Democracy. "When women represent 50 per cent of MPs I will not make a film about them," she answered without hesitation, and, in an interview with The Cairo Times, when El-Abnoudy was asked why she spent time and money documenting elections to an institution "many of whose members are routinely ridiculed for sleeping on the job, lining their pockets, or spending time in jail?" she responded with a powerful statement of principle. "I take everything seriously," she said. "We have to take everything in this country seriously. I'm not one of those intellectuals who have no hope. I always have hope. I'm not only a documentary filmmaker. I'm also a researcher and a social worker. I'm using the profession I'm good at to expose things." And so, in the current book and film she does.
Only 89 women presented themselves as candidates at the 1995 elections out of a total of 3,980. The various political parties nominated 19 women, the other 70 being independent candidates from all over the country and representing different social classes. Only five of the 89 succeeded in winning a seat in the 444-member People's Assembly, and these five were all nominated by the ruling National Democratic Party, members of a group of seven women put forward by the NDP and known as 'the Magnificent Seven'. They included Soraya Labnah (Cairo), Fayda Kamel (Medinat Nasr), Dr Amal Othman, a former minister of social affairs, Galila Awwad (Southern Sinai) and Sawsan El-Kilani (Ismailia). Why so few successful women, El-Abnoudy asks in her book, and answers her question by remarking that either "women voted for male candidates, or they voted for women candidates and their votes were rigged, or they did not vote at all." Depressing answers indeed.
Why do women choose to stand for election and what do they hope to achieve if elected? In answer to these questions, Soraya Labnah, president of the Union of Social Workers, treasurer of the NDP's centre in Medinat Nasr and several times an MP, told El-Abnoudy that she was "hooked on elections. Running in them has become my hobby. For me it is a real joy to stay up to the early hours of the morning with my supporters around me." She tells El-Abnoudy here that her aims were primarily socio-economic, being born out of a concern at global economic developments and changes resulting from the recent GATT. "Being basically a labour leader," she says, "I ran for the worker's seat. We need to agree on wage increases for low-paid workers, if only to ensure better quality control and to help Egyptian products maintain an edge in international markets."
From Cairo, El-Abnoudy interviewed Dr Nagla' El-Qalyubi, a member of the Executive Committee of the opposition Labour Party, which has identified itself with the Islamist trend and the slogan that 'Islam is the Solution'. In 1995 El-Qalyubi stood in an overwhelmingly Christian constituency (Al-Maahad Al-Fanni in Shubra), but still followed the party's platform. "Islam is the solution," she is quoted as saying here. "Islam is not only a religion, it is also a religion that sets rules for the proper running of the state. We have a very specific vision that differs from that of others with regard to health, education, housing and development."
Scriptwriter Fathiya El-Assal, the only woman nominated by the leftist Tagammu' Party, ran in the Cairo district of Imbaba. "Democracy," she says here, "is our basic demand and the goal of our fight. It is only through it that we can act freely and fulfill our dreams." Accordingly, she tells El-Abnoudy that "in the People's Assembly I will work for democracy that does not grow out of undemocratic discourse, a democracy that would result in the development of the entire community and of men and women equally."
Twenty-three women candidates stood in the seven Delta governorates, and El-Abnoudy gives special attention to these. She considers her book and film, she says, to be, among other things, a modest attempt at linking the past with the present and bridging the gap between fathers and sons (or mothers and daughters). "I became overwhelmed by this idea as I planned to shoot the film in the villages and cities of the Delta," she says, always trying to find "women candidates, the daughters of Isis". Rawhiya El-Sayed, was one of 17 women candidates interviewed by El-Abnoudy, and she comments of the publicity material prepared for her campaign that though happy with banners bearing her name, she was not prepared to see her image in public. "I have not printed pictures of myself to be fixed to lamp posts or walls for people to see," she told El-Abnoudy in 1995, "because it is not right for a woman to display her picture before the public, and a woman must observe good manners."
To the East along the Suez Canal, El-Abnoudy met with Galila Awwad, one of the NDP's Magnificent Seven. "Had I not been nominated and supported by the NDP, I would never have thought of becoming involved in politics," Awwad says, commenting that without NDP support a woman would "never have been nominated or elected". Awwad ran for the first time, and won, in the 1979 elections, however she did so with little direct thanks to the NDP, since, she says, the party does not provide candidates with material or human resources. However "it is enough that people learn one is in the party's good books. We propagate and execute the party's programme, and our achievements are attained through the party."
In total for both book and film El-Abnoudy interviewed five candidates from the NDP, three from the opposition Wafd Party, two from the opposition Labour Party, one from Al-Tagammu', and one from Misr Al-Araby. She also interviewed two of the 53 independents, all in interviews spanning three weeks in November 1995 and stopping just days before the elections began.
From this experience El-Abnoudy says in the book that "this film taught me that the problem of women's participation in general elections, whether they are successful or otherwise, could not possibly be solved through appointment by presidential decree. Rather, [their participation] is a matter of comprehensive social development that would change male concepts of women and their role in the lives of men and society."
"I hereby present my gratitude," she says in the Preface to the book, "and respect to every one of those Egyptian women who took part in the 1995 parliamentary elections."
