When, in 2011, an eighty-year-old woman appeared among protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, no one was surprised. Nawal El Saadawi had spent her entire life confronting systems that tried to silence her—from the British colonial administration, through successive Egyptian presidents, to religious fundamentalism.
Childhood in the Shadow of Rebellion
Born in 1931 in the small village of Kafr Tahla as the second of nine children, she grew up in a family full of contradictions. Her father, a Ministry of Education official, was exiled for taking part in an uprising against the British and taught her self-respect and encouraged her to learn Arabic. At the same time, this very family subjected her to ritual female genital mutilation at the age of six.
Her grandmother would say a boy was worth at least fifteen girls. Little Nawal reacted with anger, which over time transformed into methodical resistance.
When her family tried to marry her off at the age of ten, she ate raw eggplants to discolor her teeth and discourage potential suitors. Her mother sided with her—a rare gesture of solidarity in a society where a woman’s voice counted for little.
Orphaned at an early age, she had to support her large family herself. This experience shaped her conviction that education was the only path to independence. Although she dreamed of studying literature, her parents persuaded her to choose medicine as the more practical option. They did not foresee that their daughter would combine both worlds.
The Doctor Who Wrote What Others Kept Silent
After graduating from Cairo University’s medical school in 1955, she began working as a rural doctor. What she witnessed shocked her more than any academic textbook—the unhygienic practices of local barbers and midwives responsible for circumcising both girls and boys. Her attempts at health education were met with hostility from local practitioners and eventually resulted in her transfer back to Cairo.
In 1972, she published a work that ruined her bureaucratic career but guaranteed her intellectual immortality. Her book on gender socialization and its effects on women caused a scandal and led to her dismissal from the Ministry of Health. The Health Education Association she founded was closed, and her magazine was banned.
Paradoxically, being excluded from official structures gave her creative freedom. She moved her publications to Beirut and started writing novels that analyzed mechanisms of oppression from a perspective inaccessible to dry medical reports. In a 1975 work, she presented the horrifying story of a woman whose childhood, marked by domestic violence, led to prostitution—a narrative previously unknown in Arab literature.
Prison, Exile, and Returns
In September 1981, she was among more than a thousand liberals arrested under new laws. The charge was absurd: conspiring with Bulgaria to overthrow the regime. She later admitted that sometimes she forgot where that country was on the map. In prison, she wrote her memoirs on a roll of toilet paper using a smuggled eyebrow pencil.
Released six weeks after President Sadat’s assassination, she founded the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association in 1981, merging feminism with pan-Arabism. The organization survived a decade before authorities dissolved it after her opposition to the Gulf War. In 1992, her name appeared on a fundamentalist hit list.
She refused to live under armed protection and chose exile. For the following years, she lectured at American universities, wrote memoirs, returned to Egypt, and left again. Legal battles dragged on for years—she faced attempts to forcibly divorce her from her husband for alleged apostasy, strip her citizenship, and ban all her publications. Every time, she won.
Radicalism That Never Faded
In 2010, at seventy-nine, she declared that she was growing more radical with age. A year later, she proved it in Tahrir Square. She celebrated the fall of Morsi, though she opposed his imprisonment. She spoke of President Sisi without illusions—he was temporary, and his fate would be decided by the people.
When a BBC journalist in 2018 asked if she had softened her criticism, she responded that she should be more aggressive, as the world was growing more aggressive. Time magazine included her among the 100 most influential women of the century. She died in March 2021, leaving behind more than fifty books and generations of women whom she taught that rebellion could be a form of self-defense.
Rory Thornfield
Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.
His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.
Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.
Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.