Repression Then and Now: An exploration of how Egyptian governments have tried to repress the memory of a woman ahead of her time
by Tarek Zaki (great-grandson)
No neighborhoods, government buildings or streets named after her. Could it be that the men who tirelessly sought to erase Doria Shafik’s memory from history succeeded? Or is this merely superficial proof that there was a voluntary attempt to supress the memory of this revolutionary woman? One thing is for certain, by no means can repressive erasure make the impact my great-grandmother had on the role of the Egyptian woman in society and that of women in the Middle East as a whole disappear. In a time when women were expected to submit to the will of men and were confined to the household, Doria Shafik dared to think differently and fought for women’s rights for several years. Her life could not be a more accurate epitome of her own words, “nothing really worthwhile can be accomplished without suffering.” Indeed, after having suffered and endured repression of all kinds she led a movement that resulted in women being granted the right of suffrage in the Egyptian constitution of 1956 amongst several other radical changes to the position of women in society. Under the light of a class focused on the very practice of memory and forgetting, I could not ignore the significance of my maternal great-grandmother to my identity and how her memory has lived on through her daughters, granddaughters and the women who now enjoy freedoms that they did not dream of before. In the past few years there has been an attempt at the revival of Doria Shafik’s memory within my family so this work is a continuation of that tendency. A recent trip with my mother to Paris to retrace my great-grandmother’s steps in the city where she “searched for knowledge and learned philosophy,” 1 visiting La Sorbonne, where she studied and the International Student Housing where she lived, sparked a passionate interest in the life of this “Seeker of the Absolute.” Through this project, I have sought to illustrate how certain Egyptian governments attempted to repress the memory of my great-grandmother. This project is a materialization of memory. It is a refusal to forget.
As I have provided a brief rationalization of what the aim of my project is and what my motivations were, I will proceed now to explain why I chose the predominant technology of memory in the work. Why photographs? As Marianne Hirsch so accurately stated in her essay titled “The Generation of Postmemory,” “Photography’s promise to offer access to the event itself, and its easy assumption of iconic and symbolic power, makes it a uniquely powerful medium for the transmission of events that remain unimaginable.” 2 In addition, it would be hard to imagine the image of someone we were not able to ever meet or see in the flesh without the aid of photography and it is through this medium that my memory of my great-grandmother has been shaped since childhood. This recollection of photographs is an attempt at reconstructing the image of Doria Shafik and at facilitating the audience’s empathy with the time in which she lived. The black and white of the photographs becomes conveniently symbolic and appropriate to the context she was faced with: things were either black or white. Monotony was the norm. However, there are exceptions to the rule of black and white photography in my selection and that is non-coincidental. The purpose of those last three photographs in color is to illustrate how, in a time when things have changed and the world has come a long way from her time, men are still struggling to erase her memory from history. One of the photographs illustrates Egyptian men and women through whom my Anna (grandmother) Doria’s memory lives on, proudly waving flags with her image on the anniversary of the Revolution that took place on January 25th, 2011. The second and third photographs are of my grandmother and mother respectively, who inherited countless of Doria’s virtues and are living proof that she will not soon be forgotten. Then there are the comic illustrations I used. These serve to portray how the press illustrated my great-grandmother’s battle against the forces of oppression, mainly men and extremist conservative interpreters of the Quran, that were “enslaving” women. The comic illustrations were published in the magazine she edited and were some of the publications of the type that did not portray her negatively or make an attempt at ridiculing her. However, those published in the national newspapers were quite different in nature but could not be retrieved
The only question left to answer now is how did men attempt to repress Doria Shafik and her memory? However, before answering it I must provide the theoretical framework behind these endeavors to make society forget. The main theory that may be used to understand how the repression of a memory works was developed by Paul Connerton in his article titled “Seven Types of Forgetting.” 3 “Repressive erasure,” the term Connerton coined to describe “the condemnation of memory” 4 “can be employed to deny the fact of a historical rupture.” 5 Connerton’s theory could not be more relevant to this project as it is precisely because my great-grandmother brought about a historical rupture that men have tried with so much effort to institute a societal amnesia of what she did and who she was. It is unacceptable to conservative Muslim men or men who were brought up to believe, even in the present day, that women must conform to standards and norms that were in place hundreds of years ago. Therefore, it is perhaps out of cowardice or perhaps out of disgust that men have tried to forget Doria because she was the beginning of hope for the Muslim Egyptian woman and for women in the Middle East. She became proof that women could be more than just housewives who possessed no more than the ability to serve their husbands and in doing so she threatened and continues to threaten the household institutions that so many men even continue to regard highly today. However, part of the repressive erasure that came after her death and even as recently as 2013, did not only attempt to forget. It attempted to revert change that was brought about; to go back to an outdated model that my great-grandmother helped evolve. So, these countless failed attempts have targeted her memory, thus targeting women who now enjoy freedom that was unimaginable a few decades ago.
Now that I have provided explanations for my main choices in this project, I must proceed to describe the governments’ repression and attempts of repressive erasure, so as to shine light on the connections between these acts of repression and the elements of the presentation. Since the beginning of her campaign for women’s rights, Doria Shafik was attacked by the government through the use of newspaper articles and illustrations that created rumors and portrayed her negatively such as an image of her head “superimposed on the top body of a belly dancer in a very obscene pose.” 6 A damaged reputation would not be well-received by future generations and this was a way of trying to erase her memory and diminish the impact of her actions. Although I was not able to find illustrated examples of this negative propaganda as described in Cynthia Nelson’s biography of my great-grandmother, Doria Shafik Egyptian Feminist A Woman Apart, I found examples of how the media was used to portray her gracefully and to create empathy with her fight for women’s rights. These are comic illustrations that were part of the magazine she founded and edited, Bint al-Nil (Daughter of the Nile). In this way I have tried to create an image of how the governments’ repression was peacefully combated and Doria Shafik’s reputation, and therefore her memory, protected. Following her storming of the parliament, when she led around 1500 women on the afternoon of February 19th, 1951 to demand the inclusion of women’s rights in a drafting of the constitution, Doria was first promised that women would be included and that they would be given the right of suffrage, but she was then summoned to appear in court. The promise was not kept and once again the government tried to erase this attempt and diminish its effect by publicly prosecuting her. The image I included in the presentation of her planning the storming of the parliament serves as a chronological guide, as it is the first of several acts of bravery that resulted in empty promises and repression. The image that follows it shows yet another attempt to improve the situation for women, this time directly with Egypt’s first president, that once again ended in empty promises and repression. The succession of these images is a portrayal of the repression in itself, as she was ignored and even prosecuted for her efforts time after time. The picture of the eight-day hunger strike and that of her ending it with a glass of milk serve to show how the government ignored her pleas and even allowed her to risk her life. Perhaps the government considered allowing her to die, thus trying to silence her voice forever and ensuring that her memory, although that of a martyr, would be one of a failed attempt. Furthermore, the pictures that show her in several parts of the world being heard by people of influence serve to illustrate how she traveled the world wishing to be heard, as the government in Egypt did not take her seriously. Words that would not be heard would not be remembered. These are just some of the examples of repression that my great-grandmother suffered under the governments of the King Farouk and president Naguib. However, perhaps the ultimate form of repression she was submitted to was her house arrest placed under the government of Gamal Abdul Nasser, the confiscation of her publications and destruction of her private papers in 1957. These extreme measures taken to silence her voice condemned her to seclusion. By alienating her from the active social and political life she had, she could gradually be forgotten. Nevertheless, I chose to include some of her famous quotations below the photographs as living proof that no one succeeded in silencing her voice and erasing her memory.
The acts of repression as described above all took place during her lifetime. However, attempts at her memory were made as recently as 2013, when Egypt’s first elected president after the 2011 Revolution, Mohamed Morsi, decided to remove Doria Shafik from history books taught at school. This extreme measure to erase her from Egypt’s history is a vivid example of how the Muslim Brotherhood tried to make use of repressive erasure to reinforce its views on women and how they should act in society. The repressive erasure here was a means to revert education, to return to the conservative ways that ruled society in the times of Doria Shafik. To illustrate this, I chose the three pictures that are perhaps the most symbolic. They show how future generations may not only preserve memory, but may fight to ensure that it not be forgotten. They are evidence that an aggressive attempt was made at my great-grandmother’s memory but that it failed precisely because her memory is carried on by so many Egyptians. The poem I included by Chilean poet, Gonzalo Villar, finally summarizes the various forms of repression Doria Shafik suffered and was published shortly after the world became aware of the Muslim Brotherhood’s plans. The poem that follows it by Pierre Seghers, a close friend of hers and the person who published her poems, finally serves as evidence that she will forever be survived by her beautiful words.
Finally, I decided to briefly pay tribute to Doria Shafik with a few words that to me capture the effect her memory has had on me. The final sentence is, in a way, my interpretation of what her life was but the final three words are in fact a direct quotation of what she always said she wanted her life to be. After all the research for the project and all I have learned about her, I believe she accomplished what she set out to do.
Footnotes:
1 Nelson, Cynthia. Doria Shafik Egyptian Feminist A Woman Apart. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1996. Print.
2 Hirsch, Marianne “The Generation of Postmemory,” Duke University Press, p.107
3 Connerton, Paul “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Memory Studies, SAGE Publications, London 2008
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Nelson, Cynthia. Doria Shafik Egyptian Feminist A Woman Apart. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1996. Print.
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