2020 IB Extended Essays

El-Saadawi gives the reader direct access to the insight into the male perspective on sex. Within the male perspective, for them women are described in highly sexualized terms. After becoming a servant in the Mayor’s house, Zeinab is raped when “Her long galabeya [got] wet and stuck to her body revealing her breasts and thighs. It was as though she was naked before his eyes.” ( p125 ). The imagery employed in this scene is brutal, El-Saadawi chooses a highly descriptive image of the rape in order to expose the reader to the harsh reality of being a woman in this society. Zeinab tries to save herself by using her galabeya as a shield, but the Mayor “tore remaining one and whispered in her ear, I will buy you a thousand galabeya” ( p125 ). Additionally, this alludes to the concept that women are property, as in The Handmaid’s Tale , as the Mayor almost offers to pay for her body (with galabeya). In contrast to The Handmaid’s Tale, where men also have little power over who they marry, in God Dies by the Nile the men buy women from their fathers with favours and promises of social progress. In Fatheya’s situation, her father Masoud trades off his daughter for male power. In Kafr-El-Teen, the men are reluctant to accept that the Qur’an says that a woman can decide who to marry and who not to marry. Sheikh Hamzawi, the religious leader of the community, who is “responsible for upholding the teachings of Allah and keeping the morals and piety of the village intact.” ( p30 ) marries a girl young enough to be his grandchild against her will. This relationship shows the reader that the men act accordance to their patriarchal doctrine, instead of the Qur’an, thus rendering women like Fatheya powerless. The powerlessness is why it was necessary for El-Saadawi to write such an uncensored novel as the stories of these women are buried and disregarded by the wider global community as a faceless problem and thus need someone else to speak for them. Her blunt storytelling acts as an agent of change by providing vivid detail and spotlighting the oppression and issues plaguing women in unknown villages like Kafr-El- Teen to a wider audience when historically they have been ignored.

11