Women differ about that ‘Good Egyptian Girl’

MIDDLE EAST TIMESCAIRO, EGYPT

It has been called both an Arab world’s version of “Sex and the City,” that TV-series testament to the empowerment of women, and a meaningless diatribe by a pseudo-Egyptian woman who is trying to cash in on the new trend in which anti-Islamic sentiments by Muslims sell.

Needless to say Amy Mowafi’s new book, “Fe-mail: The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Good Egyptian Girl,” is receiving more than a little attention.

“Fe-mail” is a compilation of opinion articles that Miss Mowafi, a senior editor at the pan-Arab English-language glossy magazine Enigma, wrote for the publication in recent years. She says they could be summed up as her first attempt at a memoir.

The writing tells of her life in the highly glamorous social environment of the Arab world’s elite, with money, men and the struggle between modernity and tradition as her main themes.

The book is being publicized as a, “witty, wicked compilation of articles [that] will strike a cheeky chord with a generation of young Arab women who suspect there’s more to life than playing nice and being good.”

“It’s an opinion piece. It’s me talking about my own struggles,” Miss Mowafi says, adding that she doesn’t want people to take the work out of context.

“It’s not in my place to talk politics. This is a fun, dirty, flighty opinion piece about me and my own stuff, and that’s what I am talking about.”

Not everyone is convinced that Miss Mowafi is not trying to send a political message to Arab women, despite it being in English and not Arabic.

“She is not Egyptian. Her parents happen to be Egyptian, but that does not make her one,” Egyptian women’s activist Mona Ahmed said.

“This book will undoubtedly reveal to the West all the things they wanted to hear about Arabs,” Miss Ahmed says. “Mowafi is taking advantage of the negative feeling across the world regarding Muslims and Arabs, and to do in this context is ridiculous.”

Miss Mowafi, for her part, responded to such claims with ease, including a sarcastic laugh to break the awkward silence. She believes that women, especially those outside the upper echelons of society, must understand that “Fe-mail” is not about a universal Egyptian woman’s experience. It is about her.

“I used to always say I was Egyptian growing up,” the Enigma writer begins: “I think my upbringing in England has that affect. America has the immigrant atmosphere. I have cousins who are like, ’Yeah, I’m American with Muslim-Arab origins.’ It is so confusing.”

Miss Mowafi is adamant that she is Egyptian, despite the social circumstances that she finds herself in. “Both my parents are Egyptian. I am Egyptian. I always felt I was an Egyptian living in England.”

In her view, Miss Mowafi’s living most of her life outside Egypt should not be emphasized over her Egyptian nationality. Instead, she argues, within any country there are many different levels of culture and society.

“I would have liked to have experienced real Egypt more, but this is how things ended up for me, and there are a lot of fun, quirky characters in this [read: my] world to make an interesting story,” she says.

As for the book’s content, Miss Mowafi says she’s received numerous calls and e-mails from Arab women across the globe congratulating her on writing what “they couldn’t.”

On the Internet’s Facebook Web site, women across the Arab world, she says, write in to thank her for a book that gives them voice and saying it helped them with their own trials and tribulations.

Asmaa, a female artist and activist in Cairo, says that Miss Mowafi was involved in self-hate. She argued that “Fe-mail” is a testament to what some call expressions of a “self-hating Arab.” She said this needed to stop if the world were to see Arabs in a better light.

“This is not a book about everyone; it is about the rich and elite,” Asmaa says, adding: “It will give more fire to the already burning ideas that Arabs are backward and women here are repressed.”

Miss Mowafi disagrees: “I don’t think it is self-hating at all. I know the feedback I am getting, and that is that I come off as being proud to be Egyptian. I’m not trying to make political statements. So what I am essentially trying to show is that the Arab world is like the ’other.’ ”

Miss Mowafi says she hopes that Westerners, not only Arabs, will be able to get a glimpse of what life is like for someone like her.

“It is nice if someone is not Arab or Egyptian and they read this and can relate to it,” the outspoken writer says.