Egypt’s ‘First Lady’ plays an activist role

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33783, 4 March 1975, Page 6

Egypt’s ‘First Lady’ plays an activist role

(By

DEBORAH MASON,

of trie ‘'Christian Science Monitor")

One evening in 1970, soon after succeeding Gamel Abdel Nasser as President of Egypt. Anwar al-Sadat gave his first official reception.

The affair was little dif-i Iferent from hundreds of' I occasions hosted by his predecessor. But there wa« one! ; striking contrast that at- ■ trailed more attention, than, the new President himself • —i j by his side, radiant and! ; composed, stood his wife, Jihan Sadat. ■ This would be quite a natI oral occurrence in Western ; countries, but for Egyptians ; the innovation 'was revolujtionary: during the 18-year history of the republic, President Nasser’s wife was seldom seen in public, and only a handful of Egyptians ever saw her face. Apart from permitting her the very rare appearance at a charity bazaar, Nasser observed the traditional Muslim belief that respectable women, should be shielded from pub-! jlic view. BENIGN CONSPIRACY ! The wives of kings, khe-i ■dives, and sultans before; [Nasser had been secluded! even more strictly, and were ! seldom permitted to leave! I the confines of their palace walls. I It was soon obvious how-] 'ever, that the Sadats had a; benign, conspiracy between! I them to change the traditions of centuries. j

“On that very first evening,” recalks a long-time: resident of Cairo, “Mrs; Sadat walked into the room! in front of the President.) Imagine. Adn when he greeted his guests, he began his; speech with “My wife and I We knew from that moment that we were witnessing a quiet revolution.”

In the four years since her debut as Egypt’s First Lady, Jihan Sadat has become one of the best-known and bestloved personalities in the country. Not only has she enhanced her husband’s' popularity, but she is becoming, in her own right, j a leader, guide, spokesman, j and advoate of Egyptian; womanhood. “For more than 25 years,” j said Amina al-Said, one of | Egypt’s leading women journalists, “we women of Egypt have been working in an aimless vacuum and we have had our own leaders in our own fields, but we have badly needed someone to pull” us together, to inspire us to work for our common good. At last we have found such a person in Jihan Sadat. It has been a long wait, but she has been well worth waiting for.” ROLE AS LEADER Mrs Said has no doubt that Jihan Sadat takes her role as women’s leader very seriously. “She conceives of herself as a woman — an'

I Egyptian woman first, and 'the President’s wife second,” said Amina al-Said, “and she also believes it is her duty Ito defend our rights, whatiever the risk may be.” Last .year, in a controversial intervention, she spoke out in favour of sweeping changes in Egypt’s family laws. These laws have for centuries enshrined the superior position of the Egyptian male: his right to infidelity, his right to divorce at will, his right to custody of children. So strongly do . conservative Egyptian men cling to these privileges that the mere rumour of possible changes provoked widespread demonstations. Liberal Egyptians are con- ! vinced that changes are ! necessary. But few had I dared to voice their opinions until Jihan Sadat, a devout IMuslim herself, risked doing Iso.

“Certainly I get criticism,” :Mrs Sadat, admitted in a I recent interview. “Many people are still not accus- ! t.omed to seeing a woman in I a public role. But we arq islowly changing all that.”

Jihan Sadat also strives at. championing the cause of ! the physically handicapped. : She has been the moving [force behind a new rehabilitation effort called El Wafa jwal Ama! (Faith and Hope), ! which is building a centre to (specialise in the care of victims of war or accidents. It will include an entire village where houses, buildings, roads and footpaths will be accessible by wheelchairs. Factories will be built to be run by the physically handicapped. DEFEAT IN WAR It was' the defeat of Egypt lin the 1967 war, with its (legacy of resignation and (despair, that convinced Jihan I Sadat that the time had I come to play an activist role, She was the only wife lof any member of Nasser’s cabinet to break out of the traditional isolation imposed on Egyptian wives; Concerned "about the. despairing lot of poor Egyptian village women, she formed the Tafia Society, which set out to! convince them that by training and self-help they could escape from a centuries-old cycle of pover'.;' and improve their standard of living.

“I benefited enormously from this conact with the village people,” she said. “And I came to know something that has become very important to me since: that we must give much more

I than we demand fromi I others.” She told, at a recent inter-! View, of renewing her interrupted student career. She 1 'has passed her university I entrance certificate, and last I year enrolled at the UniverIsity of Cairo in the faculty I of English. She is two years I behind her two teen-age ; daughters. “By her example she is showing other women who gave up their chance to go to university that they, too, can become students again in their later years,” said Amina al-Said. “How many brilliant minds in Egypt have been wasted simply because they never had a chance to prove themselves?” NEEDS OF FAMILY Much of Mrs Sadat’s energy is devoted to the needs jof her family — three teenage daughters and a son, [aged 14. Two of the girls were married last year, but I still live with their husbands at the presidential home. “They both will continue

their studies at university,”: their mother said. “Of course, there is I always the possibility they will have babies before they finish their education.” she said, “but we have talked a lot about birth-control methods, and they see the importance of waiting a little to begin their farm- i lies.”

Mrs Sadat, a practising Moslem, strongly supports birth control and is very ac- - tive in the family-planning movement in Egypt. “Contrary to many people’s belief, birth control; is not against the Moslem law,” she points out. “Many women use the religion as an excuse to avoid planning their faimly but if they read ; their Koran carefully, they will find it contains no I objection.” There is obvious solidarity among the Sadat family, which seems naturally to stem from the close relationship between the President and his wife. “I think I fell in love with, him the day we met,” she recalled. “It was in Suez, and he had just been re-; leased from prison (where his opposition to British rule had more than once landed; him).

I knew a great deal about | this army officer, and I ad-; mired him enormotwly, since ; he had sacrificed so much for his country. In ' fact, 11 even kept a scrapbook of articles about him. So when ■ we met, I felt as if I was meeting an old friend.”

FEMININE DISCRETION | At that time, Jihan was only 15-years-old, almost 13 years younger than Anwar Sadat. “But the more I got to know him, the more I respected and loved him. Soon we decided to get married,”; she said.

Although Jihan Sadat! undeiwtands the problems ’ her husband deals with as President, she is too discreet to pry into his affairs. While ■ he was preparing to launch; the war of last October, for. instance, intuition told her! what her husband could not.

“I knew instinctively what we.; being planned, but I asked no questions because I i knew he could not answer; ! me,” she recalled. “But I felt , it, and I sensed almost to I the minute when the Egyptian troops started to cross the Suez Canal. When my Ihusband left the hov»se the i previous evening, I knew ■ deep inside that war was ! very close. But I did not ask him.”