Woman at Point Zero Summary free essay sample

Egypt had achieved a formal but nominal independence in 1922, under which King Fu’ad I and his son King Faruq ruled with a cabinet and parliament. Britain, however, retained enough influence to oppose cabinets or key politicians and thus dampen the growth of Woman at Point Zero Summary 2 Woman at Point Zero Summary pluralism or effective democracy. The British had occupied Egypt since 1882, ruling it as if it were a colony, though officially it was not. They maintained a military presence there too, to protect their interest in cheap cotton and in revenues from the Suez Canal. Genuine independence and the total withdrawal of foreign forces was a continuous issue in Egypt until the rather surprising 1952 military coup by a group of young army officers, including Gamal Abdul Nasser (also spelled Jamal ‘Abd al? Nasir). The revolution ignited by these officers changed the power structure of Egypt, displacing wealthy property owners as the nation’s most influential political force. When first established under President Muhammad Naguib, however, the new regime did not have preformulated platforms or a theoretical framework for future policies. The rebels shipped the king off to Europe; the elite who remained in Egypt would suffer— if not at first, then later under the new regime’s populist policies. Meanwhile, the peasants and urban poor appreciated the coup, although because of the inadequacy of reforms and policies like the decision to expand industry, their circumstances would be relieved only at the expense of growing debt and dependency for Egypt. Woman at Point Zero Summary 3 Woman at Point Zero Summary In 1953 the military officers banned all political parties and abolished the monarchy. The officers were eliminating potential rivals. Their one? time ally, President Naguib, was stripped of his powers, and Nasser became the voice of Egypt, with ‘Abd al? Hakim ‘Amir in control of the army. Another former ally, the Muslim Brotherhood, a 25? year? old grassroots Islamist party, was repressed by the new regime after a Muslim Brother tried to assassinate Nasser in 1954. Nasser’s government also put down a worker’s strike, and moved against the Communist Party and other leftists. In 1956 Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in response to the withdrawal of an expected loan from the World Bank that year. The Egyptian masses applauded this seizure of Egypt’s largest source of revenue, which had been controlled by foreign powers since its construction under the local ruler, the khedive Isma‘il, in the nineteenth century. The ensuing war in Suez, known in Egypt as the Tripartite Aggression, saw the Israelis, French, and British jointly attack Egypt to punish Nasser for the seizure. To Egyptians, the war indicated the hostile intentions of the West against their young government. And in fact the attack met with global condemnation. Nasser moved further away from the West by announcing a Czech arms deal in September 1955, and by refusing that same year to sign the Washington? sponsored Baghdad pact (to protect Middle Eastern nations such as Iraq and Turkey from Soviet aggression). He would publicly claim a commitment to neutralism, to independence without reliance on the East or the West. But in fact the need to build up Egypt’s military base and the army’s dominance in politics resulted in Egypt’s purchasing weapons from the Eastern bloc and in Russian military advisors arriving to conduct business in Egypt. Important in this period was Nasser’s enunciation of Arab unity. A short? lived (1958? 61) union of Egypt and Syria resulted in the United Arab Republic, which would ultimately disintegrate. For a while, many in the region embraced this macro? philosophy, and it complicated the gender issue. If Arabs were to share a unified culture, how would it be possible to allow for the variations in attitudes and Woman at Point Zero Summary 4 Woman at Point Zero Summary practices concerning women in different lands? In some Arab societies, arranged marriages or marriages to first cousins were still preferred, strict separation of the sexes was observed, and women’s ability to challenge spousal abuse was extremely limited; in other Arab societies women were moving into the workforce, advancing through education, and challenging some of the legal restrictions imposed on them. After the short? lived experiment in Arab unity came the defeat of the Arab states in the 1967 so? called Six Day War with Israel. Israel’s preemptive strike on June 5, 1967, destroyed much of the Egyptian air force parked on the airfield. Israel emerged victorious not only because of the strike but also, among other factors, because of poor training of Egyptian troops, an inadequate budget, and Nasser’s refusal to withdraw forces from Yemen. The mix led to Israeli victory in the Sinai, and Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The loss was enormous. Arab intellectuals termed the 1967 war the nakba—the disaster, a political and cultural crisis, a nadir from which they could descend no further. Suddenly all the slogans in favor of Arab socialism and unity seemed empty, especially the one that promised an eventual reclamation of Palestine. Instead Egypt had experienced a further defeat. There was, however, no vibrant ideology to step into the place of Arab socialism and unity. Woman at Point Zero Summary 5 Woman at Point Zero Summary The decade following Nasser’s death in 1970 brought further disintegration in political and social values. A new economic open? door policy in 1972, the infitah, led to the expulsion of Soviet advisors, and the expectation on the part of international aid agencies that Egypt would pursue more â€Å"rational† economic policies—that is, embark on privatization, or the transformation of public enterprises into private ones. The policy, involving invitations for Western investment in Egypt, troubled many leftists. Their country had for some years followed a path of neutral selfsufficiency. If the public sector were to be gradually privatized, what would happen to the previously proclaimed commitment to the common citizens? El Saadawi forged her resistance to oppression, whether it related to gender, or more Woman at Point Zero Summary 6 Woman at Point Zero Summary broadly to authoritarianism, during these decades. The Egyptian public had been regaled with promises that the demise of the ancient regime, and the withdrawal of the lingering British, would bring a new age. Yet women especially did not experience a newly tolerant, materially plentiful existence. Instead they experienced a competition for resources that repeatedly favored men—father over wife and children, uncle over niece, and male employers over female workers, to name a few examples from the novel. Women in modern Egyptian history. Urban elite women followed a fairly strict code of sexual segregation in the Ottoman Empire of the nineteenth century. In Egypt many upper? class women lived within the boundaries of the harem system, which secluded them from the general male public. Debate stirred here about the need for female education within a modernizing society, about the abuses of polygamy, and about the veiling of women’s faces. A woman’s honor was theoretically the property of her menfolk, so a high value accrued to virginity. Meanwhile, the custom of paying a brideprice, the amount given to a girl’s parents to formalize a union, was sanctioned by religion and custom, which meant that poor women could be â€Å"sold. (Wealthy women had more freedom, because they retained control of their own income. ) Women in the countryside were not subject to the Ottoman face veil or practices of female seclusion because their labor was necessary for family subsistence. If girls survived their early childhood, they were circumcised at age six or seven to weaken their sexual urge and ensure virginity. The painful, unsa nitary practice involved removing all or part of the clitoris, which resulted in medical and psychological complications.