I understand Field Marshall el-Sissi
has a wife. I don’t know anyone who has met her, and I cant find any
photographs of her. Several google searches have revealed very little. Elshaab on-line says her name is Nihad Nour. Reuters say she
wears the niqab, while others say she wears the hijab. One report says she is a best mate to Suzanne Mubarak, who introduced her to el-Sissi, and another says she comes from a wealthy family - and that a brother, Tareq, owns TV channels, night clubs, businesses and had links with Tamarod. It really should be a
case of who cares? But when it comes to
a prospective president's wife, people do, and it matters.
“If el-Sissi runs for
president, I wont vote for him, purely
because we will never see his wife,” says my friend Karim, a lawyer. “I want
Egypt to be seen as a modern state, with
an active, visible First Lady, like Queen Rania of Jordan. We need to show we are
living in the 21st century.”
Another friend, Yasmina, says,
“Forget First Ladies', I want a female president,” but knows, with a sigh, that at this stage of the gender
game, it’s not even worth bitching
about.
Karim might have to wait a
while for a sexy, smart highly visible First Lady who juggles her own life, with
that of being a head of state’s missus. Egypt has become a deeply conservative society,
and the only thing that matters is that
el-Sissi has a wife. A visible,
working wife, might lose him votes from his more conservative backers . In
Egypt , most women give up their jobs once
they are married, (if they have one) and hunker down to have babies, put on weight
and get bored out of their atrophying brains - much like UK’s valium popping housewives of the fifties.
Mrs Nagla Ali Mahmoud, 51, is the wife of
deposed ex-president Morsy. As his wife, her duty was to provide a prime
example for her fellow Muslim Brotherhood
sisters. Covered in what looks like a
large duster that reveals only her face, Mrs. Mahmoud, from a poor village background,
is so ordinary by contemporary Egyptian standards as to make her elevation
extraordinary. Mrs. Mahmoud could hardly be more different from her
predecessors, Suzanne Mubarak and Jihan el-Sadat, both glamourous, half-British
and highly educated.
During
the time of her husband’s presidency, Mrs Morsi preferred to be known as Umm
Ahmed (Mother of Ahmed, her eldest son), and devoted herself to looking after her husband and children
behind palace doors. She was a woman who looked and lived like most people’s
sisters and mothers and for many, made a refreshing change from the up-front,
glamorous Suzanne Mubarak, with whom they could not identify. But to the westernized elite, she stood for a backwardness and a provincialism which it saw as typical of the
Muslim Brotherhood. A column in the newspaper, El Fagr asked incredulously: “How
could she receive world leaders and still adhere to her traditional Islamic
standards of modesty? “Don’t look at her. Don’t shake hands with her,” the
paper suggested, calling it a “comic scenario.”
She was reported as saying that if she tried to
play an active role, she risked comparisons with Mrs. Mubarak, who was widely
despised for her supposed influence behind the scenes. But if Mrs. Morsi is
invisible, she said, “They will say that Mohamed Morsi is hiding his wife
because this is how Islamists think.”
Given
Egypt’s patriarchal culture - men seldom talk publicly of their wives,
and mentioning them by name is a taboo for Islamists – it is unlikely Morsi’s
missus would ever have been shoved onto the podium beside him, whether she liked
it or not. She only became visible when
her husband was forced to stand down and was marched off to prison. Like a tragic heroine in a Greek
play, she stepped out of her confinement to plead for the release of her husband from his.
As a small girl I can remember watching Jehan Sadat on the television, with
her husband President Anwar Sadat. She beamed intelligence, and of course, was
very beautiful. Today , she is known internationally as a lecturer, educator and social activist
promoting international peace and women's education. She contributed to the image of Egypt and the Arab world in
her own unique way. In the 70’s while the world’s media obsessed over Mrs
Sadat’s wardrobe, her hair etc., she got on with playing
a key role in reforming Egypt's civil rights laws. Often called ‘Jehan’s Laws’
the new statutes granted women a variety
of new rights, including those to alimony and custody of children in the event
of divorce. I remember her as a breath of fresh air blowing through Middle Eastern politics. She was evidence of a secular liberalism that flourished for a while in Egypt but like, Islamism, never took root in mainstream politics.
Queen Rania of Jordan has followed on in this
tradition, and focused on education and
health, community empowerment, and cross cultural and inter faith dialogue. She
is genuinely loved and respected by Jordanians, and represents a society that
is seen as progressive and outward looking, partly because of her dynamic visibility.
Egypt desperately needs its own Queen Rania,
or another Jehan (with or without hijab) if it is to take its standing in the world and develop
social activism for educational and health reforms that will benefit everyone. First Ladies have access
to a network of powerful elite, funding, sponsorship, business networks, expertise that
can benefit their countries.
First Ladies can also be bitches from hell, endorsing their husbands' butchery. Take Asma al-Assad, stylish wife of Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad.A former investment banker, she has stood by her husband enjoying the fruits of his billion dollar fortune rifled from the country. Between them they are a dynamic duo of destruction. Her mega spending sprees and recently posted instagram pictures of her charity work are a heartless endorsement of her beloved's razing of the country and the murder of its children with chemical weapons.
With no sighting so far of Nihad Nour, and barely a mention of her in the media, el-Sissi is going to have to bring his missus out of the closet soon, or tongues will start to wag. Last year, Egyptians politely ignored pictures in which he appeared to enjoy being drooled over by a clutch of actresses at the October 6 celebrations. I wondered if Nahid Nour was watching it all on the television, and what the hell did she feel about it? Nobody seemed interested enough to talk about it, even though her connections have played an important role in her husband's stellar rise. Do Egyptians really not want to know who might become the power behind the throne and a cheerleader of goodness knows what is to come?
The election of el-Sissi as president, will be a misguided response to the security and
stability Egypt is gasping for, and will reinforce the message of the Muslim Brotherhood that the military
purports to despise - that Egyptian women must be neither seen nor
heard.
