Egypt has produced many women writers over the last century, many of whose names will be wholly unfamiliar. In a patriarchal society, women are oppressed. Usually, ‘oppression’ is a term that refers to physical or emotional abuse, sexual harassment, rape, or domestic violence, along with other, more structural, issues, such as lack of access to x, fewer opportunities to y. However, patriarchy also works towards erasure. Simply, it erases women and their stories, it discredits them, and often buries their work and their thoughts beneath a mountain of dominant patriarchal ones. Therein lies the power of oral histories, because many of the writers on the coming list are gone, but their stories live on. Enayat Al-Zayyat (1936 – 1963) Born in 1936 to a wealthy family, Enayat Al-Zayyat was the middle child to sisters Aida and Azeema. She attended school with her childhood best friend actress Nadia Lotfy, both of whom received their education in German. However, she did not continue her education, and instead was married in 1956, at the young age of 20. Al-Zayyat married Kamal Ibn Shaheen, and while they had a son, their marriage quickly fell…
