instead i'll ask you, please, to welcome nawal el saadawi. [applause] .. lot. >> sometimes you meet people and you are never friends. you can live with them -- [laughter] >> in the same room, in the same

bedroom and they are strangers. [laughter] and sometimes you meet people in conferences like that and you become friends. that's creativity. creativity is not just writing. creativity in human relationships, in friendship, in love. some people think creativity is a right or freedom is just freedom to write. in fact, i cannot see you and this is -- you can see me but i cannot see each other. can we see each other. this is one of the major problems of conferences. that we are up and you are down. we are in the light. you are in the darkness. and it is very difficult for me to speak when i don't see the eyes of people. when they don't see their faces

because i am inspired by you. by your presence. so now i cannot -- can you see them? >> i think -- >> can you all diminish the light a little bit or is it the television? >> no, i think we can raise the lights a little bit. >> okay. okay. oh, that's too much -- that's too much. [laughter] >> no, it's okay. >> it's too close. is it okay like that? okay. i like to be comfortable when i talk. i am i was invited to california in one of the big universities, and they were supposed to speak about democracy. and the situation was very undemocratic. [laughter] because we were sitting very up -- up maybe higher than that.

in a very -- and we were in what they call is position or positions, how we sit, how we talk to each other is very important. and it's important in dialog. but anyway, i am spoke to speak about the freedom to write. but is the freedom to write separated from other freedoms? economic freedom, political freedom, sexual freedom. here you have the freedom of everywhere, is the free market really free? because the word "freedom" sometimes very misleading. you know, you feel free but you are not free. it's like when i ask women who are veiled, why are you veiled? they say we are free. we choose the veil. i ask women who put makeup under

the veil. i call it post-modern veil. i ask the women why you put the makeup. they say we are free or women who are naked and they show half their breasts i ask why are you naked, they say freedom, freedom to dress or freedom to undress, freedom to be veiled or not to be veiled or to be naked, this is not the freedom. this is an illusion. this is really an illusion. and the freedom i hadn't seen really in any country freedom to write and the freedom to express ourselves. there is censorship in the hundreds of course, the cens censorship is very cruel and visible. but here maybe the censorship is more dangerous because it's subtle and invisible. [applause]

it's very invisible and it's embedded in the most sophisticated freedom to write and express and it is in the big media and in the big academia so i am very cautious when i speak about the freedom to write. that's number one. number two, i think we live in one world. not three worlds. i am very much against the word third word. -- third world. that's an insult to me. i'm not the first world and this country is the first world because when you have george bush that go to iraq and kill people, this is not a first world man. [applause] >> so we have to be very -- we should not use this language.

this is colonial language. but we use it in our writing. like the word post-post colonial." in the academia they say post colognal. we are in the nero colonial period. the middle east, they say i'm from the middle east. every say i hear the word "middle east" and there's some insult to me. why we live middle east by the british colonizers. we're middle relative to london and india with the far east relative to england. so we were named by our colonyizers. i say when i go to england, i say i'm going to the middle west. [laughter] >> when i come to the united

states, i say i'm going to the far west. [laughter] >> you laugh -- you are laughing about a ridiculous language. but we use this ridiculous colonial language everyday, in our writing, in our academia, in the media and nobody laugh. so we have to change the language in order to be free because if we cannot change the language, we are not free. we are dominated by the big powers in the academia, in politics, in economics, in religion. i'm supposed to be brief because -- no, because i would like to have a dialog, and a conversation with anthony and maybe hopefully with you but maybe we will not have the time, but anyway, what i would like to say that -- >> religion.

>> oh, religion. yesterday, and that's the danger of the media. how we are brainwashed in a subtle way and how we receive false information and false knowledge all the time. under knowledge. authority. and that's why we never have real knowledge. we receive false knowledge, fragment knowledge in the academia, in the media by people who have authority. and this delayed the revolution. we are supposed -- this about revolution evolution, i come to that. so yesterday in the "new york times," yesterday was saturday so i read a big part with a very

famous authoritarian person speaking about religion and he said science has cold facts. there's no passion. there's no compassion in science. that's why people go back to religion. in fact, he doesn't know -- he doesn't know even political analysis because my political analysis or the political analysis of many people for this backlash going back to religion has nothing to do with compassion or we lack compassion in science. it's political. bin laden and george bush are twins. you know, they needed each other -- the whole problem of religious fundamentalism and going back to islamic fundamentalism or christian fundamentalism or jewish fundamentalism, it's political. it's economic.

as if religion is separate, number one, from politics. religion is a political ideology. then he spoke about science as if science has no passion or compassion. i'm a medical doctor, and i felt a lot of passion and compassion as a medical doctor to my patients and if we really understand science, it's full of passion and compassion and passion and feelings. there is no separation between feeling and thinking. there is no separation between my body, my spirit, and my mind. you know, so but he was bringing -- he was a victim of the split that we inherited from slavery. between the physical and the spiritual. between science and art.

and he said people go back to religion because science is cold and has no passion and compassion. and this is not true. but who can answer him if i write an article to reflect that in the "new york times" because they will not publish that and i am not famous like him so they will never publish me. the problem with writing is that the freedom to write can veil the mind and can do the opposite. can unveil the mind. and lead to real knowledge. and real understanding of the dynamics in the world because we do not receive this knowledge from schools or universities. we receive fragmented knowledge. i graduated from the medical college not understanding

politics. i have to study politics. i have to study religions. even when we -- we didn't study the circumcision, and male circumcision and that's very harmful but we didn't study that. we didn't study it. so it's a big problem. and we have really to be critical, even to secrecy. we have to criticize god, we have to criticize heads of state, we have to criticize anything. without this critical mind, we cannot be creative. and without this critical mind and creativity we cannot have revolution. we cannot have social revolution. we cannot have collective revolution because writers can

help in the elimination. they can help in this revolution. or that opposite. and that's the problem. writing is very powerful. and it can be against knowledge and can be -- it depends where you stand. are you in the market? are you looking for the market to have the normal price? to have a high price. to have a lot of money. to be secure, not to go to prison? because you are afraid of torture, of prison or what? and that's the question. why we did not stop the war. why we did not change this jungle. we are living in a jungle. when a country, a superpower, a big country go to another smaller country and invade it as

palestine was invaded, as iraq was invaded, as afghanistan is invaded. when we live in such a jungle, and then you don't expose it and you don't challenge political taboos, sex taboos, religious taboos. go to prison, yes, go to prison. what's going to happen? i was happy in prison. [laughter] >> because we are living in a big prison. we are not free. we think we are free. we are are all prisoners of the system but we are not aware of that. i would like to say we need a revolution, real collective, social, political, economic revolution and writers can do it. everybody can do it. we have to do that.

it's our responsibility. there is no freedom without responsibility. if i am free, i am responsible. but nobody speak about responsibility to others. in fact, creativity means to be responsible towards the self and the others. to fight for your liberation and liberation of the others. so we need to do that and writing is a very powerful weapon. i remember in prison the jailer comes everyday to my cell. the jailers and they inspect my cell, looking for a piece of paper and pen. and the head of them used to tell me, if i find paper and pen in your cell, it is more

dangerous than if i find a gun. you see, how writing -- how the pen is important. it's powerful if it's really used against injustice. against hypocrisy, against lies. if the pen is used with the responsibility and with freedom, then we can change the world. thank you very much. [applause] >> so you've written about many things. you've done many things. and so we could talk about many things. but i'd like to start, if i may, since you said rightly that what you are above all else is a writer. just to talk a little bit about the history of your writing, about how you came to write. you grew up between a small

village on the bank of the nile and your grandfather's house in cairo. so you went back and forth between the city and the country. in a country where a lot of women -- young women in your village wouldn't have had a good education. you say that the fact that you became a medical doctor was partly the result of your father's decision, not yours. he wanted you to be a medical doctor. that was also rather unusual. so there must be unusual about your family to explain some of the unusual things about you. >> yes, yes, exactly. i had a problem with two things in my childhood. i had a brother who was older than me. and i was better at him at school i worked at school and home. he played at school and at home because he was a boy.

but just because he was a boy he had a lot of privileges. my parents were relatively liberal and they sent me to school. my cousins didn't go to school in the village. they were married when they were 10 years of age and they tried to marry me when i was 10 years but i rebelled. [laughter] >> anyway, so my brother had everything. and did nothing, almost nothing. he was spoiled. so i asked him, why -- my parents and my family, why is this happening? they said this is a boy and you're a girl and i said so what? and then when they are cornered, they told me that's what god said. so i went to my room, closed the door. the first letter i wrote in my life was to god. i wrote him a letter and, of course, i didn't know his address. but i wrote --

[laughter] >> and i told him, dear god, you are supposed to be justice because my grandmother, who was a peasant, she was very brilliant, she told me -- she never read the koran. she was illiterate. we know god by our mind. so when i was 5 years, i understood god as justice, a symbol of justice. that's all. he's not a book. he's not a koran and so i went and wrote the letter. i told him, god, you are supposed to be justice as my grandmother said, but you are not just because you prefer my brother though i am more intelligent than my brother. [laughter] >> and so the point is, i told

him, if you are not just i'm not really to believe new. [applause] >> and i tell you this is the mind of all children. all children are born creative. girls and boys, poor, rich, black and white we are all born created. creativity is not something for some genius writers up there, no. everybody -- every child born creative but we lose our creaticreat creaticreat creatititicreat creatity -- creative, through sociallation, inhibition and all that. so every child is sensitive and understand that there is a problem that god is not just but -- and when i wrote, of course, the word if you are not just and not ready to believe in you, i was trembling, i was afraid because he would take me to hell, you know?

but, anyway, i did it. i wrote it. and then, of course, i burned the letter. the point is, if i would like to answer your question, childhood is very important. and what changed me really is a word from my mother. my mother told me secret ly nawal, because she was broad-minded and my father as well and my grandmother who told me god is just, my father, he told me, criticize everything. do not be convinced except your mind, by your mind. he graduated from an islamic institute but he was also a

dissident, a thinker. so i was lucky to be in this family, in fact. >> that still doesn't explain the call to writing. i mean, your response to the problem of the injustice in your family was to god. do you trace your sense that writing was you had to do back to that moment? what were you reading when you were a child? >> what i did i read? >> what were you reading? >> what i read? >> yes. >> well, i read, of course, in school. i didn't read much because we don't -- we didn't have a library. in primary school or secondary school. i used to -- i came from a poor family. and not rich -- my father didn't buy me books. my father had a library with some islamic books, et cetera,

which i couldn't read. it's very difficult for me. the big yellow books. and i used to buy in the village, you know, where i used to live. so i -- and in the village usually they sell this little candy or something for children in papers which they cut from books, so i used to read the paper. [laughter] >> after i'd eat the candy or something and i'd -- i was very hungry for knowledge. but i didn't find books in the village. that's why a few years ago i established a library in my village for children to read. [applause]

>> so -- i mean, the idea of being a writer is a strange idea. >> the idea? >> of being a writer, it's a strange idea. and you seem to have had this idea from very young. >> uh-huh. >> without too many examples. i mean, who were the writers that you -- if i had said to you when you were 15, a young woman of 15, who are the writers that you think about. >> of course, when i went to the medical college, after high school -- in high school the library was very small and i found a book by a novelist, a very good book, and this book was very good. in fact, there was one of the writers who through his book encouraged me to write. and then when i went to the medical college, of course, i started to read more and to have more books and to have

discussions, so my wife opened up in the medical college. >> and so you're going through medical school. but you're writing. >> uh-huh. >> fiction, as well, not just writing notes and writing about medical things but writing fiction and you published some fiction pretty much immediately after you finished medical school when you were still a very young woman, graduated quite young. did it occur to you that one possibility was just to stop all the medicine and just live as a writer or was that not a possibility? >> no. i started writing since i was a child. as i told you to the first letter of god and then i wrote many other letters to authority people in school and i was really very challenging the authority at home and in school, and i was always feeling that there is something wrong in

school. or in the street. because in the street when i used to walk, the boys used to throw stones on me because i was a girl. they threw stones or say some bad words about me. so i was furious. i was not treated like my brother or like boys in the street. in school, the girls who came from the higher classes, from rich families, they were treated much better than us girls coming from poor classes so i was angry and that's why i was very class conscious when i was young and i rebelled against this class oppression, the same as i rebelled against gender oppression as a girl. but when i started medicine, in

fact, it was very important because writers shouldn't study science and medicine and especially shouldn't avoid it. i felt a lot of pleasure in dissecting the brain to understand -- to see this heart because usually as a writer, i used to write about love stories and how we love by our heart. so i wanted to see this heart. how the heart looks. and then i needed a combination or a link between the heart and the mind. and the spirit and the mind. and that's -- medical education, though, it lacks many things but it's eliminating to facts and to the reality of the body. the flesh and also seeing death

everyday and seeing people die everyday, i started to link death to life. because death is part of life and the spirit is the part of the body. so in that way, i understood the human being much more than if i didn't study the body. and the conclusion is that facts and fiction are inseparatable. in fact, when somebody tell me, oh, you're a medical doctor, why do you write fiction? i say there is no separation between facts and fiction. like there is no separation between the physical and the spiritual. >> uh-huh. >> they are one. >> at what point did you change your response to the problem of being a woman in your society from writing to god about it --

>> from what? >> from writing to god to organizing, to saying, look, we women have to organize. we have to -- was there some event that precipitated that for you? something that made you think, we really have to do something about this. i can't explain about it. i have to act? >> yes, yes, exactly. i felt that as an individual i am vulnerable. they can shoot me. my name was on the death list for years. they put me in prison. they can eliminate me in a minute as an individual. but if we are a group, and that's the revolution, that's the meaning of revolution. revolution is collective, social revolution. it must include the majority. and that's why we did not stop the war.