Secrets of Egyptian Creative Women

By Youssef Alrefaie Farawelah

This book includes the success stories of the 13 most prominent Egyptian creators women and the difficulties that they faced in their career and how they overcome them with patience, effort and creativity. 13 models of Egyptian soft power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Youssef Alrefaie Farawelah
• Release date: Jan 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463899922

Youssef Alrefaie Farawelah

- Date of birth: January 27, 1969 * Profession: - Novelist. - Member of the Writers Union of Egypt. - Member of the Egyptian Publishers Union. * Qualification: - Bachelor of Journalism, Faculty of Information, Cairo University (May 1990). - Master in Journalism, Faculty of Information, Cairo University (October 2011). * Literary publications: 1- Adolf Hitler: Beginning and End (translated book). 2- Teardrop on the cheek of time (anecdotal set) 3- Virgin (anecdotal set). 4- A manifestation moment (story collection). 5- A city that will not die (a novel). 6- The woman who inhabited me (a story collection). 7- Soft claws (novel). 8- Female Lavender (novel). 9 - Seagulls and the Sea (novel). 10- Almuntazar (novel).

Book preview

Secrets of Egyptian

Creative Women

Youssef Al-Refaie

Youssef Al-Refaie – Secrets of Egyptian Creative Women. Copyright © 2019. Deposit number 2019/21708 ISBN 978-977-85412-9-8. All electronic publication rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. Produced in Egypt. Published by: Lamar for Publishing, Printing and Translating. Address: 16 Faisal city, Almontaza, Alexandria, Egypt. E-mail: [e-mail].

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Iqbal Baraka

Chapter 2

Hala Al-Badri

Chapter 3

Sahar Tawfiq

Chapter 4

Sohair Al-Mosadfa

Chapter 5

Safaa Abdel Moneim

Chapter 6

Amal Ewida

Chapter 7

Salwa Elwan

Chapter 8

Soha Zaky

Chapter 9

Fawzia Shaheen

Chapter 10

Radwa El-Awady

Chapter 11

Walaa Samir

Chapter 12

Asma Gamal

Chapter 13

Doaa Abdul-Rahman

Introduction

I have hesitated for a while to put my name on this book, despite my great enthusiasm for it, which is between its two covers, is not imaginary fabric, but I have practiced the role of narrator. I know well that a few sheets are not enough to document all these creative experiences, cause they have a lot of details actually, they are many, complex, and wealthy.

As much as I had troubles chasing those experiences and trying to incorporate them into a book, I was confident that the experience would be satisfying to my personal passion by knowing the secrets of their success. I admit that I found myself confused by some details, such as: where would I start describing those experiences, how can I extracted those treasures hidden in their hearts, and I know they don't prefer to talk about themselves, or their experiences.

I said to whom dwells in my mind: Perhaps it will be better if they write about themselves, and this choice is the best in my opinion, because when you let the creator writing about his personality and experience, you will find that he or she is the best person who can describe his/her career, feelings, ideas, preferences, this is what I call ‘The just case’. No matter how professional the critic is, the critic will not be able to touch the most important details, nor will he be just fair enough to avoid bias.

Creativity is a dilemma for those who try to check it or analyze it. This is my conviction.

I chose the dialogue, not only because it is the purest in conveying the image, but also because it has the ability to avoid any confusion. I resorted to dialogue only to go with them to some areas that they may inadvertently ignore, and to return to the spaces that they exceed, or to the memories they do not want to dig in, to let them read themselves with a bit of meditation, in moments of calm, away from all this jogging, and away from the noise of the media, and I think that dialogue helped them to open their closets of secrets.

However, the reproducing the creators success stories was not an end in itself. It is enough to contemplate what they write if we want to discover who they are. But my most important goal was to draw the model from those experiences, to put it among the hands of the reader, carrying the secrets of their success, to help readers choose their own ways if they wanted to acquire a similar luster of theirs. After a while, I chose to focus on certain angles in their lives, not the history of those experiments systematically, cause a lot of papers are not enough to it.

I admit that I was annoying to some creative people by insisting on their participation in this work, and this is not strange to me as a journalist. I was fortunate that I found them really responsive to me. They did not hide any important information from me, although some of them treated questions diplomatically. I was happy, and I felt for a moment in every conversation that I had reached the points I was looking for.

I wanted to meet more of them. It was not enough to gather what I really get of their experiences, but I worked hard. What I got after six months of coordination is this wonderful package of characters and experiences. I saw that this work might not  be limited to pioneers, who have made our literary life memorable, but it was fair to add to them another modern and creative models that move confidently and insistently along the same path.

What is certain is that experience and giving is not equal between the creators, no matter how similar the living conditions are, because roses do not carry the same fragrant, nor color appear in the same quality. God makes them different, beautiful in themselves, in harmony with their environment, Everyone who succeeded, had a difficult beginning, and was eager to compete with successful creators, to get some of their light, and accompany them to where they shine.

After all, it is striking that a fine line of common features brings together the creative people whom I have met in this book, as if success had similar features, although each case varied in-depth and diversity. I will not prolong, the following lines carry a lot about their talent. I wish you could have a nice time with these creative tales.

Youssef Al-Refaie

Chapter 1

Iqbal Baraka

Iqbal Baraka is a prolific well-known Egyptian writer and has a controversial intellectual situations, but I wanted to let her talk about herself. she said:

I am a courageous writer, proud of being an Egyptian woman whose used to use my pen as a sword in the face of the forces of injustice, corruption and underdevelopment.

How did you succeed? I asked her.

She said: I lived in the golden age of Egypt, learned from my intellectual father who sanctifies reading and the pursuit of enlightenment. I learned in good schools, and I met teachers who predicted me a great future and joined a progressive journal whose writers encouraged me to express my opinions and engage in thorny subjects, without fear of its social and political consequences.

Iqbal Baraka described about the cultural environment in which she grew up. She said: My father gave us a huge library stuffed with of heritage books and many translated books of world literature that attracted me as a child and encouraged me to excel in the study as a path to intellectual and material independence.

She added: My family belongs to the liberal middle class. Aldaher district, where I was born and grew up, played a big role in cultivating the spirit of religious tolerance and liberalism in my mind. Early marriage to a young man of the same environment helped me developing my thinking and my dreams grew.

Iqbal is enthusiastic about her environment. She said about it: "The environment has a great impact on the creator negatively and positively. He may be subject to it, and he may conflict with it, searching for achieving his own goals. The environment plays a huge role in directing the human being, either by giving him the strength to rush forward or slowing his determination and drag him to despair and pessimism.

Iqbal Baraka is a woman who is reconciled to herself. She achieved great success in her personal and practical life. She recognizes that the destiny played a major role in determining her life course.

But she believes that: It was not easy all the time, but my personal conviction and deep faith in the capabilities of Egyptian women and the need to play an active role in Egypt put me on at stake. I often suffered despair. I always faced the forces of backwardness. But then something happens that ignites my enthusiasm again and increases my hardness.

This woman has a special concept of success. She said: The writer's success lies in the fact that readers will follow him eagerly, and I have been at the forefront of readers' attention, even those who have opposed my ideas and disavowed my insistence on full equality among all citizens. I often met those who loved my thoughts and showed their admiration unreservedly, and those who faced me by rejecting my thoughts and They tried to make me fail.

Iqbal said: I have won great popularity among the groups that defended them, such as women and Copts. They have praised and admired me. But I have also faced a lot of troubles with the officials and politicians, a great deal of hatred from intellectuals and a hard conflict of with religious hardliners.

she added: Unless the writer feels satisfied with himself, convinced of his superiority over everyone, and has a great deal of the culture he collected all over the period of learning, he  will not be able to achieve significant success and will not leave a significant impact on the wall of glory.

Narrating her journey of self-seeking that has long seemed to me, she said: After graduating from university, I scored the top grades, but I refused to become a lecturer. So I wrote a waiver about that and attended the Diplomatic Service examination, but my papers were rejected because of my age. I applied to work at EgyptAir company and passed the acceptance tests, but my mother vehemently objected, fearing for my life of the risks of frequent flights, so I worked as an employee of a global company. After my husband moved to work in Cairo, I applied to Cairo University to work as a teacher, but the head of the English department wanted to appoint one of his graduates instead of me.

The challenge journey did not stop. She said: I thought of working as a translator at the United Nations. But I gave up that idea cause I was pregnant in my daughter. I decided to travel abroad. I worked as an English teacher in Kuwait, but my family could not go with me because my husband worked in the armed forces. After all I became a program presenter on Egyptian radio. In the meantime, I was publishing stories and reportage in ‘Sabaho Alkhair’ (Good Morning) magazine.

When I became an editor at the Rose Al Yousuf Press Foundation, I immediately resigned from the Egyptian radio and accepted What is equal to half the salary I was earning before, for the sake of working as a journalist. I was comfortable to practice writing that I was eligible for it.

It seems to me that her passion for challenge has declined her need to be helped from others, unlike many other people. I asked her whether she believed in that a woman must have a patron or supporter in some way. She simply said: Sometimes the sponsor or supporter turns into a cause of the failur. They may claim that this shepherd is the one who writes instead of her, or that he mediated to appoint her in a prestigious place. Unless one depends on the support of destiny and has a strong will and a constant desire to succeed, e or she will not make any superiority.

I asked her: After you achieved a lot of success, would you choose the same route if you chose to start over again? She said: I would have insisted on studying literature in both English and Arabic, as I did, so that I could combine their advantages together. I would not change my convictions to what I had previously believed as a truth. I would memorize all what I can from verses of the Holy Quran, because it is the inherent essence and the net spring of human thought.

She added: I would have begun to read the literary works of other people in Asia, South America, and Spanish and French speaking European countries. It was my passion for knowledge that made me a good  student, then a famous writer, although I feel that I am in need of completing my circle of acquaintances.

I think it is not doubt that Iqbal Baraka eligible to compose the creative literature. What she said about herself confirmed my expectations about her, when I asked her if she had ever thought of changing her course, or reversed her important decisions. She said: The opposite is true. God has let me down every time I betrayed the path of literature. I have knocked on other doors that were open on their shutters, but I retreated.

Narrating how she starts writing, Iqbal said: "I began to write in adolescence; I tried to record my feelings so as not to forget them, and in the first year of the Faculty of Arts wrote a novel, and some short tales, and presented my writings to the far-famed writer at the time, Dr. Youssef Ezzeddine Issa whom was impressed by my writings, and encouraged me to continue writing Without hesitation. Years later, I published my first novel ‘We shall stay friends forever’ in a series of new writings that were published by the writer Sobhi Sharouni after the famous critic Dr. Gali Shukri had nominated my writings for him.

After a while, the Palestinian writer Tawfiq Fayyad presented my second novel ‘Dawn for the First Time’ to the great critic Rajaa al-Nakkash, who in turn nominated her for publication in Beirut, and then, it was reprinted by Dar Gharib in Cairo. I do not know whether my novels reached my targeted readers or did not arrive, because we do not have clear and honest statistics on distribute books."

I think she knows well where she stands, and she knows well whom she will see, if she stares at her mirror. This is what I call Self-peace that characterizes writer Iqbal Baraka.

She says about her writing style: I cling to simplicity in my writings. I always choose subjects that really interest the reader. I do not bother him with rhetoric and boring narration, and discard words that may be misunderstood. The modern era which we live, there are many competitors, whether in the field of journalism or literary writing and the reader may lose his time by following-up modern social media which became too many. I have been told a lot that my writing draws readers because of its frankness, courage and  some fun.

To whom do you write, I asked her and she said: "I write to the smart ones, and I will continue to discuss with them all