Context
Nawal El Saadawi was born in the Egyptian village of Kafr Tahla in 1931. Her father was a civil servant, and her mother came from an upper-class Egyptian family. At the age of six, and at the insistence of her mother, El Saadawi underwent a clitoridectomy (also known as female genital mutilation), a procedure in which a young girl’s clitoris is removed. El Saadawi was one of nine children, and her parents made the unusual decision to send all of their children—boys and girls—to school. El Saadawi excelled in school, and in 1949 she entered medical school at the University of Cairo. There, El Saadawi met and eventually married Ahmed Helmi, a fellow medical student and an Egyptian freedom fighter who opposed Britain’s presence in Egypt. They were soon divorced. Despite the limitations placed on women by governmental and religious rule at the time, El Saadawi became a doctor in 1955.