Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics

6. Mother of the Egyptians

chapter six Mother of the Egyptians Safiyya Zaghlul, wife of the Wafdist leader Sa‘d Zaghlul, was on hand in March 1919 when her house was the focus of demonstrations, and she signed the women’s petitions delivered to foreign consuls. After the revolution of 1919, she became widely known as “Mother of the Egyptians .” Her title built on the nationalist role cast for elite women from the turn of the century as “Mothers of the Nation.” First among the mothers, she became a popular nationalist symbol. At the same time, she wielded a great deal of power within Wafdist and nationalist politics and became a central force in Egyptian women’s political culture.1 Women nationalists often spoke in a maternal voice and, like their male compatriots, adopted family metaphors and kinship idioms. This rhetoric reached its fullest flowering in Egypt in the interwar years with the creation of a national mother. The fiction generated a sense of solidarity and relatedness among people who were otherwise strangers or divided along class, race, ethnic, and religious lines. The “mothers” and “fathers” provided comfort, creating a sense of collective belonging and suggesting that the welfare of the people was in the right hands. Yet assertions that the nation was a family were also meant to insure obedience to the leaders and to silence dissent. This chapter follows the life and career of Safiyya Zaghlul, “Mother of the Egyptians.” Safiyya planned her public persona, carefully chose her words, weighed her actions, and controlled her image, particularly her photographic image. She manipulated maternal symbolism to carve 135 out a political role for herself. In spite of opposition from the British and non-Wafdists, she took advantage of an opening and played her part well. As a result, she enjoyed political influence during her husband’s lifetime and continued to exercise power long after his death. images and memories As the “Mother of the Egyptians,” Safiyya Zaghlul became the keeper of Sa‘d’s memory when he was in exile and after his death, and a political actor in her own right. Although Safiyya was a major pillar of the national movement, historians of nationalism have generally ignored her. They have focused instead on male figures whose power was institutionalized through parties, parliament, and other formal structures. At the same time, scholars of women’s history preferred to highlight feminists, intellectuals, radicals, and working-class women. Yet Safiyya embodied many of the paradoxes elite women faced in this period. No woman appears in more photos in the national press in the interwar years than Safiyya. Her picture appeared regularly in periodicals, proof that she was one of the most visible and popular female figures of the period. While Sa‘d and King Fu’ad competed as male leaders for press coverage , Safiyya encountered no competition from the palace. Queen Nazli did not appear unveiled before the Egyptian public through her husband’s reign. Forced by convention and her husband’s policy of catering to Islamic sentiments to stay out of sight, she almost never appeared in press photos .2 Safiyya, on the other hand, manipulated politics to command a central role as a first lady of sorts. (How the queen felt about Safiyya’s public visibility and usurpation of what she may have perceived as her role is not clear.) Safiyya’s closest competitor in press photos, Huda Sha‘rawi, appeared fairly frequently; but the total number of photos in the weekly al-Lata’if al-Musawwara, for example, adds up to about a fifth of those of Safiyya Zaghlul. In short, Safiyya enjoyed a prominence in the national press that was second to none. Her photos could be found on the front page or prominently inside numerous periodicals. Al-Lata’if al-Musawwara printed over one hundred photos of her, and women’s weeklies and monthlies such as al-Hisan and al-Mar’a al-Misriyya showed her in various poses. The number of photos of Safiyya did not drop off after Sa‘d’s death, and indeed may have increased, showing her independent stature. The many photos document Safiyya’s movements and demonstrate her centrality in Wafdist politics. When she was depicted with Sa‘d, she appeared at his side as a steady support. In other contexts, such 136 The Politics of Women Nationalists as surrounded by Wafdist women, she became the focus of the photo. The editor even took...