Mozn Hassan

This call from one of Egypt’s pioneering feminists is not a relic of the past. It is an urgent reminder for our region today: justice and peace cannot be achieved if women’s lives remain confined to false separations between “public” and “private” or if the pain endured in our bodies and homes is dismissed as apolitical.

Before we shift focus to the work and life of the courageous writer Malika Moustadraf, it is important to highlight the fact that Alice Guthrie translated every single text of Moustadraf’s that she was able to track down and, in doing so, laid the foundations for those who do not speak Arabic to immerse themselves in her literary world. Guthrie spent time in Moustadraf's home city, met with her friends, family and companions and sought out published interviews and articles on the writer herself.

The memory of that day is still very painful for Noura. She was in Cairo's City Stars Mall when she suddenly felt cramps, accompanied by heavy bleeding: "I sat down on the toilet. I felt something heavy flowing from my uterus. I put my hand under me to catch the blood." Noura is not using her real name here. She had an unplanned pregnancy at the age of 23 while in an extramarital relationship with a man called Khaled.