Egypt
The Cares of Umm Muhammad
Nagya Muhammad al-Bakr — known as Umm Muhammad, mother of Muhammad — is 37 years old and works as a hospital attendant in the Heart Institute in Imbaba, Cairo. She is married to Bayoumi ‘Abd al-Baqi and has eight children. This interview, excerpted and translated from the Arabic by MERIP editor Judith Tucker, was published in the Egyptian journal al-Tali‘a in February 1976.
Where are you from?
From the peasantry. Our village is Minya al-Ghamh, in the province of Sharqiyya, and I’m from the ‘izba of Shalshamun. We came to Cairo twenty years ago.
Can you read and write?
Textile Workers of Shubra al-Khayma
Dire material necessity is increasingly forcing Egyptian women to take up wage labor. Job conditions are poor, pay is low and social sanctions are heavy. Women make up 12 percent of the Egyptian industrial workforce, concentrated in textiles, food industries and pharmaceuticals. In textiles, an important Egyptian industry, their present numbers and their historical role are quite substantial.
“No to the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty”
The Progressive Assembly of National Unionists was established in 1977 as the official “left” party of Egypt. One of three legal national parties, its leadership was drawn from the ranks of leftist intellectuals, some former communists, who had chosen during the Nasser era to work within the Arab Socialist Union in uneasy alliance with the dominant Nasserist forces. As an official party, its relationship to the Nasserists has remained tenuous, while its relations with the Sadat regime have grown increasingly acrimonious.
European Leaders Unhappy with Sadat-Begin Treaty
In the view of leading European politicians, statesmen and journalists, the “peace” treaty signed between Egypt and Israel in March is more of a liability than a promising asset in their governments’ attempts to forge better relations with the Arab world. Many see it as a prelude to further conflict in the Middle East, and diplomats for the nine member states of the European Economic Community (EEC) have been quietly urging the United States either to extract more concessions from Begin or to make a new initiative — unilaterally if necessary — to widen the Treaty to include other Arab states and possibly the Palestine Liberation Organization as well.
Sadat’s “New Democracy”
On April 5 the president of Egypt spoke for two and a half hours before the People’s Assembly, explaining and defending his peace treaty with Israel. Such was the “public debate” on the treaty. Sadat gratuitously added that “as of today” there would be no restrictions on political parties, and pledged a “bill of rights” which would be “the start of a new life in Egypt.”
