- Injī Aflātūn (1924 – 1989, Egypt) – Mudhakkirat Injī Aflātūn (‘Inji Aflatun’s memoirs’, 1993), in which the painter and activist describes her four-year experience in the al-Qanātir (1959-1963) Women’s Prison in Cairo, where she was incarcerated in 1959 after being accused of being one of the leaders of the Central Committee of the Egyptian Communist Party (reference). Aflātūn was a prominent member of the Egyptian women rights movement, and during the 40 years of her imprisonment, she continued to paint life around her (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Arts)
- Salwā Bakr’s (1949-, Egypt) – al-ʿArabah al-Dhahabiyyah lā Taṣʿad ilā al-Samāʾ (1991, English trans. The Golden Chariot, 2008). ʿAzīza is confined to a dystopian women’s prison in Egypt after murdering her stepfather. There she spends her time fantasizing about a golden chariot and selecting qualified inmates to accompany her on her imagined journey to the heavens. This selection process is done through interviews by ʿAzīza in which she hears the stories of various prisoners. The women’s prison is there through portrayed as “a space for women to compare stories and negotiate their socio-economic differences and characteristics” (reference).
- Zīnah Dakkāsh’s (?, Lebanon) play Shahrazād bi-Baʿabdā (‘Scheherazade in Baabda’, 2012) was a project in cooperation with inmates from the Baabda Prison in Lebanon, in which the women’s stories, those of violence, traumatic histories, and deprivation of motherhood, were portrayed. The play was first performed by the female inmates themselves in 2011 (reference). The documentary movie Scheherazade’s Diary, released in 2013, follows the developments of the project. Dakkāsh also made a documentary about making a play with male prisoners in the Rūmiyyah prison in Lebanon called 12 Lubnānī Ghāḍib (’12 angry Lebanese’, 2009).
- Zaynab al-Ghazālī (1917 – 2005, Egypt) – Ayyām min Ḥayātī (1972, English trans. Return of the Pharaoh: Memoir in Nasser’s Prison, 1994). This memoir portrays the author’s imprisonment after being accused of association with a plot by the Muslim Brothers to kill the Egyptian President Jamal Abdel Nasser. Al-Ghazālī, a Muslim activist, was imprisoned in both men’s and women’s prisons from 1965 until 1971. In that period, she was heavily tortured.
- Rūzā Yāsīn Ḥassan (1974-, Syria) – Nīghātīf (‘Negative’, 2008). This novel is “constructed of oral testimonies of women who have been detained in Syrian prisons” and who describe the torture they endured, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as their coping mechanisms and how they experienced daily life in the cells with other women (reference). It also includes references to other texts about prison, such as from Farīdah al-Naqqāsh and Hiba Dabbāgh’s Khams Daqāʾiq wa Ḥabs (1982, English trans. Just Five Minutes: Nine Years in the Prisons of Syria, 2007), and footnotes on the backgrounds of the prisoners (reference).
- Farīdah al-Naqqāsh (1940-, Egypt) – Al-Sijn… al-Waṭan (‘The prison and the nation’, 1980), and al- Sijn… Damʿatān wa Warda (‘The prison: two tears and a rose’, 2010) both describe the author’s experience in prison during the regime of Anwar al-Sadat, and the effect imprisonment had on her, her husband, and their child.
- Hasiba ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (1959-, Syria) – al-Sharnaqa (‘The cocoon’, 1998). This novel is based on journals and other writings the author composed while in the Syrian women’s prison in Duma. It is the first Syrian prison novel by a former female prisoner.
- Nawāl al-Saʿadāwī (1931 – 2021, Egypt) Imraʾ aʿind Nuqṭat al-Ṣifr (1975, English trans. Woman at point Zero, 1983) and Mudhakarātī fī Sijn al-Nisāʾ (1983, English trans. Memoirs from Women’s Prison’, 1994).
Imraʾ ʿaind Nuqṭat al-Ṣifr (1975, English trans. Woman at point Zero, 1983). The novel paints the picture of a woman’s passage from a victim of incest to prostitution and eventually to murderer. Its hero is Firdaws, who tells her life story before being executed. The novel is based on the author’s meeting with a female prisoner in the Qanatir Prison.
Mudhakarātī fī Sijn al-Nisāʾ treats the months that the author was imprisoned in the year 1981 in the Qanatir prison for criticizing Sadat’s normalization of relations with Israel (reference) (see 1977 Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel). She describes her relations with fellow prisoners and her coping mechanisms, such as finding any piece of paper to write on. The memoir also describes the one-man reign of al-Sadat as one that spread fear and panic amongst the Egyptian population (reference)
- ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Barakah Sākin (1963-, Sudan) – al-Junqū, Masāmīrā al-Arḍ (English trans. The Jungo – Stakes of the Earth’). Banned in Sudan, this novel treats the experiences inside a women’s prison in the city of Gadarif in the extreme southeastern parts of Sudan bordering Ethiopia and Eritrea.
- Latīfa al-Zayyāt (1923 – 1996, Egypt) – Hamlat Taftīsh: Awrāq Shakhsiyyah (1992, English trans. The Search: Personal Papers, 1997). The writer records her two prison terms, the first in 1949, when she was twenty-six, after she was accused of joining the Communist party which was planning a coup d’état, and the second for rejecting al-Sadat’s decision to normalize relations with Israel on the accusation of ‘spying for a foreign country’ (reference) (also in A: Autobiography).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Hosn Abboud. 2016. “Chapter 8: Gendering Home. ‘Nation’ in Arab Women’s Prison Memoirs” in Representations and Visions of Homeland in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Sebastian Günter and Stephan Milich. Georg Olms Verlag: Hildesheim, Zürich, New York. pp. 135-155, p. 136
- Nadia Sinno. 2011. “From Confinement to Creativity: Women’s Reconfiguration of the Prison and Mental Asylum in Salwa Bakr’s ‘The Golden Chariot’ and Fadia Faqir’s ‘Pillars of Salt’.” JAL 42: 67-94, p. 67
- Aljazeera. 2012. “‘Shahrazād bi-Baʿabdā’ .. min Sijn al-Nisāʾ ilā Aswāq Bayrūt.” www.doc.algazeera.net, 10 July 2012 https://doc.aljazeera.net/cinema/2012/7/10/شهرزاد-ببعبدا-من-سجن-النساء-إلى-أسواق (last accessed 25 March 2023)
- R. Shareah Taleghani. 2021 Readings in Syrian Prison Literature. Syracuse University Press: Syracuse, New York p. 25 and 38-39
- Fayyiz ʿAlām. 2016. “#adab_alsujūn: Riwāyat ‘Mudhakkirāt fī Sijn al-Nisāʾ’.” www.raseef22.net, 27 May 2016 https://raseef22.net/article/24693-nawal-saadawi-prison-memoire (last accessed 17 April 2023)
- Hosn Abboud. 2016. “Chapter 8: Gendering Home. ‘Nation’ in Arab Women’s Prison Memoirs” in Representations and Visions of Homeland in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Sebastian Günter and Stephan Milich. Georg Olms Verlag: Hildesheim, Zürich, New York. pp. 135-155, p. 147