Part of my job at ‘The Economist’ was writing about HIV, and that included the grim task of reporting on the state of the global epidemic. Shereen El Feki Read Quote
Growing up, I came to love Egypt and respect Islam, but I never thought to go beyond the surface. Back in Canada, many of my father’s Egyptian friends questioned his decision not to raise his only child more strictly in the faith. I was not taught salat, the Muslim ritual of prayer, nor did I study Arabic. Shereen El Feki Read Quote
We were the outliers: my mother was the only Western woman (khawagayya, in Egyptian Arabic) to have married into the family, and during my childhood, we were the only members living outside of Egypt. So between my father’s prestige as the eldest son and my own exotic pedigree, I basked in the spotlight. Shereen El Feki Read Quote
The patriarchy is alive and well in Egypt and the wider Arab world. Just because we got rid of the father of the nation in Egypt or Tunisia, Mubarak or Ben Ali, and in a number of other countries, does not mean that the father of the family does not still hold sway. Shereen El Feki Read Quote
Civil society must be strengthened to help raise awareness among people living with HIV, and those at risk, of their rights, and to ensure they have access to legal services and redress through the courts. Shereen El Feki Read Quote
Egypt, once a melting pot of peoples, classes, cultures and religions, has, after 30 years of Mubarak’s rule, become a place of intolerance and distrust of the other. Shereen El Feki Read Quote
Although I was raised in Canada and the U.K., my roots are in Egypt through my father, in a family line that stretches back generations and runs along the Nile, from the concrete of Cairo to the coast of Alexandria. Shereen El Feki Read Quote
I’m Egyptian and Muslim, but I grew up in the West, far from my Arab roots. I began ‘Sex and the Citadel’ to help outsiders – like myself – to better comprehend this pivotal part of the world, up-close and personal. Shereen El Feki Read Quote
