Connections from Egypt to Iraq and Beyond in Samia Serageldin’s The Naqib’s Daughter
As I read Samia Serageldin’s The Naqib’s Daughter, the question arose of why she chose to write about the French invasion of Egypt. As I read this book and received the opportunity to speak to the author about the book, I made a connection with an event in our country. Samia Serageldin spoke to me about her inspiration for The Naqib’s Daughter being the war in Iraq following the September 11th attacks on the United States.
In The Naqib’s Daughter, the French believe the Egyptians need their influence. There is “no doubt they would be welcomed by the Egyptians, to whom they would come as liberators rather than conquerors” (2). The French believed they were helping the Egyptians by bringing modernity to the country and helping them develop and prosper as a country. The Egyptians, however, did not feel the same. On the contrary, they felt as though they were being oppressed and being destroyed. The people of Cairo felt as if their traditions and ways of life were being completely destroyed as if they were losing their very identity. In The Naqib’s Daughter, after Madame Verdier mentions how beautiful Zeinab has become by conforming to the French vision of beauty, Zeinab “didn’t think she looked pretty; her mother would have said she looked thin and drawn, and tried to stuff her with sweetmeats” (106). Zeinab and other Egyptians began to question the French and did not like when others traded their native traditions for the new “modern” ones of the French.
The many similarities between the Iraq War that followed the attacks on September 11th and the invasion of the French in the novel directly reflect the author’s inspiration from recent history to write this historical fiction. Similar propaganda techniques were used by America as were used by the French in this book. When the troops went into Iraq, the United States’ intention was for the good of the Iraqi people and not to harm them. President George Bush even mentioned in a press conference that “No troops would be withdrawn from Iraq as long as he was president because it was what the Iraqi people wanted” (Lynch).
Bonaparte attempted to keep the people of Cairo believing the French were there to bring the greatness of the Western culture to the people of Egypt. The Egyptians were to believe that the French were there to bring all the liberating qualities from the west such as democracy and freedom from their oppressors. The Americans’ main purposes were to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction and then to root a democratic system in Iraq to free them from their oppressing and controlling leaders. However, fear and a feeling of oppression from the Americans arose in the Iraqi people much as the people of Cairo. The Iraqi people began to question the motives of the Americans as well. When asked for the three main reasons for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, less than 2% chose “to bring democracy to Iraq” and the majority 76% chose “to control Iraqi oil”(Lynch). As in The Naqib’s Daughter, doubt and a feeling of oppression or destruction comes with many country invasions. The feelings felt by the Egyptians were the same as the ones of the Iraqi people and the inspiration for The Naqib’s Daughter becomes quite evident when connected to events today.
Bibliography
Lynch, Marc. “What the Iraqi People Want.” Abu Aardvark. N.p., 23 August 2006. Web. 12 Feb. 2012. <http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/08/what_the_iraqi_.html>.