Woman at point zero: Egypt's most famous feminist seeks reform the second time around.(EGYPT)(Nawal el Saadawi)

CAIRO, EGYPT --

THE VIEW FROM THE 26TH FLOOR of Nawal el Saadawi's apartment in Shoubra Gardens, a working-class neighborhood in east Cairo, may once have been spectacular. But as I sit in a rattan chair in Saadawi's sunroom, enjoying a cool breeze and a view of the nearby Nile through the haze of a Cairo afternoon, I notice the rooftops below us are awash in trash and dusty satellite TV dishes. Like so much of Cairo, the tall modern buildings constructed during the heyday of Egypt's post-independence rush toward the future have seen their sheen since dimmed by decades of ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.