Gehan Sadat.

The lady illustrated below is Mrs. Gehan Sadat, the wife of Egypt’s president in the 70s, Anwar Sadat. By all possible means, she is an exceptional woman not just in the 20th century Egypt, but the entire Arab World. Hailing from a well-off ancient familly in Egypt, Mrs. Gehan defied all norms and married the fired officer, ex-convict, and the daring bum who played acrobats on Egypt’s tumultuous political stage of the 40s, Anwar Sadat. Well..the sharp insights of Gehan, and her extraordinary perceptive powers were not fully known back then. However, time has shown her pioneering spirit, modernist bent, and in deed she tried as much as can be to enact a progressive vision regarding women in Egypt.

In a matter of just 20 years after her marriage to ex-lieutenant, Anwar Sadat, her husband became the second real president of the Egyptian republic. A few years afterwards Gehan assumed the official title of Egypt’s first lady, quite deservedly.

Of the three queens of the Egyptian kingdom, the low-key wife of Nasser, and overbearing wife of Mubarak, Susan, Gehan comes across as truly exceptional.

She further educated herself and her teachers were impressed by her modesty, willingness to learn, and natural intelligence. She had an outstanding appearance on all arenas, regional, local, or international without ever coming across as fastidious or over the top, just a nice lady from Egypt. In this respect, she was in some ways close in formal character to the late empress of Iran, Farah Diba.

She passionately adopted the cause of women rights in Egypt and modifying familly laws while using deft, smooth diplomacy, and charisma to push her agenda which she managed to implement against fierce resistance from the clergy. She used to tour Egypt’s organizations, institutions, big firms, etc., to hold friendly, informal discussions with women where she was the first among equals.

When Sadat invited a friend, a politician, a writer, or a public figure, they were dumbfounded by her friendliness and modesty. She even used to cook pasta herself. On the other hand, she was criticized by many for what they saw as her penchant for luxury. If I were to make an input in this repect, I would say that context is prime. For the Arab World, wealth of royals, and billions of Mubarak, that must be ok. Her son, Gamal Sadat, is even way less wealthy than each of the offspring of all Egyptian presidents and monarchs, no exception.

In further testimony to her independence and strong-mindedness, she remarried after Sadat’s death, which,I think, is something that has never happened in the history of Arab republics.

Quite astonishingly, Mrs. Gehan was probably the only woman in Egypt and one of very few persons who were allowed to have open and free discussions with Nasser who in his last year before passing away used to dine quite often at Sadat’s lodgings!