Tea with Mona Eltahawy

Image Credits: Mallika Mahidar

It all started at JLF this year. JLF 2016. Yes, that’s the year I had the absolute pleasure of hearing Mona Eltahawy speak. Now, I must confess, I hadn’t known much about her before this. I knew she was a journalist, but I lacked the knowledge that her essays had been compiled into book form named Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution. 

So there I was at one of the JLF sessions, named “After the Arab Spring”, with an extensive panel of Mona Eltahawy, Sulaiman Addonia, Omar Barghouti, Vali Nasr, and Laleh Khalili, which was moderated by Gerard Russell (watch here). A learned panel of feminists and professors alike, how could I have missed it? She was the first person in the panel to speak and the moment she did, she was met with thunderous applause all over the Mughal Tent. I was already inspired.

Anyway, it all started with a tweet. Mona (look at all this liberty I take to write with just her first name) tweeted about being in Bombay, and I feel so lucky to have spotted that tweet right away. I tweeted back to her about how I had introduced her book to my book club, Bombay BYOB. Assuming she might be speaking somewhere, I asked her if she was here for an event or a lecture somewhere, as I would have loved to hear her again and possibly drag members of my book club as well. And then, the best thing happened. She tweeted back saying she wasn’t speaking at any event, but she would love to meet us! What? A celebrated, inspiring author, who has inspired millions, fought for basic human rights, would be willing to meet us? I was sitting in office, hyperventilating at her response. It took me a few minutes to get over the fact that she was so cool. A few DMs later, it was arranged. I hadn’t been this happy in a long time. 

Tweet of the Year

At the Lighthouse Cafe in Worli

We ended up in a cafe in Worli. It was one of those lazy hours of the afternoon where we ordered up obscene amounts of tea and spoke about the world. We spoke about the rights and the wrongs of the world. We spoke about the politics of the world. We spoke about our personal lives and how everyday things affected us. We spoke about love and sex. We spoke about FGM that is not just prevalent in countries such as Mauritania, but the substantial Bohra community just 2 or so kilometres away from my house. We spoke about growing up in Muslim households. We spoke about growing up in countries that are always on the brink of revolution. I’ve never been to Egypt, but I felt that through Mona and her book, I know the kind of place she grew up in as if I was there as well. I realised that the plight of women is same across the world. Religion and culture are wonderful things until they’re molded in a way that oppresses womankind. Just through this one thought, I feel connected to women all over the world; women who have lived through revolutions like Mona has, women still oppressed, such as the Yazidi women under ISIS-controlled territory. If the world has taught us anything, it is that “being a woman anywhere is dangerous”.

So, why am I writing about about meeting one of the most inspiring women I’ve known of? I’ll let Mona Eltahawy’s words answer that: “The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters. It does.”

“When I travel and give lectures abroad and I'm asked how best to help women in my part of the world, I say, help your own community's women fight misogyny. By doing so, you help the global struggle against hatred of women.” - Mona Eltahawy