1. Nawâl al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl al-Dâ’iriyya (Cairo: Maktabat Madbûlî, 1978); translated as The Circling Song (London: Zed Books, 1989). The literal translation of the Arabic title is “The Children’s Circular Song.”

2. Nawal El Saadawi, Personal Communication, April 14, 1993. See also Nawal El Saadawi, Author’s Introduction to The Circling Song, p. 2.

3. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, p. 43.

4. Ibid., p. 11.

5. Ibid., pp. 15–19.

6. Ibid., p. 15.

7. Ibid., p. 41.

8. Ibid., p. 42.

9. Ibid., p. 43.

10. Ibid., pp. 18–19, 44.

11. Ibid., p. 43.

12. It is unfortunate that this parallel is missing in the English translation (The Circling Song, p. 32).

13. See Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), esp. pp. 297–300.

14. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, pp. 76–81.

15. Ibid., p. 44.

16. Yûsuf Idrîs, “al-‘Amaliyya al-Kubrâ,” in al-Naddâha (Cairo: Dâr Misr lil-Tibâ‘a, 1982), pp. 113–137.

17. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, p. 17.

18. Ibid., p. 44.

19. For an edifying children’s story in which the male hero, known as al-Fahd (the Panther/Cheetah), is an extremely positive figure, see the Syrian children’s magazine Usâma, 1982/334–1983/347–348. For a discussion of this story, see Douglas and Malti-Douglas, Arab Comic Strips, pp. 125–126.

20. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, p. 77.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., p. 63.

23. On the poetry of Najm, see Kamal Abdel-Malek, A Study of the Vernacular Poetry of Ahmad Fu’âd Nigm (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990). Food imagery and its class connections are quite prevalent in Najm’s corpus.

24. Food is an important element in much of Ahmad Hijâzî’s comic-strip work; see, for example, Tambûl al-Awwal (Beirut: Dâr al-Fatâ al-‘Arabî, 1981). For a discussion of food in Hijâzî’s work, see Douglas and Malti-Douglas, Arab Comic Strips, pp. 61–82.

25. Yûsuf al-Qa‘îd, al-Harb fî Barr Misr (Beirut: Dâr Ibn Rushd lil-Tibâ‘a wal-Nashr, 1978), p. 62; translated as War in the Land of Egypt, trans. Olive Kenny, Lorne Kenny, and Christopher Tingley (London: al-Saqi Books, 1986). The Arabic has yatrukunâ, which is probably a typographical error for yatrukuhâ. See also idem, Yahduth fî Misr al-An (Cairo: Dâr Usâma lil-Tab‘ wal-Nashr, 1977); Fedwa Malti-Douglas, “Yûsuf al-Qa‘îd wal-Riwâya al-Jadîda,” Fusûl 4, no. 3 (1984): 190–202; and idem, Afterword to War in the Land of Egypt, pp. 185–192.

26. Al-Qa‘îd, al-Harb fî Barr Misr, pp. 72–73.

27. See Tâhâ Husayn, al-Ayyâm, vol. 3 (Cairo: Dâr al-Ma‘ârif, 1973), pp. 68, 76–77; translated as A Passage to France, trans. Kenneth Cragg (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976). I have discussed incidents involving eating and their social importance elsewhere; see Malti-Douglas, Blindness and Autobiography, pp. 41ff.

28. See Malti-Douglas, Afterword to War in the Land of Egypt, pp. 185–192.

29. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, pp. 30–31.

30. Ibid., pp. 20–35.

31. For these ballads, see Pierre Cachia, Popular Narrative Ballads of Modern Egypt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 269–322. According to my colleague and friend Hasan M. El-Shamy, the murderous brother is a common figure in Arab folklore generally.

32. Laylâ Abû Sayf, “New Ballads for Old,” Public Lecture delivered at U.C.L.A. For a more traditional rewriting, see Shawqî ‘Abd al-Hakîm, “Shafîqa wa-Mutawallî,” in Shawqî ‘Abd al-Hakîm, Malik ‘Ajûz (Cairo: al-Dâr al-Qawmiyya lil-Tibâ‘a wal-Nashr, n.d.), pp. 124–159.

33. Najîb Mahfûz, Bidâya wa-Nihâya (Beirut: Dâr al-Qalam, 1971).

34. See, for example, Hasan M. El-Shamy, “The Traditional Structure of Sentiments in Mahfouz’s Trilogy: A Behavioristic Text Analysis,” al-‘Arabiyya 9 (1976): 53–74.

35. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, pp. 105–106.

36. See, for example, Luciano P. R. Santiago, M.D., The Children of Oedipus: Brother-Sister Incest in Psychiatry, Literature, History, and Mythology (Roslyn Heights, N.Y.: Libra, 1973).

37. See, for example, El-Shamy, Brother and Sister Type 872*, esp. p. 36, for the jealous brother; idem, “Brother-Sister Syndrome,” pp. 313–323, esp. p. 320. For a discussion of this phenomenon in differing literary contexts, see Malti-Douglas, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word, chaps. 3 and 9.

38. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, pp. 34–35.

39. Ibid., p. 43.

40. Ibid., p. 54.

41. See, for example, ibid., p. 9.

42. Ibid., p. 31.

43. See, for example, ibid., pp. 57, 84.

44. Ibid., p. 66.

45. Ibid., p. 95.

46. Ibid., pp. 70–71.

47. Ibid., p. 57. For a discussion of cross-dressing, see Chapter 9 below.

48. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, p. 56.

49. Ibid., pp. 56–57.

50. See El-Shamy, Brother and Sister Type 872*.

51. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).

52. See, for example, Jean-Paul Charnay, “Communication et société: variations sur parole, amour et cuisine dans la culture arabe,” in L’ambivalence dans la culture arabe, ed. Jacques Berque and Jean-Paul Charnay (Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1967), pp. 184–185; Paula Sanders, “Gendering the Ungendered Body: Hermaphrodites in Medieval Islamic Law,” in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 74–95.

53. See, for example, al-Sakhâwî, al-Daw’ al-Lâmi‘ li-Ahl al-Qarn al-Tâsi‘ (Beirut: Manshûrât Dâr Maktabat al-Hayât, n.d.), 12:93–94.

54. See Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace Books, 1969).

55. Tahar Ben Jelloun, L’enfant de sable (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1985); idem, La nuit sacrée (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987).

56. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, p. 115.

57. See Chapter 9 for a detailed discussion of cross-dressing and its heterodox nature in the Arabo-Islamic cultural sphere.

58. Ibid., pp. 118–120.

59. Ibid., pp. 74–75, 105.

60. Ibid., p. 121.

61. “Al-‘âr mâ bi-yighsilush illâ al-dam” is the existing dialectical variant of the father’s order in El Saadawi’s text. I am grateful to Hasan M. El-Shamy for this information.

62. Al-Sa‘dâwî, Ughniyyat al-Atfâl, p. 100.

63. Ibid., p. 106.

64. Ibid., pp. 57, 59, 82, to mention but three examples.

65. Ibid., p. 73.

66. Ibid., p. 28.

67. Ibid., p. 11.

68. Ibid., p. 32.

69. Ibid., pp. 9–10.

70. Ibid., pp. 9–10, 122–123.