The daughter of the chief of the Arabs

Author's name: Miral Al-Tahawy

This book stirs stagnant waters, sparks a broad intellectual movement, and reveals unspoken areas in modern Egyptian history. Daughter of the Arabs, in the language of a novelist and an academic, talks about identity, origins, and the strange worlds of the Bedouins. She recounts the stories of grandmothers and what they inherited from the tribe, and asks her fundamental question: Did the Bedouins melt and mingle with Egyptian society, or did they continue to constitute an ethnic and racial minority within society? Who created this isolation? How did this split identity of the Bedouins mature? In this book, Miral Eltahawy, with rare boldness and courage, explores this thorny relationship between the Bedouins and the Egyptian owners of the land, between the tribe and the cultivated land, between the urban population and the Bedouins. She explores this conflict between two cultures that have shared Egypt's history, land, and wealth, and have coexisted for centuries. But this proximity did not erase the shadows of that confused relationship between two opposing parties, each of whom continued to despise and sanctify his rival at the same time.