The Mother-Daughter Dyad

Paying tribute to her mother, Mona Helmy resurrects Nawal El Saadawi poetically. In these poems Helmy orchestrates two voices aptly. The first voice recalls the mother’s feminist teachings, her tender presence, the protection she provided, and the strength and confidence she armed her daughter with. The tone in these poems is nostalgic, elegiac, loving, and passionate. Through the tone and the hissing sound of the consonant s in El Saadawi, Helmy clearly declares her position toward her mother: reverential respect mixed with love and admiration. Helmy’s subversive strategy is to humanize Nawal El Saadawi, whom institutional powers had demonized. Challenging the discourse and practices of pathetic powers, Helmy salvages El Saadawi’s legacy and her distinguished attributes as a nonconforming mother come forth to the foreground of the poem.In parallel to that, the second voice of the poet emerges clearly when she presents herself as a nonconforming woman in a society that has its own strict gender constructs. Her aspiration to find true love is always crushed by a harsh, crude reality; after unremitting attempts, if we consider that each poem stands for an attempt, she gives up and contemplates suicide. The voice is now at its nadir, and the reader fears for the life of the poetic persona. In an unexpected twist, the mother emerges again, and Helmy restores her balance. Returning to the mother’s womb becomes a leitmotif loaded with primordial feminine symbolism. It carries the vast teachings of women, the potential for power, intuition, spirituality, and sexuality.The two poetic voices do not compete but complement each other; one rises, and the other works as a supporting chorus. One is in agony, and the other becomes the healer and soother. In both voices, however, El Saadawi is always present, endowing the daughter with the will to adamantly refuse to conform and to remain true to the teachings of the womb. The womb to which the poet expresses her desire to return is a litany for survival.The mother-daughter dyad is also illuminated through the autobiographical details that sometimes pop up in the poem, among which is the poet’s decision in 2006 to be called after not only her father’s but also her mother’s name. The reader comes across the mention of courts and the fundamentalist discourse that Helmy never hesitates to challenge by revealing its double moral standards.The poet’s style, vision, and syntax are not different from those of the mother/writer but also not identical. Although there is a mother-daughter dyad, each has her distinguished style and voice. Matriarchal solidarity does not mean cloning, and Helmy is aware of this. Yet she remains a dutiful daughter whose practices and writings are consistent with the teachings of the womb and equally subversive of the imposed teachings

Daughter · Developmental psychology · Dyad · Genealogy · Political science · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Psychology · Socioeconomic Development in MENA