El Zar: A Tool of Oppression and Liberation‪.‬

Out El Kouloub El Demerdashiyya uses the seemingly primitive practice of the zar or exorcism in the tale of Nazira to offer pointed feminist, literary, social and political critiques of the Egyptian society in the first half of the 20th Century. Her tales entitled Trois Contes De L'Amour Et De La Mort first appeared in book form in Paris, in 1940. They were then translated in the year 2000 to English by Nayra Atiya and published in the United States by Syracuse University Press. This paper will adopt a three step analytical process. Through first answering questions about the importance of Out El Kouloub in Arabic feminist writing, second defining the term "the zar," finally I will examine the text in its socio-political context. Let me start by answering the question, who is Out El Kouloub? And where can we place her in the Arabic literary cannon? After all, this is a writer who published in French, over half a century ago. She is hardly known to the Egyptian/Arab reader and has only been rediscovered in the 1990s by literary scholars in the West through translation into English. Even trying to answer the question "Who is Out El Kouloub?" is no easy task. According to Nayra Atiya, she was born either in 1892 or 1899 in Cairo. Her father was the head of El Tarikah El Demerdashiyya, a Sufi order which was founded by one of her ancestors in the 16th Century. As part of her harem upbringing, she was educated at home. We also have conflicting stories about her divorce or the death of her husband. Whatever happened to her marriage resulted in her raising her five children as a single mother, managing her vast estate, and vigorously pursuing knowledge. In addition to her extensive readings, she held a literary salon that drew famous intellectuals, both Arab and European, who were mostly men. Although a devote Muslim, who never served alcohol at her salon, she adopted progressive ideas, especially when it came to the emancipation of women, hence the story of Nazira. She died in 1968 in Europe after she fled the Nasser regime (Atiya xiv).