Alifa Rifaat

Alifa Rifaat
Born	5 June 1930 Cairo
Died	1996 Cairo
Nationality	Egypt

Fatimah Rifaat (June 5, 1930 – January 1996), better known by her pen name Alifa Rifaat (أليفة رفعت), was an Egyptian author whose controversial short stories are renowned for their depictions of the dynamics of female sexuality, relationships, and loss in rural Egyptian culture. While taking on such controversial subjects, Fatimah Rifaat’s protagonists remained religiously faithful with passive feelings towards their fate. Her stories did not attempt to undermine the patriarchal system; rather they were used to depict the problems inherent in a patriarchal society when men do not adhere to their religious teachings that advocate for the kind treatment of women. Fatimah Rifaat used the psydonymn Alifa to prevent embarrassment on the part of her family due to the themes of her stories and her writing career.

Fatma Abdullah Rifaat was born on June 5, 1930 in Cairo, Egypt. Her father was an architect and her mother was a housewife. Her family boasted that their roots are said to extend back to Umar ibn al-Khattab, a companion and advisor to the prophet Muhammad. She was raised in provincial Egypt and spent most of her life there. Subsequently rural Egypt became the setting for most of her stories. Her active interest in writing began at age nine when she wrote a poem expressing the despair in her village. For this she was met with punishment by her family due to the poem’s subject matter. Fatimah attended Misr al-Jadidah Primary school and The Cultural Center for Women for her intermediate education. She also attended the British Institute in Cairo from 1946 to 1949 where she studied English. When Alifa Rifaat expressed interest in continuing her education by enrolling in the College of Fine Arts in Egypt her father instead arranged for her to marry her cousin, a police officer.

For the first few years of their marriage her husband allowed her to write and publish stories under her pseudonym despite the common idea of writing being a purely masculine field in Egyptian culture. She published her stories from 1955 until 1960 when she chose to stop after facing pressure from her husband to end her writing career. During this nearly 14-year period of literary silence Alifa Rifaat pursued the study of literature, astronomy, and history. Despite her attempts at preoccupation through these means Alifa Rifaat remained frustrated at her inability to express herself and the societal issues she faced as a woman through literary means.

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