A different first lady
Egypt’s everywoman finds her place is in the palace
Naglaa Ali Mahmoud wears an Islamic head covering that falls to her knees, did not attend college and never took her husband’s last name, because that is a Western convention few Egyptians follow.
She also refuses the title of first lady, preferring Um Ahmed, a traditional nickname that identifies her as the mother of Ahmed, her eldest son.
Egypt has a new leader, Mohammed Morsi, the first president to hail from the Muslim Brotherhood, not the military.
It also has Ms. Mahmoud, 50, whose profile is so ordinary by contemporary Egyptian standards as to make her elevation extraordinary. She could hardly be more different from her predecessors, Suzanne Mubarak and Jihan el-Sadat: aloof, British-Egyptian fashion plates with well-coiffed hair and advanced degrees.
With her image as a traditionalist everywoman, Ms. Mahmoud has come to symbolize the dividing line in the culture war that has made unity an elusive goal since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
For some, she represents the democratic change that the revolution promised. She is a woman in the presidential palace who looks and lives like their sisters and mothers. But to some in the westernized elite, she stands for a backwardness and provincialism that they fear.
“I can’t call her a first lady under any circumstances,” complained Ahmed Salah, 29, a banker having coffee with his friends on the Nile island of Zamalek. “She can’t be an image for the ‘ladies’ of Egypt.”
Many others, though, said it was her critics who were out of step. “People like Suzanne Mubarak are the odd ones out — you don’t see them walking down the street,” said Mariam Morad, 20, a psychology student. “This is exactly what we need: change.”
Ms. Mahmoud, for her part, said she knew it would not be easy to be the wife of the first Islamist head of state, as she told the newspaper of the Muslim Brotherhood.
If she tries to play an active role, she risks comparisons with Ms. Mubarak, who was widely despised for her supposed influence behind the scenes. But if she disappears, “They will say that Mohammed Morsi is hiding his wife because this is how Islamists think.”
The woman grew up in the poor Cairo neighborhood of Ain Shams, and was 17 and still in high school when she married her cousin, Mr. Morsi, who was 11 years older.
He also had grown up poor, in El Adwa, a village in the Nile Delta, but excelled in engineering at Cairo University. Three days after their wedding, he left for Los Angeles, to complete his PhD at the University of Southern California.
His wife finished high school and studied English in Cairo. A year and a half later, she joined her husband in Los Angeles, where the first two of their five children were born.
She volunteered at the Muslim Student House, translating sermons for women interested in converting to Islam. It was in Los Angeles they were invited to join the Muslim Brotherhood. “I always say that the Brothers don’t blindfold anyone,” she told the group’s newspaper. “From the beginning
they told us about the situation and what was asked of us, and they told us that the path is long and full of dangers.”
After Mr. Morsi completed his degree, Ms. Mahmoud was reluctant to return to Egypt, she told a Brotherhood website. But he wanted his children to grow up in Egypt.
After their return, he taught engineering at Zagazig University north of Cairo and began a climb through the Brotherhood’s ranks. Ms. Mahmoud, a homemaker, became an instructor in its parallel women’s auxiliary, teaching girls about marriage.
Like many Egyptians, Mr. Morsi traveled abroad to earn extra income, teaching engineering at a Libyan university in 1988-92. He made enough money to leave their small rented apartment and buy an apartment in Zagazig and make a downpayment on a Mitsubishi Lancer sedan.
The Brotherhood was outlawed under Mr. Mubarak, and playing a role in its leadership was not always easy.
“I don’t know if I will come back to see you,” Mr. Morsi told her before he left for a protest in 2006. “The next time we meet could be in Tora prison.” He didn’t come home for about seven months, which he spent in detention.
In Egypt’s patriarchal culture, and especially among Islamists, men seldom talk publicly of their wives, and mentioning them by name is almost a taboo. But Mr. Morsi is unusually appreciative of Ms. Mahmoud, even in public, sometimes saying in television interviews marrying her was “the biggest personal achievement of my life.”
She often appeared with him during the campaign, though she seldom spoke publicly. When a magazine journalist asked for a photograph, her answer was conditional.
“Only if your photos make me look younger and a little thinner,” she said.