One of the fiercest voices of Middle Eastern feminism, the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls explains her mission to ‘destroy patriarchy’

Every morning, Mona Eltahawy carefully lines her eyes in thick kohl. “It’s a ritual I gift to myself every morning,” explains the 53-year-old Egyptian author, journalist and feminist activist. “Holding that brush is like being a calligrapher, and I consider lining my eyes as a way of writing a love letter to myself. It’s a form of adornment, but it also connects me to my Egyptian heritage, because in ancient Egypt, men and women of all social classes wore eyeliner. It has become a kind of self-care for me since the pandemic began.”

We are speaking via Zoom, with Eltahawy in Montreal, where she lives with her partner. Behind her is a framed portrait of the Egyptian blogger and women’s rights activist Aliaa Mahdy, by the Canadian artist Nadine Faraj. Eltahawy speaks fast, beaded earrings swinging from her ears, often pausing to run her hand through her close-cropped hair; she shaved her long red hair in May. “Red was my power before,” she says, “but to signal power now, I wanted to shave it all off, to say, ‘This is the pandemic me that is emerging.’” Eltahawy is not one for the unexamined life. She is likable, earnest and sincere.