Egypt's Liberating First Lady

Anwar Sadat's only rival for popularity among Egyptians these days is a safe and sure ally: his wife Jehan Sadat, 40, a comely woman with dark brown hair and eyes and a fetching smile. Scarcely a year ago, students demonstrating against the regime covered Cairo walls with insults directed at her, the largely unknown First Lady. But since the October War, when Mrs. Sadat spent highly publicized 20-hour days visiting troops, touring hospitals and working as a bandage roller with the Egyptian Red Crescent, she has won over even these youthful critics. Civilians as well as soldiers refer to her by the sobriquet conferred by the armed forces, "Mother of the Fighting Men."

Friends of the First Lady insist, however, that her most important contribution to Egyptian life has not been in building up wartime morale but in raising the peacetime stature of women. "Many changes have come to Egypt under Sadat," says one, "but Jehan is the greatest change of all." Mrs. Sadat has become the symbol of a special kind of women's lib adapted to a country where women are still generally held down. Without upsetting the traditional male role as family head, Mrs. Sadat has persistently worked for greater rights for women. Among other things, her husband recently appointed his first female Cabinet Minister and Egypt's first women judges are about to be named as well.

--The First Lady's liberation views developed in Talla, Sadat's home town in the Nile delta. "A woman complained to me of the way her husband was treating her," Mrs. Sadat explained last week to TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn. "She told me he had sold her sewing machine for the money. I decided I must do something to help such women win respect and security, so they wouldn't be tyrannized by their husbands. I started a center for social development and helped the women to sew aprons for schools and for sale in shops. Now that woman is making enough money to support herself, and even her husband sees her in a new light."

Mrs. Sadat pointedly occupied a central seat at a tumultuous meeting in Cairo last year, where Egyptian women confronted Libya's Muammar Gaddafi to rebut his arguments for political union between the two countries. If Gaddafi imposed his fundamentalist Islamic views on such a merger, they shouted scornfully, it would force them all back to the harem, and they refused to go.

A stylish dresser known for her well-tailored trouser suits and gowns, Mrs. Sadat is half English. Her Egyptian father and British mother met and married while he was in London studying medicine. Jehan first met Sadat on her 15th birthday when he was 30 and an army captain. They were wed after Sadat's first marriage, an arranged match with a cousin, ended in 1947.

The Sadats have three teenaged daughters and a ten-year-old son, Gamal, named for the late President Nasser. In normal times their family life is close but, in Egyptian style, private. Since the war, however, the children have been in Talla because both parents have been away from home much of the time. Says Mrs. Sadat:

"I didn't know a war was about to begin, but I knew something big was going to happen. My husband had been having so many meetings with generals and the Minister of War. Then he told me he was going away for a day or two but didn't say where. I didn't ask him what was happening. He wouldn't have told me anyway, and I don't like to ask a question if I'm not going to get an answer."

She is still active visiting troops on the Suez Canal and is organizing a city for disabled veterans. Following her example, many Egyptian women left home during the fighting to participate in the "national struggle," and their new activities are likely to continue. "I know many nor1mally tradition-minded husbands who now want their wives to participate," says one Cairo feminist. "They've been convinced by Jehan."

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