“I do not expect you to lose your entity for the sake of mine or for the sake of anyone else; you have your independent self. I want you to have confidence that comes from within: from yourself. It is only then that you will reach happiness.” This is the advice that Latīfa al-Zayyāt utters over the lips of her protagonist Layla in her great novel Al-Bāb al-Maftūh; anadvice that Egyptian women pass on among each other to date.