'Nawal’s eyes light up when she talks about her time in prison, which she says was "a good experience" overall. "When I went to prison I was already 50 years old – quite mature – so I was strong enough to survive. It’s a battle, but you go on. You are conquered and then you conquer. You are not broken. In prison, you face real life. Prison is like death, like exile, you face something horrible that you were so afraid of all your life – I was so afraid of prison and of death and of exile and of loneliness, of everything, but when I was in it, I lost my fear. You have to face these things to lose your fear."
Nawal is constantly encouraging women to let go of their fear. "The braver you are, the more nobody can touch you," she tells me. When I ask if she was always this confident and strong spirited, she says no – it happened gradually. She asks me, "Are you not strong and confident too?" And I say, "No! I don’t feel that strong or confident" and she says, "Ah, maybe this is because you didn’t need a battle. You didn’t fight for your rights, you found them, that is why you are easy-going and relaxed. It is okay! It is good! But when you are in fire, walking through fire, when you feel that everywhere you go you meet obstacles and you want to break through, you develop strong bones to go on."'