Um Ahmed, wife of Egypt's President Morsi

By John Ballard

This NY Times sketch is refreshing. 

Naglaa Ali Mahmoud wears an Islamic head covering that drapes down to her knees, did not attend college and never took her husband's last name, because that is a Western convention that few Egyptians follow. She also refuses the title of first lady, in favor of simply Um Ahmed, a traditional nickname that identifies her as the mother of Ahmed, her eldest son.

Dalia Saber, 36, an engineering lecturer, said, "She looks like my mother, she looks like my husband's mother, she probably looks like your mother and everybody else's."

For her, Mr. Morsi and Ms. Mahmoud were what the Arab Spring was all about: regular people in power.

"They're people like us," she said. "It is a strange relief to people. The people feel that there's a 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, the 84-year-old Islamist movement. If she tries to play an active role, she risks comparisons with Mrs. Mubarak, who was widely despised for her supposed influence behind the scenes. But if Ms. Mahmoud disappears, she said, "They will say that Mohamed Morsi is hiding his wife because this is how Islamists think."

Ms. Mahmoud's unexpected path to the presidential palace illustrates just how foreign her experience is to the culture of the old Egyptian elite - or perhaps how foreign that elite is to Egypt. Hers was a very typical beginning: She 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 the small village of El Adwa in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya, but excelled in the engineering program at Cairo University.

Three days after their wedding, he left for Los Angeles, to complete his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California. She finished high school and studied English in Cairo. A year and a half after their wedding she joined her husband in Los Angeles, where she volunteered at the Muslim Student House, translating sermons for women interested in converting to Islam.

It was in Los Angeles that she and her husband were first invited to join the Muslim Brotherhood, an offer that would later define their lives. "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."

She said the Brotherhood recruiters told Mr. Morsi to be sure his wife approved of the decision before joining, telling him, "We care about the stability of the family more than having one more member."

Mr. Shatner is nobody's fool.
He knows how to pick a candidate, win friends and influence people.
Um Ahmed is an Egyptian Barbara Bush.