Read Online Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi - Free Book Online Page A

one with the right to experiment and choose, while the woman just had to accept whoever chose her: one special man, who spends his whole life convincing himself that he is this one special man. Isn’t a woman just like a man, doctor? Have you forgotten your science? Or has your mind become separated from your body? Arrogance turns a man into a stupid, feeble-minded creature.

    Society impaled me with looks as sharp as daggers and lashed my face with stinging tongues like horse-whips.
    How can a woman live alone without a man? Why is she going out? Why is she coming in? Why is she smiling? Why is she breathing? Why is she taking gulps of fresh air? Why is she looking at the moon? Why does she hold her head up and open her eyes wide? Why does she tread with confidence and pride? Isn’t she embarrassed? Doesn’t she want a man to protect her?
    My family and relations attacked me. Even my closest friends vied with one another to discard me. I stood in the eye of the storm, thinking.
    Since childhood I’d been immersed in a series of endless battles and here I was up against a new one with society at large: millions of people, with millions more in front and behind. Why didn’t things go as they ought to in life? Why wasn’t there a greater understanding of truth and justice? Why didn’t mothers recognize that daughters were like sons, or men acknowledge women as equals and partners? Why didn’t society recognize a woman’s right to lead a normal life using her mind as well as her body?
    Why did they make me waste my life in these confrontations?
    I rested my chin in my hands and sat thinking. Should I do battle with society or submit to it and be carried along by it, bowing my head to it, shutting myself up in my house and seeking protection from a man like all the rest?
    No! Such thoughts were absurd. I would fight, looking to myself for protection, looking to my strength, my knowledge, my success in my work.

    I left everything behind: my family and friends; men and women; food and drink; sleeping and dreaming; the moon and the stars; wind and water. I put on my white coat, hung the stethoscope round my neck and stood in my surgery.
    I’d decided to do battle, to drown in my own sweat, to face society on feet of iron.

    She came to see me in the surgery, her small body trembling with fear, panting, turning to look behind her, her innocent child’s face contorted with terror.
    ‘What’s wrong, my girl?’ I asked.
    She shuddered as if she was feverish and started to sob her heart out. I managed to pick up a few disjointed, fragmented words from her quivering lips: ‘He didn’t do what he said... cruel bastard... Upper Egypt... they’ll kill me... I haven’t got anyone... save me, doctor.’
    She didn’t have a hanky, so I gave her mine and waited until she had no more tears left. She dried her eyes and fixed her frightened gaze on my lips, desperate to hear the one small word I would speak, granting her life or sentencing her to death.
    I looked at her. She was a child of no more than fourteen or fifteen, innocent, pure, frail, with no income and no one to support her. I had no choice. How could I abandon her when I was all she had, or sentence her to death when I believed in her innocence and her right to life? How could I leave her neck under her father’s knife when I knew that her father, mother, brother and uncle had all done wrong? How could I punish her alone when I knew that the whole of society had participated in the act, or wonder at her when I knew that everybody did similar things? How could I not protect her when she was the victim and society protected the real offender, or disapprove of her error when I myself had already fallen? I who had lived twice as long as her and seen and learnt many more things than she had. How could I not absolve her when I had already absolved myself?
    I tried to save the poor child from the talons of the law and tradition and from the fangs of the wild beasts and the