Read Online Two Women in One by Nawal El Saadawi - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Nawal El Saadawi
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his polite, obedient daughter’s body naked, not in her own bedroom but in a young man’s flat. Not only he would see her, but so would thousands of others who read the morning paper, including the members of her vast family scattered across the country from Aswan to Alexandria (especially the peasants and the ones from Upper Egypt). Not to mention all the employees at the Ministry of Health: her father’s superiors and subordinates, who had been convinced over thirty years that he was an efficient superintendent with close family ties and an honourable reputation, that his sons and daughters were diligent and well-behaved, especially his hard-working medical-student daughter Bahiah.
She shuddered as in a dream: she knew she would willingly sacrifice all the years of her life to spare her father that shock, that she did not mind dying or being seen naked if only her father would never see or know. She loved her father in spite of everything, and when he handed her an old ten-piastre note every day, her heart sank. When she folded her fingers around the note which carried the smell of his sweat, she wanted to bury her face in her hands and weep, for she knew that he worked so hard for her and her brothers and sisters. Sometimes she saw him pushing his way through the crowds with his thin body and bowed back; and when he crossed the street with its swirling traffic she would shiver with fear that a car might hit him. Once she saw him standing on the steps of the monstrously overcrowded tram and she imagined that the steps would collapse under the hundreds of feet and her father’s body would be crushed under the wheels. Once she had been to her father’s office at the Ministry of Health. She spotted him walking along the corridor behind his boss. His back was bowed, his neck muscles slack, and his head hung in submission, while his superior walked in front, his back straight, his neck muscles taut, his head tilted back arrogantly. She longed for the earth to swallow her up. Later when he sat near her on the tram and smiled, she did not smile back. She avoided his eyes until the next day, and when he handed her the sweaty, old note she nearly refused it. But finally she took it, feeling humiliated. When she managed to raise her eyes to his she saw an invisible, translucent tear.
As she jumped up he turned and there was his face directly before her, his eyes on hers. She was overwhelmed by that magical current, instantly felt that anything outside that moment was devoid of meaning and reality and that her whole life, past and present, was not really hers but belonged to some other person. She had no connection with the world she had lived in, with the people she had known, or with anything other than this face, with its blue-black eyes fastened on her, asserting her existence.
‘Saleem.’
Her voice in the room sounded strange, like the voice of somebody else. So did the name ‘Saleem’ sound strange, like someone else’s name. She repeated it several times in silence, to get used to its vibrations in her ears, and it sounded stranger every time. His name was Saleem and hers was Bahiah. His name sounded no stranger than her own. Names are so far from the reality of things. The senses are so hopeless in understanding feelings. What she felt for him went beyond the ability of her ears to hear, of her eyes to see, her nose to smell, and her fingers to touch. She realized that people have other senses, as yet undiscovered, that they lie latent in the inner self. But these other senses are more capable of feeling than the senses that are known to us. They are the real, natural senses, but they have never been developed by our upbringing, or by education, regulations, laws, traditions or indeed by anything at all. They are like a river flowing free without dams, or the rain pouring down from the sky, facing no barrier or obstacle until it is soaked up by the soil.
Now she sat on the sofa, he beside her, the window opposite
She shuddered as in a dream: she knew she would willingly sacrifice all the years of her life to spare her father that shock, that she did not mind dying or being seen naked if only her father would never see or know. She loved her father in spite of everything, and when he handed her an old ten-piastre note every day, her heart sank. When she folded her fingers around the note which carried the smell of his sweat, she wanted to bury her face in her hands and weep, for she knew that he worked so hard for her and her brothers and sisters. Sometimes she saw him pushing his way through the crowds with his thin body and bowed back; and when he crossed the street with its swirling traffic she would shiver with fear that a car might hit him. Once she saw him standing on the steps of the monstrously overcrowded tram and she imagined that the steps would collapse under the hundreds of feet and her father’s body would be crushed under the wheels. Once she had been to her father’s office at the Ministry of Health. She spotted him walking along the corridor behind his boss. His back was bowed, his neck muscles slack, and his head hung in submission, while his superior walked in front, his back straight, his neck muscles taut, his head tilted back arrogantly. She longed for the earth to swallow her up. Later when he sat near her on the tram and smiled, she did not smile back. She avoided his eyes until the next day, and when he handed her the sweaty, old note she nearly refused it. But finally she took it, feeling humiliated. When she managed to raise her eyes to his she saw an invisible, translucent tear.
As she jumped up he turned and there was his face directly before her, his eyes on hers. She was overwhelmed by that magical current, instantly felt that anything outside that moment was devoid of meaning and reality and that her whole life, past and present, was not really hers but belonged to some other person. She had no connection with the world she had lived in, with the people she had known, or with anything other than this face, with its blue-black eyes fastened on her, asserting her existence.
‘Saleem.’
Her voice in the room sounded strange, like the voice of somebody else. So did the name ‘Saleem’ sound strange, like someone else’s name. She repeated it several times in silence, to get used to its vibrations in her ears, and it sounded stranger every time. His name was Saleem and hers was Bahiah. His name sounded no stranger than her own. Names are so far from the reality of things. The senses are so hopeless in understanding feelings. What she felt for him went beyond the ability of her ears to hear, of her eyes to see, her nose to smell, and her fingers to touch. She realized that people have other senses, as yet undiscovered, that they lie latent in the inner self. But these other senses are more capable of feeling than the senses that are known to us. They are the real, natural senses, but they have never been developed by our upbringing, or by education, regulations, laws, traditions or indeed by anything at all. They are like a river flowing free without dams, or the rain pouring down from the sky, facing no barrier or obstacle until it is soaked up by the soil.
Now she sat on the sofa, he beside her, the window opposite
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