Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal el Saadawi

Author:Nawal el Saadawi [Saadawi, Nawal el]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780863567230
Google: KEMhBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Saqi
Published: 2013-06-01T07:00:00+00:00

I sat beside him on one of the big stones forming the base of the pyramid, straining my eyes to the distant horizon and watching the sun’s red disc as it crept out from behind thick grey clouds.

‘What are you thinking about, doctor?’ I heard him saying.

‘Why do you always call me doctor?’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘It reminds me of my patients calling me when they’re in pain.’

‘It’s a magical title. I feel proud to use it when I’m talking to you. You’re the first woman doctor I’ve known.’

‘Really?’

‘When I sent for you to come and see my mother, I didn’t think I was talking to the doctor when I heard your voice on the phone. And when I saw you coming into my mother’s room I couldn’t believe you were the doctor.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’d imagined that a woman doctor would be ugly or old or both, with thick glasses and a bent back from so much reading and hard work. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might be a beautiful woman.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s difficult for a woman to combine being beautiful with being clever.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then I’ll tell you: because from early childhood a girl is brought up to believe that she’s a body and nothing more, so her body becomes her main concern for the rest of her life, and she doesn’t realize that she’s got a mind as well which must be looked after and encouraged to develop.’

‘Why do they do that?’

‘Because men, who hold the key positions in life, don’t want women to be anything more than beautiful, stupid animals whose legs they can lie between when they feel like it. Men don’t want women as equals or partners; they want them to be subordinate and to serve them.’

He laughed and so did I. He came closer and said, ‘I’m not one of those men. I want a woman who’s my partner, not my servant. I’m proud of your mind. You can’t imagine how happy I feel when I go into your surgery and see with my own eyes all those men and women waiting for you to cure them and make them healthy, desperate for your opinion and your expertise. How could a woman with a mind like yours be shut up in a house doing the cooking? Or one with your intelligence and learning waste her life breastfeeding like an illiterate peasant — or worse, like cats and dogs? It would be absurd, an insult to you and the whole human race.’

His words penetrated and quietened my rebellious depths and calmed my confused heart. I felt the conflict between me and the male sex evaporating and leant my tired head contentedly back against the stone of the pyramid. Why hadn’t my mother spoken to me like this, or society recognized the truth of notions such as these? And here was a man doing it, acknowledging that women had minds; that a woman, just like a man, had both a body and a mind. Here was a

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