Two Women in One by Nawal El Saadawi

Author:Nawal El Saadawi
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780863567285
Publisher: Saqi

Back in her bed that night, she felt that what had happened was only a dream. If not a dream, then an accident that had befallen her without her willing it, like all acts of fate and destiny. Somehow she was now back in her familiar bed, her body intact and with all its usual external boundaries.

But with some other mischievous part of her mind she realized that this accident was the only real thing in her life. It was not an accident, a dream, an act of fate and destiny or mere chance, but the only act she had ever performed intentionally, the only thing she had actually wanted to do.

None of her life was of her doing or her own choice. It was her mother who had given birth to her and her father who had enrolled her at the medical college. Her aunt, who suffered from a lung disease, wanted her to specialize in this particular field of medicine. Her uncle wanted her to be a successful, highly-paid doctor, who would marry his son, the business-school graduate. Her savings would grow thanks to his expertise in commerce, and they would raise children who would inherit their wealth and bear his name, and the names of his father and grandfather before him.

Everyone told her what they wanted. No one asked her what she wanted. In fact, she had never wanted any of the things they wanted for her. She did not want to be a doctor, and especially not a chest specialist. She used to watch the rows of TB patients looking like walking skeletons, their doctors obese and flabby. She had never liked her uncle or his son the businessman. The whole family thought him good-looking: he was tall, slim, with a fair complexion and pink cheeks. His eyes glowed with health and happiness. His features were as innocent as a child’s. It was as if he was still being breast-fed. He gave everyone the same happy, vacuous smile.

She hated his smile and his happiness, and responded with bared teeth and angry lips. But he never got angry, believing — either because he was stupid or because, like all stupid men, he was arrogant — that she was hiding her real admiration for him behind those bared teeth. He would say to her in his dull, flat voice, ‘I know women. A woman says no, but her heart says yes.’

She would have liked to spit in his face, but she would not do anything out of choice. So when she saw her father smiling at him, she would smile too, saying, ‘Who told you that I’m a girl?’ They were used to hearing this question from her. It did not annoy them; on the contrary, her father was rather pleased by it, as if secretly delighted that his daughter was not really a girl, or as if he wished, deep down, that she was not. She knew that her father’s approval was genuine, for he had wanted her to be a boy.

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