Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi

Author:Nawal el Saadawi [Saadawi, Nawal el]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Classics, Feminism, Fiction
ISBN: 9781842778739
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 1975-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


* * *

At the end of the day I found myself walking down a street without knowing where I was. It was a clean, paved thoroughfare, which ran along one bank of the Nile with tall trees on either side. The houses were surrounded by fences and gardens. The air which entered my lungs was pure and free of dust. I saw a stone bench facing the river. I sat down on it, and lifted my face to the refreshing breeze. I had barely closed my eyes in rest, when I heard a woman’s voice asking:

‘What is your name?’

I opened my eyes to find a woman seated next to me. She was wearing a green shawl, and her eyes were shadowed with green make-up. The black pupils in the centre of her eyes seemed to have turned green, a powerful dark green, like the trees on the bank of the Nile. The waters of the river reflected the green of the trees, and flowed by as green as her eyes. The sky over our heads was as blue as the bluest sky, but the colours mingled and everything around radiated this liquid green light which surrounded me, enveloped me completely, so that I felt myself gradually drowning in it.

It was strange, this sensation of drowning in dark green, in a dark green with a density of its own, a consistency of its own, like the feel of water in the sea, a sea in which I was sleeping, and dreaming, in which I was sinking as I slept and dreamt, in which I was gradually sinking without getting wet, gradually dropping without getting drowned. I felt myself lying on its bed at one moment, swallowed deep down inside, and a moment later carried gently upwards, floating higher and higher back to its surface, without moving an arm or a leg.

I felt my eyelids getting heavier as if I were about to fall asleep, but her voice echoed in my ears again. It was a smooth voice, its depths so soft that it sounded almost drowsy. It said,

‘You are tired.’

I forced up my eyelids with an effort and said, ‘Yes.’

The green in her eyes grew even more intense. ‘What did the son of a dog do to you?’ she asked.

I gave a start like someone who has suddenly been awakened from sleep. ‘Whom do you mean?’ I asked.

She wrapped the shawl around her shoulders more closely, yawned and continued in the same soft drowsy voice.

‘Any one of them, it doesn’t make any difference. They’re all the same, all sons of dogs, running around under various names. Mahmoud, Hassanein, Fawzy, Sabri, Ibrahim, Awadain, Bayoumi.’

I interrupted her with a gasp. ‘Bayoumi?!’

She laughed out loud. I glimpsed her small, white pointed teeth, with a gold tooth right in the middle.

‘I know them all. Which one of them started it? Your father, your brother… one of your uncles?’

This time my body gave a violent start which almost lifted it off the stone bench.

‘My uncle,’ I replied in a low voice.



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