Author’s Note
I wrote
Memoirs of a Woman Doctor
thirty years ago when, as a young woman in my twenties, I had just graduated from the School of Medicine in Cairo. It expressed my feelings and experiences as a woman who was a doctor at work, but still performed the roles of a wife and a mother at home.
Memoirs
first appeared in serialized form in the Egyptian magazine
Ruz al-Yusuf
in 1957. It had a great impact in Egypt and in the Arab world. Some critics regarded it as a revolutionary feminist novel which revealed the double exploitation of Egyptian women — both their general, social oppression and their private oppression through the institution of marriage. But the book was also controversial.
Ruz al-Yusuf
deleted sections of the complete work from the serialized version on the demand of the government censor. I then tried to have the book published without deletions but publishers refused to print it without censoring it. As I was young and inexperienced and eager to see the book in print, I allowed it to be published with deletions.
Since that time, the novel has been frequently reprinted in both Cairo and Beirut. But it has never appeared in its entirety because I have lost the original manuscript.
Despite these limitations, I still consider
Memoirs,
incomplete as it is in the present edition, as a fair description of the moral and social position of women in that period. Some people believe that
Memoirs
is autobiographical, but although many of the heroine’s characteristics fit those of an Egyptian woman such as myself, active in the medical field in those years, the work is still fiction. It is one thing to write a novel, and another to write one’s autobiography.
At that time I had not read any feminist literature on women’s struggles or on women’s status in contemporary society — this only came later — but although I have subsequently written many novels and short stories which may be more sophisticated, I still consider
Memoirs
like a first daughter, full of youthful fervour and expressing a reality which is still relevant today. It is a simple, spontaneous novel in which there is a lot of anger against the oppression of women in my country, but also a great deal of hope for change, for wider horizons and a better future.
Nawal el-Saadawi
London, June 1987
1
The conflict between me and my femininity began very early on, before my female characteristics had become pronounced and before I knew anything about myself, my sex and my origins, indeed before I knew the nature of the cavity which had housed me before I was expelled into the wide world.
All I did know at that time was that I was a girl. I used to hear it from my mother all day long. ‘Girl!’ she would call, and all it meant to me was that I wasn’t a boy and I wasn’t like my brother.
My brother’s hair was cut short but otherwise left free and uncombed, while mine was allowed to grow longer and longer and my mother combed it twice a day and twisted it into plaits and imprisoned the ends of it in ribbons and rubber bands.
My brother woke up in the morning and left his bed just as it was, while I had to make my bed and his as well.
My brother went out into the street to play without asking my parents’ permission and came back whenever he liked, while I could only go out if and when they let me.
My brother took a bigger piece of meat than me, gobbled it up and drank his soup noisily and my mother never said a word. But I was different: I was a girl. I had to watch every movement I made, hide my longing for the food, eat slowly and drink my soup without a sound.
My brother played, jumped around and turned somersaults, whereas if I ever sat down and allowed my skirt to ride as much as a centimetre up my thighs, my mother would pierce me with a glance like an animal immobilizing its prey and I would cover up those shameful parts of my body.
Shameful! Everything in me was shameful and I was a child of just nine years old.
I
I wrote
Memoirs of a Woman Doctor
thirty years ago when, as a young woman in my twenties, I had just graduated from the School of Medicine in Cairo. It expressed my feelings and experiences as a woman who was a doctor at work, but still performed the roles of a wife and a mother at home.
Memoirs
first appeared in serialized form in the Egyptian magazine
Ruz al-Yusuf
in 1957. It had a great impact in Egypt and in the Arab world. Some critics regarded it as a revolutionary feminist novel which revealed the double exploitation of Egyptian women — both their general, social oppression and their private oppression through the institution of marriage. But the book was also controversial.
Ruz al-Yusuf
deleted sections of the complete work from the serialized version on the demand of the government censor. I then tried to have the book published without deletions but publishers refused to print it without censoring it. As I was young and inexperienced and eager to see the book in print, I allowed it to be published with deletions.
Since that time, the novel has been frequently reprinted in both Cairo and Beirut. But it has never appeared in its entirety because I have lost the original manuscript.
Despite these limitations, I still consider
Memoirs,
incomplete as it is in the present edition, as a fair description of the moral and social position of women in that period. Some people believe that
Memoirs
is autobiographical, but although many of the heroine’s characteristics fit those of an Egyptian woman such as myself, active in the medical field in those years, the work is still fiction. It is one thing to write a novel, and another to write one’s autobiography.
At that time I had not read any feminist literature on women’s struggles or on women’s status in contemporary society — this only came later — but although I have subsequently written many novels and short stories which may be more sophisticated, I still consider
Memoirs
like a first daughter, full of youthful fervour and expressing a reality which is still relevant today. It is a simple, spontaneous novel in which there is a lot of anger against the oppression of women in my country, but also a great deal of hope for change, for wider horizons and a better future.
Nawal el-Saadawi
London, June 1987
1
The conflict between me and my femininity began very early on, before my female characteristics had become pronounced and before I knew anything about myself, my sex and my origins, indeed before I knew the nature of the cavity which had housed me before I was expelled into the wide world.
All I did know at that time was that I was a girl. I used to hear it from my mother all day long. ‘Girl!’ she would call, and all it meant to me was that I wasn’t a boy and I wasn’t like my brother.
My brother’s hair was cut short but otherwise left free and uncombed, while mine was allowed to grow longer and longer and my mother combed it twice a day and twisted it into plaits and imprisoned the ends of it in ribbons and rubber bands.
My brother woke up in the morning and left his bed just as it was, while I had to make my bed and his as well.
My brother went out into the street to play without asking my parents’ permission and came back whenever he liked, while I could only go out if and when they let me.
My brother took a bigger piece of meat than me, gobbled it up and drank his soup noisily and my mother never said a word. But I was different: I was a girl. I had to watch every movement I made, hide my longing for the food, eat slowly and drink my soup without a sound.
My brother played, jumped around and turned somersaults, whereas if I ever sat down and allowed my skirt to ride as much as a centimetre up my thighs, my mother would pierce me with a glance like an animal immobilizing its prey and I would cover up those shameful parts of my body.
Shameful! Everything in me was shameful and I was a child of just nine years old.
I
Similar Books
