Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi Page B

alone on his wooden bench letting my eyes follow the movements of my brother and his friends in the street. I felt the rough edge of his galabiya brushing my leg and breathed in the strange smell of his clothes. I edged away in disgust. As he came closer again, I tried to hide my fear by staring fixedly at my brother and his companions as they played, but I felt his coarse rough fingers stroking my leg and moving up under my clothes. I jumped up in alarm and raced away from him. This horrible man had noticed my womanhood as well! I ran all the way up to our flat and my mother asked what the matter was. But I couldn’t tell her anything, perhaps out of a feeling of fear or humiliation or a mixture of the two. Or perhaps because I thought she’d scold me and that would put an end to the special affection between us that made me tell her my secrets.

    I no longer went out in the street, and I didn’t sit on the wooden bench any more. I fled from those strange creatures with harsh voices and moustaches, the creatures they called men. I created an imaginary private world for myself in which I was a goddess and men were stupid, helpless creatures at my beck and call. I sat on a high throne in this world of mine, arranging the dolls on chairs, making the boys sit on the floor and telling stories to myself. Alone with my imagination and my dolls, nobody ruffled the calm of my life, except my mother with her never-ending orders for me to do tasks around the flat or in the kitchen: the hateful, constricted world of women with its permanent reek of garlic and onions. I’d scarcely retreated into my own little world when my mother would drag me into the kitchen saying, ‘You’re going to be married one day. You must learn how to cook. You’re going to be married…’ Marriage! Marriage! That loathsome word which my mother mentioned every day until I hated the sound of it. I couldn’t hear it without having a mental picture of a man with a big see-through belly with a table of food inside it. In my mind the smell of the kitchen was linked with the smell of a husband and I hated the word husband just as I hated the smell of the food we cooked.

    My grandmother’s chatter broke off as she looked at my chest. I saw her diseased old eyes scrutinizing the two sprouting buds and evaluating them. Then she whispered something to my mother and I heard my mother saying to me, ‘Put on your cream dress and go and say hello to your father’s guest in the sitting-room.’
    I caught a whiff of conspiracy in the air. I was used to meeting most of my father’s friends and bringing them coffee. Sometimes I sat with them and heard my father telling them how well I was doing at school. This always made me feel elated and I thought that since my father had acknowledged my intelligence he would extricate me from the depressing world of women, reeking of onions and marriage.
    But why the cream dress? It was new and I hated it. It had a strange gather at the front which made my breasts look larger. My mother looked at me inquiringly and asked, ‘Where’s your cream dress?’
    ‘I won’t wear it,’ I replied angrily.
    She noticed the stirrings of rebellion in my eyes and said regretfully, ‘Smooth down your eyebrows then.’
    I didn’t look at her, and before opening the sitting-room door I ruffled up my eyebrows with my fingers.
    I greeted my father’s friend and sat down. I saw a strange, frightening face and eyes examining me relentlessly as my grandmother’s had done shortly before.
    ‘She’s first in her group at primary school this year,’ said my father.
    I didn’t notice any admiration in the man’s eyes at these words but I saw his inquiring glances roaming all over my body before coming to rest on my chest. Scared, I stood up and ran out of the room as if a devil was after me. My mother and grandmother met me eagerly at the door and asked in unison, ‘What did you do?’
    I let out a single cry in their faces and ran to my