Two Women in One by Nawal El Saadawi Page A

with threatening eyes shining with lust.
    Bahiah’s lips parted in a smile, which died when she saw her father, who seemed to have emerged from the depths of the earth. He gave her a sharp, threatening look as he answered the officer’s questions, scribbled his signature on the investigation record, paid ten Egyptian pounds and took his daughter away.
    She got into the taxi. Her father sat on her right, her uncle on her left. The door shut and the taxi moved off. It was as if she had been arrested again, but this time by another kind of police. Her father on one side and her uncle on the other seemed like policemen. Their faces, in profile, were immobile. They stared straight ahead, avoiding her eyes; they were like two strange policemen to her, taking her to the guillotine or a prison cell.
    All the men of the family met. They sat round the table devouring stuffed chicken. After lunch they sat smoking in the hall, picking their teeth with toothpicks; their bellies swelled over their thighs like pregnant women and their fat, flabby bottoms filled the big bamboo chairs. Each would belch audibly, clear his throat and say something in a coarse, deep voice that was not his own. ‘In my opinion, we should take her out of school. Universities corrupt girls’ morals.’
    Another replied, ‘I think we should marry her off as soon as possible: marriage is the strongest protection for girls’ morals.’
    A third said, ‘It’s my opinion that we should do both: take her out of medical school
and
marry her off. We already have a groom.’

 
    She was in the grip of fate. Iron fingers held her relentlessly. The bars were so close together that she could not even poke her head out. Fate was her father, who owned her just as he owned his underwear. He might or might not educate her, for he was the one who paid the fees. He could marry her off or not marry her off, for he was the broker, even though she had never authorized him.
    A conspiracy was woven against her in great secrecy. She heard whispers. She saw the look in their eyes. She sensed the impending danger and looked for a way out. At midnight, when she heard her father’s snores, she sneaked out of her bed, dressed, and sat on the edge of her bed wondering where to go. Where could a girl of eighteen like her go at this time of night?
    She had never felt that she was a girl or that she was eighteen. This used to be called the age of puberty. A suspicious word. At the mere sound of it fathers and mothers tremble with suppressed sexual desire, baring their teeth and shaking a warning finger at their sons and daughters. Other eyes look at them suspiciously, but mothers and fathers follow their own instincts free from suspicion.
    She knew they would interpret her escape from home in sexual terms alone, although at the time she had no sexual desire at all (her relationship with Saleem was something different). Since the time her mother had smacked her when she was three, she felt disgusted by the sight of sexual organs in the bathroom, and would quickly avert her eyes. She was not even aware of being female. She did not consider Saleem male. She saw her real self in his eyes. Going to him was an assertion of her freedom and choice. When she was with him, she lost all desire for food as well as her sexual appetite. She would become a human being without instincts and without those familiar desires. She would be in the grip of a new, wild, nameless desire: the desire to be her real self and to trample all other wills down with hers, to tear her birth certificate to pieces, to change her name, to change her father and mother, to gouge out the eyes of those who had cheated and deceived her, including herself, so that no one would be able to take her own eyes and replace them with eyes that were not hers.
    She had always known that her eyes lied and that they hid her sexual desires, but not by choice. Her sexual desire was shrinking despite her. She could feel it withdrawing from her,