Zeina by Nawal El Saadawi

night, he creeps out of her bed to the housemaid in the kitchen or the secretary in the office. He only lusts after low-born younger women. Such a woman would regard him as a great man, a rare, unparalleled genius, a god or a demi-god, as his mother saw him, for his mother regarded him as a paragon of beauty, even if he was as ugly as sin. From his childhood she would fill his ears with statements such as, ‘You’re smarter than all your mates. You’re unique, you are!’”
    Safi, wrapping her head in a white scarf, pursed her lips and swallowed her bitter saliva. She was a Marxist until she left her Marxist husband. After marrying her Islamist husband, she wore the veil and published a book on women’s rights under Islam. Following her divorce from him, she married a liberal writer who asked her to take off the veil and stop ranting about religion. This was when she took off the scarf, wore an elegant turban sprinkled with pearls and published a book on literary criticism. But that husband abandoned her for a university student, with whom he lived without an official or an unofficial marriage contract. She discovered the relationship by chance, and her husband confessed to her that he was in love with the girl and she with him. He was free and so was the girl. Safi didn’t understand this kind of neo-freedom and decided to break it off.
    “You’re much stronger than I am, Safi. Each and every day I dream of leaving Zakariah, but I don’t have the courage to do it.”
    “You’re scared of loneliness, Bodour, aren’t you?”
    “Don’t you feel lonely, Safi?”
    “Loneliness is much nicer than a hateful companion. Like you, I feared loneliness and accepted humiliation. I was a prisoner to that fear until I came to know loneliness and found it to be beautiful and inspiring. We are born in fear and live and die in fear.”
    “Aren’t you at all afraid, Safi?”
    “Afraid of what?”
    “Of death, for example?”
    “Death, like loneliness, is an illusion, for we don’t feel death when we die. The dying person feels nothing. Imagine, Bodour, that we spend our whole life in fear of something we cannot feel?”
    “Do you believe in life after death?”
    “I used to believe in it, but I am now free from this illusion as well.”
    “And believing in God, Safi?”
    “I was a firm believer in God, Bodour, before I studied religion. I wanted to study religion in a profound manner, as a way of strengthening my faith. But the opposite, in fact, happened. The more I learned about God the less I believed.”
    Bodour trembled as she walked beside her friend, Safi. Her eyes quivered and she raised them to the sky, fearing that God might shower curses on Safi. She feared that her friend might collapse on the ground, suffering from complete paralysis, or that her heretical tongue might become paralyzed.
    “I used to believe, Bodour, in God’s three Holy Books, as the Qur’an instructs us. I gave religious talks at conferences and on the radio. I published articles on faith, piety, and the women’s veil. But something kept me awake at night. I used to get up in the middle of the night to perform ablution and prayers. I continued kneeling and praying. I kept my voice low in order not to wake my husband as I whispered the plea, ‘Oh God, forgive me for all my trespasses’, which I repeated countless times. I moved the rosary beads with my trembling fingers. I thought I was suffering from fever. But I was infected with doubt, and continued to be so until I delved deeper into the study of religions. The deeper I went, the less trembling I suffered from and the less faith I had. We inherit faith from our families, Bodour. Faith infiltrates the cells of our brains and our bodies from birth till death. You can’t get rid of it except through studying science, knowledge, and religion itself. This is a route fraught with perils. I’m opening my heart to you, Bodour, because you are my life-long friend. Please keep this a