Zeina by Nawal El Saadawi Page B

saw him from the back, she would be overcome by memories, as though she was a different woman, a woman who was not Bodour but perhaps Badreya. Badreya was nineteen when she joined the great demonstrations. Next to her walked Nessim, with his graceful, erect bearing. His large eyes radiating a bluish black lustre that was similar to the color of the night or the sea reflecting the rays of the sun.
    “Zakariah al-Khartiti is jealous of Mahmoud al-Feqqi. He believes I’m in love with him.”
    “But you’re in love with your shrink ...”
    “He’s in love with me. It’s a one-sided love, Safi!”
    “But the opposite is true, Bodour!”
    The conversation drifted to love and men. Safi had more experience in this area than her friend, for she had known a greater number of men: colleagues, friends, and lovers. She told Bodour, “I’m looking for the man who deserves me. But such a man is not born yet, and perhaps never will be!”
    She laughed, tossing her head back. Her thick black hair was cropped short after she had gotten rid of the veil and the turban along with the husbands. She was slightly taller and less plump than Bodour. Her stride was also longer. She stared at things steadily and hard. Her lips were thin, and she would often wet her lower lip with the tip of her tongue as she talked.
    “As a matter of fact, men don’t attract me. In my adolescence, I was in love with a woman. Now, at this advanced stage of my life, my adolescence is coming back to me. To be frank with you, Bodour, I’m attracted to women. I sometimes catch myself feeling hopelessly in love with a woman. One day, I dreamt of embracing Zeina Bint Zeinat. Imagine!”
    “An innocent embrace, to be sure, a sisterly or a motherly embrace!”
    “There’s no innocent embrace, Bodour!”
    Safi laughed aloud, a laugh that the golfers almost heard. Bodour joined in her laughter, which eased the burden on her heart a little, the mysterious load of vague childhood fears.
    “Yes, Bodour, laugh as much as you can, for life isn’t eternal. We only live once and must therefore live to the full. Let me tell you a joke about the stupidity of men ...”
    Safi laughed heartily before she embarked on telling the joke, her head tossing in the air along with her short, cropped hair.
    “There was this man who was bent on marrying a young woman who was a one hundred per cent virgin, a woman who hadn’t known any man in her entire life. Every time he planned to propose to a woman, he’d subject her to a test. He would ask her, as he dropped his trousers and uncovered his penis, “What is this, little girl?” The girl naturally said it was a penis. So the man would pull up his trousers and leave, telling himself that he couldn’t possibly marry a girl who knew about men. He repeated the test with every young woman he proposed to, but they all naturally failed the test. After several years of tests, one young woman passed, for when he uncovered his penis and asked her what it was, she told him it was a whistle.
    The man was over the moon and congratulated himself on finding a woman who had never seen a man’s penis before. “Eureka, Eureka!” he said to himself.
    After thirty years of marriage and a dozen children, as they sat one starry evening on the balcony, it occurred to him to ask her a question. Pointing at his penis, he said, ‘But how is it, darling, that you didn’t know that this was a penis?’ His wife burst out, saying loudly, ‘Do you call that a penis? A penis is as long as my arm here.’”
    Bodour and Safi burst out laughing. They laughed so hard and so long that the tears poured from their eyes. Each wiped her eyes with aromatic tissue, as Safi said, “That’s men’s stupidity for you, dear. Shall we go to the theater this evening to hear Zeina Bint Zeinat sing? She’s singing a new song tonight for the first time. You know, she writes her lyrics and her music herself. A truly talented artist! Umm Kulthum used the lyrics and music