She hurled the words and letters at the faces and returned with the empty bag, free from her burden, hopping like a sparrow and humming an old tune. She swung the empty bag like a child returning happily from school. She tossed it in the air and caught it as it fell. She saw the man with the spying eyes walking cautiously after her. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. When she decided that he was following her she turned into another road, slipped away from him and returned to the main street, to be swallowed up by the sea of people. She walked along, observing people on the treadmill of their daily lives. The tram with its uneven steps creaked under the weight of bodies. Its iron wheels hungered for any stumbling foot. On the platform an old, blind woman sat stretching out her veined hand. Children looked out at the world with yellow eyes, their gaping mouths hungry for any bite that came their way. In the windows of the tram and the bus she could see the identical heads and necks hanged by their ties. She saw the bulging, frightened eyes and heard the murmured incantations. Occasionally a black car like a police car sped by. Through shining windows she saw fleshy faces with their narrow, spying eyes.
At nightfall she strode back towards her small attic room. Her panting breath came like a stifled sob. Streaks of sweat ran down her face and armpits. She pulled the iron bar down across the door, clamped all the windows shut and stretched out on the small iron bed, gazing into the darkness. The thin, intense face, the blue-black eyes able to see her loomed before her. ‘Saleem!’ she called out faintly, but no one answered. Realizing that she was alone, she got up, pulled the painting out from under the bed and stood it against the wall. The pressure of her hand as it coiled around the brush gave her a mysterious joy that spread from her fingers to her arms, neck and head as if along a taut electric wire.
Anyone seeing her there in the dark would have been astonished. Her muscles were as taut as if she had been crucified. Her black eyes were fixed on her lines, her head steady, her arm confident. Her fingers gripped the brush and her feet were solid like a granite statue.
No one could know how long she would stay like that. The whole night might pass as she sat, immobile, adding no lines to her painting: but her eyes never shifted. She relived her life, saw it parade before her eyes, moment by moment, like a film.
Shortly before dawn she moved her brush over the painting, changing the lines and creating new moments in her life, new moments that she chose to create through her own will. With that deliberate movement across the paper — in any and all directions — she destroyed other wills and designed her own lines and features. She would make her eyes blacker, her nose more upturned and her lips pursed in ever greater anger and determination.
When she felt tired she would let her body fall and stretch out on the iron bed. She shivered under the old blanket, pulling it over her head and around her freezing feet. Her teeth chattered, making a faint sound like a baby sparrow that had fallen from its mother’s nest in an arid land, trembling as its tearful eyes glowed in the dark with the frightened look of an orphan.
A hot tear ran from the corner of her eye onto the pillow. She felt its wet warmth on her cheek and peeped out from under the blanket to see her mother: the long thin face like her own, the wide black eyes, and the breast that offered generous warmth. She buried her head in her mother’s breast, sniffing her and seeking an opening that would contain her, hoping to hide from the world and the forces threatening her. She wanted to curl up like a foetus. Her body shook with a strange violent yearning for security. She longed to curl up in her mother’s womb, to feel security, silence, with no sound or movement. Her mother’s big arms embraced her with amazing strength, pulling her body towards her once more. With all her might she tried to make their bodies one, but in vain. The eternal separation took place in a fleeting moment never to return.
‘Bahiah!’ The voice rang out and she opened her eyes. But no one was there. The sun had started to penetrate the rotting wood of the shutters. She heard the slow knocks from behind the door that greeted her every day. She saw the old man with his turban, kaftan, grey eyes in which the white seemed to have melted into the iris, his thick brown fingers curled round the yellow worry beads, moving them fast and regularly like a constant shiver. The same shiver could be seen in his thin yellow lips, which muttered incomprehensible words in which the letter s recurred like a whistle.
When he saw her, the gap between his dry lips widened and the edges of his decaying yellow teeth appeared. He whispered in a voice like a sleeping snake, ‘Are you awake?’
‘No’, she answered angrily, and closed the door. She heard him hiss behind the door. He was an old man whose lungs had been destroyed by smoking. He had bled his life away in the beds of four frigid, virtuous wives: each had given birth to a number of children, half of whom were dead, the others married off. He had only one wife left, an old woman who propped herself against the wall, made him black tea and set up the water pipe for him in the evening. He would lie near her in the wooden bed and bury his thick fingers between her sagging breasts. Their thin bodies would shake wearily and their cold stagnant breath would be visited by a faint glimmer of warmth, soon to disappear like a death rattle, leaving them like two corpses in their old wooden bed.
She wrapped up the painting and went out the small wooden door, her tall body slim, her straight legs enveloped by her trousers. One foot trod firmly on the ground before the other, and her legs parted noticeably. The men of the neighbourhood gazed at her from the shops; the women stared through keyholes and cracks in the windows. Was she woman or man? Had it not been for the two small breasts showing through the blouse, they would have sworn she was a man. But since she was a woman, it was legitimate to stare. Her body was the victim of hungry, deprived eyes. They stared at her and whispered. One dared to laugh obscenely, another made a dirty crack. Street urchins were encouraged to follow her, wiggling their bottoms. Teenage boys would expose themselves to her. One threw a stone, another let out a long cat-call. Men sitting in the cafe laughed hoarsely, slapping their thighs with rough hands cracked like arid, thirsty land. Women would strike their breasts and heave that ever-suppressed feminine sigh, saying, ‘Just look at what Western women are like!’
She fought her way through stares, noise and obscene remarks. She raised her black eyes and pursed her lips in anger, defying fate. Once she disappeared down the street, life in the neighbourhood returned to normal. The blacksmith’s hammer and anvil rang out; the clinking of glasses and the click-clack of backgammon could be heard in the cafe; children crying, boys fighting and women quarrelling were heard from behind the cracks — and also the coarse voices of men taking the oath to divorce their wives. The smell of boiled fish, falafel, rice and lentils was everywhere. Worry beads danced in the hands of the old man sitting on his prayer mat by the window. When he bowed down, his body touched the wool of the carpet: he would be overcome by suppressed desire, and his old eyes would search the neighbourhood for any plump body.
When she reached the main street she felt a wave of cold air hit her burning cheeks. The muscles of her face contracted and a sense of impending danger swept through her body. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed the policeman standing there, then she went into a small shop and unwrapped her painting. The old man smiled, as he usually did on seeing her work. His veined hand reached into his pocket and extracted three Egyptian pounds, which he counted out carefully, one after the other.
She went back out into the street, and soon realized that a pair of eyes were watching her and footsteps following her. A bakery smell reached her nose; she went in and ate a piece of her favourite cake. When she paid the cashier, she saw the narrow eyes behind her in the mirror. She went out into the street and hailed a taxi, glancing at her watch. The taxi stopped. At a bend in the street she looked behind her and saw the same pair of eyes following in another taxi. She got out at al-Attabah square. She knew that Raouf and Fawzi would be waiting for her in the basement but she did not join them. She wandered down al-Moski street, wa
tching the women and girls as they walked with their closely-bound fat legs, pounding the street with their bodies, their bottoms visible under their glossy dresses. Their made-up eyes devoured the shop windows: they lusted after clothes, transparent nightdresses, slippers, make-up, perfume and body lotions. Their sharp, penetrating voices mingled with the popping of chewing gum and the clacking of pointed high heels bearing bodies laden with shopping.
She pursed her lips in anger, for the greedy desire to consume is mere compensation for eternal deprivation. Under the lustful, burning eyes lies the coldness of snow. Under the hair wavy as silk lies a brain soft like a rabbit’s, knowing nothing of life except eating and reproduction.
The sun was setting as she went out into the street. The sky, the earth, the houses and trees were tinged pale red. They grew paler by the minute, like a face drained of blood after the long, slow wait for death. Then the street lights came on. Hundreds of white circles of light were reflected on the asphalt, in shop windows, in car windscreens and in people’s faces. Everything glowed under the light. She heard soft laughter and saw a girl taking a young man’s arm while his other arm curled around her. She smiled at them as a sudden energy surged through her. She filled her lungs with the damp night air. Her black eyes glittered like diamonds as, with childish joy, she watched the coloured lights hanging like balloons from the stores. She watched the cars speeding over the shiny asphalt, the window-panes glistening like mirrors, and the people in their colourful clothes walking in the white light like herds of deer. A child let off a firework: the rocket exploded in millions of shining, coloured particles.
She heard herself laugh as she had as a child. She almost skipped like a child too, but then she saw the narrow eyes in front of her. She turned and saw another pair of eyes watching her. She went down a side street on her right but found that the eyes blocked her way. She headed for her own neighbourhood, but the policeman’s fat body loomed with his shiny buttons and his pointed weapon hanging from his leather belt.
She stopped and looked around quickly with that frantic movement of people who feel threatened, with known and unknown forces lying in wait to destroy them. The eyes dart in all directions, watching for the hand that may strike from front or back, left or right. The head jerks continuously: every cell is alert, thinking: how can I save myself from the impending danger? How can I protect my body from the blows and carry it away safely? The muscles contract cautiously; the heart beats impatiently; the blood surges through the body with its rapid, regular pulse: it is the throb of anxiety, bringing with it the sensation of life. Her long, fine fingers shook imperceptibly. Her feet stood firm, the outlines of her body as unyielding as the earth beneath her feet. But under that stillness was a rapid, palpable movement, like the vibrations of air sensed by the ear or the pulse of blood through the walls of the veins. It was a rapid vibration that seemed silent from the outside — but beneath the stillness was hidden a frightening violent motion. It was the struggle between resistance and submission, the only movement through which the difference between life and death becomes clear.
It was a frightening moment. She feared it as much as she desired it. She longed to escape from it and yearned to pursue it. It was the only time she saw that she was real and alive. We feel alive only when we face death. It is like the colour white that becomes white only when contrasted with black.
Her lips parted in a smile and her eyes shone. This moment was her goal. She had wanted it from the very beginning and had marched toward it firmly and with determination. She knew that she was heading only toward danger, and at its brink was that small place, just a foot wide suspended in air; above was sky and below the abyss. It was a moment ruled by two powerful forces: one pulling down to the abyss, the other urging soaring flight.
She was sure that she would not plunge into the abyss. She would not surrender. She would not be Bahiah Shaheen, would not return to the ordinary faces, would not sink into the sea of similar bodies or tumble into the grave of ordinary life.
She raised her black eyes, tensed the muscles of her back and legs and walked toward them with long strides, each foot striking sharply on the ground, her legs parting confidently and freely. When she was face to face with them she said in her quiet, confident voice, ‘Let’s go!’
One of them locked the handcuffs around her wrists and put the key in his pocket. She walked briskly in front of them, her eyes darting, her feet searching among all those faces for the thin face with the exhausted features burdened with the world’s worries, for those eyes that could pick out her face from all other faces and distinguish her body from among millions of bodies floating in the universe.
When she saw him before her she shouted joyfully like a child: ‘Saleem!’
She stretched out her arms to embrace him, but she could not reach, and her hands trembled in the handcuffs.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 86356 562 X
EAN 9-780863-565625
eISBN: 978-0-86356-728-5
copyright © Nawal El-Saadawi 2005
Translation © Osman Nusairi and Jana Gough
First published in 1985 by Saqi Books
The right of Nawal El-Saadawi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of l988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This edition published 2005
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