Free Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi

moving amoebas, and the amoebas developed appendages, and they became fins, wings, arms and tails, and the arms grew fingers, and the tail became extinct and the ape stood upon two legs...
    As a child, why had I been sad because I couldn’t fly through the air like a pigeon? Why had I been angry at the blood which stains a woman every thirty days? Why had I rebelled against history and laws and tradition and raged because science hadn’t discovered the secret of living protoplasm?
    The years would go by and possibly time would transform history and laws and tradition. Life would discover a clean and beautiful way for little girls to mature. Human bodies would grow progressively lighter and fly. Science would stumble upon the secret of living protoplasm. The cavalcade of life moved along and each day life discovered something new. Why had time seemed so slow to me, its cogs tearing at parts of my life as it rumbled by? Why had life rushed me along and flung me away and up on to a lofty peak shrouded in icy loneliness?
    How cruel the silence was and how gentle human voices, even if they were noisy. How cold the solitude and how warm the breathing of people, even the sick. How repellent inertia was and how beautiful movement, even struggle and conflict. How terrible empty time was, and how sweet thinking and being busy, even if the outcome was unsuccessful.

    The feeling of emptiness took root in me and the giant found he had space to move. The throng of ideas and images inside me dispersed and the giant spread out his arms and legs and began lazily to yawn and stretch.
    What do you want? You rebelled against everything and refused to lead a woman’s life. You ran after truth and truth made you shut yourself away from yourself. And men? You looked at them, searched around and were thrown into disarray; then you pursed your lips disparagingly.
    What do you want? A man who only exists in your imagination and doesn’t walk about the earth? A man who talks, breathes and thinks but doesn’t have a body like other men? Can you forget those bodies lying on the dissecting table, or the miserable sound of snoring near your pillow, or those despairing, helpless looks, or death which cuts children down? Why don’t you shut yourself up in your prison cell and go back to sleep?
    But the nights had grown long, and the nocturnal phantoms had taken up position around the bed again and the bed itself had become vast and cold and frightening. The giant didn’t want to go back to sleep. Success didn’t satisfy his hunger, fame was meaningless and money was just like dead withered leaves.

6
    Among the letters and papers on my desk I noticed a little card. I reached for it and found it was an invitation to a party from some professional body. I got up quickly, went down to my car and drove to the place where the party was being held.
    I went into a large hall and saw sparkling lights and guests dressed in starched ironed clothes, with formal, strained expressions on their faces. I let my eyes rove around the place and the people as if I was looking for something in particular. The men were stealing glances at the women and the women at the men. I strolled among the guests nodding to them when they nodded to me, like a doll with its head on a spring.
    There was a sudden commotion and the guests rushed forward, pushing each other aside, to crowd around a small corpulent man. They all wanted to walk next to him, be photographed with him, appear on television standing near him, and make him remember their faces, their voices, their existence.
    I left the crush and stood in a quiet corner. I half turned and found a man standing there. An ordinary man wearing ordinary clothes and standing in an ordinary way. He was neither short nor tall, thin nor fat, but I felt that something out of the ordinary hung about him. Perhaps it was that his expression was natural and relaxed, unlike the tense, starched features of those around him... perhaps that he