Free Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi Page B

conversation?
    I looked at the little instrument: the squarish black lump of plastic I used to carry about from place to place, and to silence with one finger if I felt like it, had become an object of terror, a dangerous bewitching piece of equipment. I looked warily at it from a distance, approached it apprehensively, and when I touched it a powerful electric charge went through me as if I’d touched a naked wire. Do things change to such an extent when our view of them changes?
    I sat beside the telephone thinking. I remembered what he’d said when he wrote his number down for me: ‘Call me when you want to.’
    He’d shown respect for my ability to decide, so why couldn’t I? I always had done in the past. Wasn’t it my will rather than the will of another which had controlled me? Hadn’t a man tried to possess my life and been unable to because I hadn’t wanted him to? And another had tried to give me his life and I hadn’t taken a thing from him because I hadn’t wanted to. My will had always determined my giving and taking. I wanted to see him now. Yes, I wanted to.
    I turned my index finger in the holes on the disc six times and the repeated high-pitched tone sounded in my ears. Suddenly it was broken off and the flow of blood to my heart stopped momentarily. I heard his deep voice saying, ‘Hello.’
    I didn’t think about different ways to be flirtatious or take refuge in womanly evasiveness. I didn’t pretend that I was just phoning to ask something. I didn’t veil my face and signal to him from behind my door, or act naive and stupid. I said truthfully, ‘I want to see you.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Now.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Anywhere. The place isn’t important.’
    ‘Where are you now?’
    ‘At home.’
    ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
    I sat back in the chair as if the life had drained out of me and looked about me at the furniture and the walls as if I were seeing them for the first time.
    Suddenly I was seized with energy and enthusiasm: this picture ought to be over here; the chair ought to be there; the vase should be full of flowers. I sent the servant to buy a bunch of flowers, then put on an apron and went into the kitchen to make a cake with fresh eggs and milk. While it was in the oven I made a jelly and put it in the fridge. I raced about like a child from the oven to the fridge, the fridge to the vase, the vase to the picture on the wall, and back to the oven.
    Sweat poured down my face and ran into my mouth but it somehow had a delicious new taste. My chest rose and fell in staccato, panting breaths like a racehorse, but I’d forgotten about my lungs. I put my hand in the oven and didn’t feel the heat, as if my brain cells had forgotten the pain of burning. My back was twisted from bending down under tables and hunching over work-surfaces as if my backbone didn’t exist. Then the doorbell gave one long ring which echoed strangely and alarmingly in my heart as if I were hearing it for the first time in my life.

    He sat in the sitting-room; his deep eyes, still smiling, strayed over the pictures on the walls and his composed, serious features registered curiosity and interest as he looked about him. I sat a little way from him trying to conceal the strange feeling stirring in my insides, suppressing the unfamiliar joy in my heart and trying to ignore the violent trembling of my soul. But how could I, when my eyes, lips and voice all betrayed me? He smiled gently and said, ‘Your house is beautiful — the house of an artist.’
    ‘I love art,’ I said, ‘but medicine takes up all my time.’
    ‘Medicine’s an art in itself,’ he said, and looked at me.
    What was it in this man’s eyes? A deep, bottomless sea?
    ‘Would you like some tea?’ I asked him and he nodded slightly, smiling. I left him and went to make the tea. The servant stared at me in doubtful surprise — I was doing something in the kitchen for the first time since I’d come to live there. I took the