Free Two Women in One by Nawal El Saadawi

would become one with it, an enormous entity filling the space between sky and earth.
    When she looked up and saw the mountain through the window-pane she slowly realized that she was returning to her definite position on the sofa. She ran her hand over her body and found that she had a body of her own, separate from his. Her eyes opened in astonishment, but she saw him in front of her and smiled. She laughed and said, ‘Isn’t this strange!’
    ‘What is?’
    ‘What’s happening between us.’
    ‘And what’s happening between us?’
    ‘Something strange.’
    ‘Why so strange?’
    ‘So fast, and without a word spoken!’
    ‘In real life there’s never any time and people invent words to justify their unreal lives.’
    They both laughed.
    ‘But how can we communicate with other people?’ she asked.
    ‘It’s impossible to communicate with other people, Bahiah. People don’t want a real person. They’re used to faking everything, including themselves, and in the end they forget what their real selves are like. When they see a real person they panic and may even try to kill him. That’s why such a person will always be hunted down, killed, condemned to death, imprisoned or isolated somewhere far from other people.’
    ‘In a flat in al-Muqattam.’
    ‘Yes, in a flat in al-Muqattam.’
    ‘I love you, Saleem.’
    His blue-black eyes were staring at the sky and the mountain and he was quiet for a long time, as if absorbed in something far off. She wanted to ask him: ‘Do you love me, Saleem?’ and to hear his voice saying, ‘I love you, Bahiah.’ But the question itself seemed meaningless, so what was the point of the answer? She loved him and whether or not he returned her love would change nothing in her feelings for him.
    ‘What are you thinking about, Saleem?’ she asked.
    ‘In nine months we may have a baby.’
    She shuddered. Her hand, lying on the arm of the sofa, began to shake and when she glanced at her watch she saw that it was half past seven. With a sinking feeling, she remembered her home, the college, her father, the dissecting room, her anatomy books, her fellow students, Dr Alawi, the tram, the streets, the people, and the whole world she had walked away from and to which she thought she would never return.
    ‘A baby?’ she asked in astonishment. The idea had never crossed her mind. She had never believed that children were created so fast and in such a trance, completely separated from earth and all sense of reality: can a body which dissolves in the universe create in that vanishing-point another body attached to the earth? Is it possible for a non-existent moment to create a concrete moment that can be touched and held?
    She felt the new pulse deep within her like magical life born out of nothingness, as if a rock fixed firmly to a mountain suddenly moved and throbbed like a heartbeat. Her lips parted in astonishment and joy and she shouted, putting her hand on her belly, ‘Look, Saleem, it’s moving.’
    He saw her looking at the mountain and asked in surprise, ‘What is?’
    ‘The mountain’, she answered, laughing.
    He laughed with her but she soon stopped, realizing that her joy was unreal: the mountain was not moving, nor the earth, the wall, the window, the sofa nor anything near her. All that was moving were the two hands on her wrist in their idiotic, slow, monotonous turn; they reminded her that time was ticking on and would never return, that the moments of her life were pouring into nothingness, and that nothing would remain but the absurd vibrations of two metal hands in a small metal box, piastre-sized and covered with glass.
    ‘Saleem’, she said sadly.
    ‘Yes, Bahiah.’
    ‘I don’t want to go home.’
    ‘Then don’t go.’
    ‘But . . . ’
    ‘But what?’
    ‘My father, my mother, the people at the college and . . . ’
    ‘And Bahiah Shaheen . . . ’
    She felt droplets of sweat on her palm and under her armpits. Her complexion turned as pale as Bahiah