And yet he considered himself a man. He had a man’s features: a deep voice and a bushy moustache. Other men were in his employ, women stole glances at his moustache and children he passed in streets and alleys didn’t dare make rude remarks or throw stones at him.
‘Close down the practice,’ he insisted.
‘What about the patients, and all the people I’d be letting down?’
‘There are other doctors besides you.’
‘And my future, and the knowledge I’ve spent half my life acquiring?’
‘I’m your life.’
‘And all those things you said to me?’
‘I didn’t know what it would be like.’
I looked at him with my eyes wide open. His eyes were pale and without depth. His hands were hard and rougher than I’d pictured, his fingers shorter and stupid-looking. Who was this stranger beside me? Who was this lump of flesh I called my husband?
He moved close to me, took my hand, whispered in my ear and put his face against mine. I tried to forget his self-important look and the inconsistency of what he said, tried to deny the evidence of my ears and eyes, but it was impossible. My memory was clear and vigilant, retaining every word. My mind was all too alert, forcing me to face images of the depressing reality of him. I could see right up close to me his teeth and his big flat rabbit’s ears.
I drew away but he put his sweaty arms around me, whispering in my ear in a hoarse, sad voice. I pushed him off me in annoyance and said angrily, ‘Why did you lie to me?’
‘I wanted to have you.’
‘That’s ridiculous. I’m not a piece of land!’
‘I’m the one who gives the orders! I’m your husband!’
The look of weakness and need was gone from his eyes and the thread that had been binding me to him was severed. A hard, overbearing expression rose to the surface of his shallow eyes: not the look of a strong man, but of a weak man when he develops an inferiority complex because he’s used to seeing himself as the strong one out in the streets and senses that he’s the weak one inside his own home.
I sat in my surgery with my head in my hands and admitted to myself that I’d made a mistake. I’d believed a man’s words in the dark without being able to see into the depths of him. I’d been seduced by his weakness and his wanting me. I hadn’t realized that a weak person conceals complexes and mean, contemptible characteristics under the surface which someone stronger would scorn and rise above. Yes, I’d done wrong. I’d disobeyed my heart and mind and done what this man wanted, entered into a marriage contract which looked like a contract for renting a shop or a flat. By doing that hadn’t I put him in authority over me? Hadn’t this contract made him my husband?
My husband! These words I’d never spoken before! What did they mean to me? A hefty body, taking up half the bed. A gaping mouth which never stopped eating. Two flat feet which dirtied socks and sheets. A thick nose which kept me awake all night long with its snorting and whistling.
What should I do now? Accept responsibility for my mistake and put up with living with him for ever? But how could I live with him, talk to him, look into his eyes, give him my lips, degrade my body and soul with him? No, no. The wrong I’d done didn’t deserve all this punishment; it didn’t.
Everybody does wrong. Life is made up of right and wrong. We only come to know what’s right through our mistakes. It’s not weak and stupid to do wrong, but to continue doing wrong.
People opened their mouths wide in astonishment and protest. How could she leave her husband? And why?
How dare they, these people who handed themselves over to me body and soul, whom I saved from ruinous illness and death? What right had they to object to something in my private life, or to tell me their opinions? I was the one who advised them what to eat and drink, explained to them how to breathe, sleep, live, multiply... Had they forgotten, or did they think that when I took off my stethoscope and white coat, I put aside my mind and intelligence and personality? How little they knew!
My mother had ruined my childhood, learning had swallowed up my adolescence and early womanhood and the years left to me of my youth could be counted on the fingers of one hand. I wasn’t going to waste them and no one was going to make me.
5
The little world that I used to build out of chairs and dolls when I was a child became reality. In my pocket was the magic key. I could come and go whenever I wanted without having to ask anyone’s permission. I slept alone in a bed without a husband, turning over from right to left or from left to right as I fancied. I sat at my desk to read and write or to ponder and think or do nothing at all.
I was free, completely free in this little world of mine. I shut my door and cast off my artificial life with other people along with my shoes and clothes, and I pottered around the house at will. I was completely alone there. I couldn’t hear voices or people breathing and I didn’t have to look at other people’s bodies. For the first time in my life a heavy burden was lifted from my heart, the burden of living in a house shared by others.
In the middle of the night I opened my eyes to the sound of the heartbeats thudding in my chest like the weary marching feet of a defeated army. My breathing grated beneath my ribs with a noise like the squeaking of a worn-out water-wheel. My open eyes saw only blackness, and my ears drummed in the terrible deadly silence. I was frightened that my heart would stop creeping along, my breathing grate to a halt, the darkness quench the light of my eyes and my hearing be lost amid the drumming.
I stared into the darkness, testing out my sight, and strained my ears. I saw the big mass of blackness splitting up into lots of smaller masses with heads and tails and horns, and sounds spread into the dead silence: whispering, rustling, wailing. I buried my head under the covers and the apparitions and noises vanished. The thudding in my chest abated and the squeaking noise died away. The warmth of the bed coursed into my joints and along my limbs and I yawned contentedly, stretching out my arms, feeling for sleep. But sleep wasn’t there, and I took something else in my arms, or someone — someone who had eyes like my father but wasn’t my father, and lips like my cousin but wasn’t my cousin. Who was he? The spectre which had haunted the nights of my youth began to visit me again. The nights grew longer and the bed wider. Solitude no longer seemed so attractive.
Where would I find him? How in this vast crowded world could I hope to come across the insubstantial being so familiar to my inner self, the spectre of a man lodged firmly in my imagination? I knew the look in his eyes, the timbre of his voice, the shape of his fingers, the warmth of his breath, the depths of his heart and mind. I knew, I knew. I can’t tell how, but I knew.
Did he exist in real life or was he entirely a figment of my imagination? Would I meet him one day or go on waiting for him for ever? And what about this giant longing to love and be loved which lay dormant inside me? Should I exclude it from my life or try to satisfy it? But how could I satisfy it when it preferred total deprivation to spurious or incomplete satisfaction? I wanted a perfect man like the one in my imagination and a perfect love and I wasn’t going to abandon either of these goals, however long it meant I had to be alone. ‘All or nothing’ was my abiding principle and I’d never accept half measures.
I decided to search for him everywhere: in palaces and caves, in night clubs and monasteries, in the factories of science and the temples of art, in bright lights and in pitch dark, on lofty summits and down deep chasms, in bustling cities and in wild deserted forests.
Why were people staring at me in amazement? Hadn’t I wasted enough of my life to satisfy them? Did they want me to sit at home, chin in hand, waiting for some man to come and buy me like a cow? Wasn’t it my natural right to choose my man? And how was I supposed to do it? By meeting only other women, or looking at pictures in books, or taking the only man who chose me? Obviously I had to look at lots of men to find him. I had to move around, looking at their faces and into their eyes, listening to their voices and the way they breathed, touching
their fingers and their moustaches, examining their hearts and minds. How could I possibly recognize my man in the darkness or from behind a window blind or from a kilometre away? Wasn’t it vital for me to see him in the light, try him out and get to know him? Didn’t experience precede knowledge, or did they want me to go wrong like last time? I had no choice but to plunge without scruples into the most risky experience in a woman’s life, choosing a man and looking for love.
All I could see of him was his eyes. The rest of his face was always hidden behind a white protective mask and his fingers in sterile gloves. His body was concealed by the voluminous surgical gown and his feet by the surgical boots. His breath was lost in the pervasive smell of ether from the anaesthetizing equipment.
I saw him looking at me surreptitiously. We were alone in the room except for the unconscious man on the operating table whose eyes were closed and whose guts protruded from a large opening in his stomach. I wondered why he bothered to try and hide what he was doing: was he scared of the unconscious man or me or himself, or was it just his normal way of proceeding?
I heard him ask, ‘Why are you so distracted? Who are you thinking about?’
‘The man.’
‘Which man?’
‘The one whose stomach we’ve just opened up.’
He laughed, and I could hear it well enough, short and scornful, although I couldn’t see his lips or his teeth. I was silent and he began fiddling around inside the man’s stomach, feeling for his large intestine. After a bit he held it up in a pair of forceps and said, ‘There’s no point in removing it. The cancer’s eaten into it and spread into the peritoneum.’
I looked at the sleeping man’s face and felt as if a knife had been thrust into my chest. I looked down at the floor, silently swallowing back my tears.
I heard him laughing again and saying, ‘Aren’t you used to these things yet?’
‘I’ll never get used to them.’
He looked at me in silence and we stitched up the patient’s stomach without another word until he said suddenly, ‘Do you know who I’m thinking about?’
‘No.’
‘I’m thinking about you.’
He stressed every word, fixing his eyes on mine and instead of looking at the floor I looked carefully and deliberately back at him.
He stared at me as if trying to convey all the notions of desire that it was possible for a man to have. ‘Once a woman’s been married, she’s much more liberated than a young virgin.’
I looked at him angrily and said, ‘My emancipation doesn’t stem from a physical change within my body. And any restrictions on my body aren’t because I fear for an insignificant hymen which can be torn by a random blow and restored by a surgeon’s needle. I impose my own restrictions on myself voluntarily, and exercise my freedom, as I understand the word, in the same way.’
He glanced spitefully at me and said, ‘Why are you scared then?’
‘Scared of what?’
‘Of me.’
‘You!’
What did he want from me or what did I want from him? I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to know something about men or about myself which was still unclear.
I marched determinedly up to his front door and rang the bell with an air of confidence. He smiled broadly, not concealing his satisfaction at his victory, and said, ‘I didn’t think you’d come.’
‘Why not?’
‘I thought you didn’t trust me yet.’
‘I don’t.’
I sat down and he came and sat next to me, his leg nearly touching mine. So I stood up and went to sit opposite. With a sly smile he asked, ‘Why don’t you want to sit beside me?’
Looking straight at him, I said, ‘I prefer to sit facing you so that I can see your eyes.’
He didn’t reply and I tried to force him to look at me but his eyes kept darting away. He thought for a moment then rose and went into another room and returned with a tall bottle. He filled a glass from it.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Your mind’s as sharp as a sword.’ He looked greedily at my legs. ‘I want to escape from it.’
My mind was like a sword! He wanted to escape from my mind! Was this a battle? What did this man want? He had a strange smile, and as I studied his expression, I had the feeling that he was preparing himself for a battle he was determined to win. The battle between a man and a woman: that odd, artificial contest in which the woman faces the man alone, but the man stands barricaded by tradition, laws and creeds, backed up by generations and aeons of history, and row upon row of men, women and children, all with sharp tongues extended like the blades of a sword, eyes aimed like gun-barrels and mouths blazing away like machine-guns.
The man has the world supporting him and holds the sceptre of life in his hand. He owns the past, the present and the future. Honour, respect and morality are all his — decorations earned in the battle against women. He owns the spiritual and the material world. He even owns the drop of sperm planted in the woman at the end of the struggle. He chooses whether or not to acknowledge it, to grant it his name and an honourable place in life, to let it live or have it destroyed.
The woman stands before the man, deprived by the world of her freedom, her honour, her name, her self-respect, her true nature and her will. All control over her spiritual and material life has been taken from her, even her control over the little fruit which she creates inside her with her own blood and cells and the atoms of her mind and heart.
I saw him smiling again. Why are you smiling like that, Man? Would you be able to name this battle?
He moved up close to me, his hot breath stinging my face, and I backed away. He came after me on his hands and knees and I stood up and moved away from him.
What was going on? Why did a man crumble in the face of his desire? Why did his willpower vanish the minute he was shut in with a woman so that he turned into a wild animal on four legs? Where was his power? Where was his strength? Where were his authority and qualities of leadership? How weak men were! Why had my mother made gods of them?
I looked at him, at his eyes, his fingers and his toes. I turned the searchlight of my gaze on him and looked closely into the depths of his heart and mind only to find hollow, empty wastes, a shallow mind and a false heart. Then I knew why he wanted to free himself of my mind: he was like a thief wanting to steal something from me when I wasn’t paying attention. I looked at him with pity and contempt. I felt sorry for him so I withdrew from the confrontation, despising myself for having considered a fight with someone so much weaker than me.
I felt stronger than him in spite of the barriers he dragged along with him, the barriers he surrounded himself with, the armoury supporting him. I didn’t need any of this: my strength was inside me, in my being. I wouldn’t let a man so much as touch my hand if I didn’t want him to, even if I was shut up within four high walls with him; but if I wanted to, I would give him myself before the eyes of the world without secrecy or stealth. It was my will which guided my behaviour, not the place or the time or other people.
I saw him coming up to me again. He put his hand on mine and I felt an icy coldness steal over my soul. Nothing will work, Man, so take your hand off me. It feels quite out of place. My mind is convinced by my heart, and my body by my mind, and there is no way to persuade one of them independently of the others.
I reached for my bag and stood up.
‘Are you going?’ he asked in surprise.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ His surprise grew.
What could I say to him? Why didn’t he understand? Would he be able to believe me? Was it possible for a man to believe that there was a woman who could get inside him and see what he was hiding from her, or a woman who could make her body submit to the dictates of her heart and mind? A woman who could return his stare unblinking, remain unmoved when he touched her hand, be shut in a room with him and not give him a thing, and then leave him and go away saying, ‘No. You’re not the man I want.’
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br /> Could a man comprehend that a woman could take a good look at him and then reject him? He couldn’t, because he was accustomed to being the only one with the right to experiment and choose, while the woman just had to accept whoever chose her: one special man, who spends his whole life convincing himself that he is this one special man. Isn’t a woman just like a man, doctor? Have you forgotten your science? Or has your mind become separated from your body? Arrogance turns a man into a stupid, feeble-minded creature.
Society impaled me with looks as sharp as daggers and lashed my face with stinging tongues like horse-whips.
How can a woman live alone without a man? Why is she going out? Why is she coming in? Why is she smiling? Why is she breathing? Why is she taking gulps of fresh air? Why is she looking at the moon? Why does she hold her head up and open her eyes wide? Why does she tread with confidence and pride? Isn’t she embarrassed? Doesn’t she want a man to protect her?
My family and relations attacked me. Even my closest friends vied with one another to discard me. I stood in the eye of the storm, thinking.
Since childhood I’d been immersed in a series of endless battles and here I was up against a new one with society at large: millions of people, with millions more in front and behind. Why didn’t things go as they ought to in life? Why wasn’t there a greater understanding of truth and justice? Why didn’t mothers recognize that daughters were like sons, or men acknowledge women as equals and partners? Why didn’t society recognize a woman’s right to lead a normal life using her mind as well as her body?
Why did they make me waste my life in these confrontations?
Memoirs of a Woman Doctor (Middle Eastern Fiction) Page 5
