Two Women in One by Nawal El Saadawi Read Free Book Online Page B

table, one foot on the floor, the other balanced on the edge of the table next to hers. His blue eyes would be fixed on hers, but she never lowered her gaze. Her black eyes continued to look ahead, staring into space as if seeking something. They released millions of floating particles into the atmosphere. They probed the minute creatures drifting through the world, searching among the thousands of similar beings for the extraordinary face, for the eyes that would see her and make her visible — the black eyes that would pick her face out from among the others, and extricate her body from among the millions of bodies lost in the world.
    But the faces were all the same, both in the dissecting room and out in the street. In the spacious but crowded college grounds, she felt as if she were drowning alone in a sea of people, unseen and unrecognized, and that her face had become like those of her fellow students. Bahiah, Aliah, Suad and Yvonne — it was all the same. Without thinking, she found herself fleeing the crowds, withdrawing to that small secluded corner opposite the college fence, behind the building. She sat on the wooden stool, leaning forwards, gazing at the tiny, palm-sized patch of earth where no green grass had ever grown. Unlike the earth around it, this furrowed patch was always mud-coloured, and between the ridges millions of tiny creatures, the size of ants, came and went.
    ‘Bahiah . . . ’
    The name sounded as if it were someone else’s and she jumped up from her stool. She saw the black eyes penetrating her own, tearing away their mask, stripping off the cover, penetrating the long narrow corridor, mercilessly and without hesitation, to her innermost depths. One brief moment more would be enough to reach the end.
    But she called out faintly, ‘Saleem.’
    He remained silent, looking at her. ‘Why did you leave me yesterday?’ she asked.
    His unflinching eyes fixed hers. She hid her face in her hands and cried.
    ‘Why are you crying?’ he asked her in a hushed tone.
    ‘You don’t love me enough.’
    ‘You don’t love anybody enough. You fear love like it was death — you’re middle-of-the-road. That’s Bahiah Shaheen for you.’
    ‘No!’ she shouted.
    He handed her his white handkerchief to dry her tears. Her black eyes glistened in the sunlight and he smiled. ‘What did you do last night?’ he asked.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Haven’t you painted anything new?’
    ‘No.’
    He paused for a moment. Then: ‘And what are you doing tonight?’
    ‘I don’t know’, she whispered.
    Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a small key. He handed it to her. ‘This is the key to my flat in al-Muqattam’, he said. ‘Come any time after three. I’ll be waiting for you.’
    He vanished behind the college building. As she stood there, her fingers coiled around a small metal object with a rounded top and a hole in the middle. Its tail had small pointed teeth. As she ran her fingers over it, a shiver swept through her like particles of soft hot sand tingling in her hands, down through her legs, up through her head, along her neck and arms, and accumulating in the hand that gripped the small object.
    It looked like the key to any other door. But she knew that objects change when feelings do. A little metal key can suddenly become magic, radiating heat that surges through the body like a burst of air and swells in the palm of the hand, filling it to overflowing.
    She felt drops of sweat in her hot hand under the solid object, but when she ran her finger over its metal surface, she froze. Wrapping it in her handkerchief, she put it in her pocket and slipped through the crowded grounds, moving with a panther’s long strides. She felt eyes staring at her, and slid her hand into her pocket to hide the key, as if, magical as it was, it might tear through handkerchief and pocket, leaping into view, as visible as the sun.
    As she headed unthinkingly towards the college, her hand still thrust into her pocket,