Target
text:
My
experience with writing and freedom
by
Nawal
El Saadawy
From the moment
the world of writing opened itself before me, I started to follow a route
which was drastically different from the one pre-ordained for me before birth.
The history of enslavement dating back to Pharaonic times had not only laid out
the path I should follow from cradle to grave but it had also created the
authorities to make sure that I did. It thus provided the authority of the
father and husband in the small family , the
authority of the state, the legal system, the social institutions, the authority
of religion and shari'a and finally the authority of international legitimacy.
These authorities took a
hierarchical shape, on top of which we find what we today call the New
World Order, the New York Times and the CNN. At the bottom lie local
governments, local television, prison, censorship and literary criticism.
As a child I discovered that writing was
the only means by which I could breathe. But the government, the
patriarchal and religious authorities, the propaganda in the media as well
as the teachings of the Faculty of
Medicine (which I joined to please my father),
all said to me, "There is no connection between writing and the act
of breathing in a woman" . But my life experience has confirmed the very
close connection between writing
and the entry of air into my lungs. These hierarchical authorities joined forces
and, like an iron fist , pushed me
into the conjugal bed, under the
illusion of love and the scientific (Freudian) idea that women created babies
and not ideas. At one stage of my life I produced babies and more than once in
my life I was married to the brim. And yet, instead of feeling the air entering
my lungs, I felt suffocated.
The more the woman dedicates herself to the
institution of marriage the more suffocated she is bound to feel. I looked up
the word "dedication" in the inherited dictionary of enslavement and I
found it connected with the devotion of the slaves to their masters. It's a term
which implies the act of getting lost in others, of self-denial and
self-sacrifice, terms which come under the category of death or of
self-destruction.
But creativity and writing are quite the
other end of the spectrum. They involve keeping the self alive rather than
destroying it. They mean the realization of self and not its denial.
And thus I discovered the contradiction
between marital devotion and self-fulfillment
in a woman's life since marriage dictates that a woman's identity
dissolve in that of her husband or in those of her children (after all, the
children are the rightful ownership of the husband and his name is written on
them). Thus the man of letters is
blessed with a wife who cooks his food, washes his trousers and offers him tea
while he sits to write down the story of his love for another woman. On the
other hand, the woman of letters is blessed with a husband who turns her life
into misery and scolds her all the time for having neglected to cook, wash or
sweep the floors or for having left the children
scream out loud while he slept. The creative
man has a wife who delights in his success and feels all the happier the more
successful he becomes. The creative woman has a husband who gets depressed when she succeeds and gets increasingly more depressed the more
successful she becomes.
The creative woman, with a little audacity
involving the denial of part of the crust of her brain, may save herself from the
depression of husbands and may succeed in avoiding to lose herself in the sacred
kingdom or the woman's kingdom inside the house. She may go out on the streets
demonstrating with others and shouting: God . . . nation . . .and king (or
whoever occupies the position of a king). She may then find
herself required to lose herself in the royal self or the presidential self. If
she cannot do that, however, a huge wooden gate will open up before her leading
her into prison.
While in prison in 1981 I tried day and night to discover the crime I had committed, never having
been affiliated to any political
party, never having committed adultery, never having carried an illegitimate
child and never having insulted anyone. After eighty days and nights in my cell
I discovered that my only crime was having been unable to lose myself in the
self of the president. In Ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh considered himself divine
and all other selves were required to dissolve completely in his. Losing oneself
has been the virtue most highly
appreciated from the days of the Pharaohs until now. But dissolving is the
opposite of creativity. Writing means expressing my Self. It means that my Self
will not dissolve in any other Self, be it my husband's, God's or the
President's.
Writing means surviving and denying death. If it had not been for
writing, all prophets, gods and pharaohs would have disappeared forever. If it
had not been for the discovery of printing, we would not have
known anything about those who had died. But for
the Torah, the Bible and the Koran, we would not have had Moses, Essa or
Mohammed.
Writing has the power of giving life to the
dead. This is how writing has become for me the only way I can survive. I often
wonder how people who do not write manage to survive or endure life. My mother
died leaving not trace. I am one of the nine children she gave birth to. None of
us carried her name. My father also died leaving behind no mark except for his
name in mine written on my books. With the translation of my books into several
languages, my father's name has become known while my mother's has gone forever.
However, I feel better off than the English
writer Virginia Woolf who took on her husband's name "Woolf" and was
known by it. A woman should use her own name on her works and not that of her
father or husband. If I had to choose between my father's name and my husband's,
I would certainly prefer my father's since it is at least permanent. The
husband's name may change with the change of circumstances. This is particularly
true in our country. When a husband happens to fall in for another woman, all he
would need do is just open his mouth and utter
the words "You're divorced" three times. Upon which the wife packs her
bags and leaves. In the eye of the law and the shari'a, she has become a
divorced woman.
I consider myself lucky that I had never
taken the name of any husband of mine and never signed on my books except with
my father's name and that of my
paternal grandfather's "El Saadawy", the name of a man who is a total
stranger to me since he had died before I was born. He died of Bilharzias,
poverty and enslavement, the triple chronic disease afflicting our peasants from
the days of the Pharaohs until the present.
There are times when my name is shortened
to my Grandfather's name "El Saadawy". This is how this strange man
gets his name imprinted on me and on the covers of my books.
Nothing consoles me better than the thought
that at least on Doomsday I will be able to
shed that strange name and carry my mother's. When I was a little girl, my
father once told me that on Doomsday people would be called by their mothers'
names. I asked him why this was so and he said that maternity was certain. So I
asked ,"Is paternity not certain. then?"
I saw the pupil of his eye quiver slightly
and a long silence followed. He gave my mother a look wavering between doubt and
certainty.
My mother had not known any man other than
my father. How could she have done if she was never out of the house or, more
precisely, never out of the kitchen? After giving birth to her ninth child, she
got pregnant with the tenth. She had an abortion.
One day while she slept, she dreamt of my
father with another woman. Her grief made the milk freeze
in her breast forming a cancerous tumor. She died very young. My
maternal grandmother used to sing to herself in the bathroom a song which went
"Trusting a man is like trusting that water would stay in a sieve". She used to pour water over the sieve and saw it disappear
to the last drop. She would smack her lips in distress. When her husband came
home late at night, she would smell the other woman in his underwear. In the
morning he gave her a speech on the
love of one's country.
After the death of my Grandfather, I became
very skeptical of any man who chanted the song of patriotism. When he went from
the love of the Motherland to the love of the peasants or laborers, my
suspicions increased. If he went beyond that and held a rosary in his hand, my
skepticism was confirmed beyond
doubt.
Now whenever I met a man
who was full of religious words and clichés and who held the rosary in his hand,
I would immediately smell a rat. If this man happened to be the head of the
state, the problem went from the domain of the personal to the public. And if he
happened to be my husband, the disaster would be unmitigated because I would
then have to choose between writing and living in the Gardens of Eden.
I have always chosen writing, Eden being
rather out of reach and its
delights designed for the gratification of men. Prominent among these delights
is the presence of fair, young virgins. But I am a woman of a dark skin. I have
long lost my virginity and am at the moment at the menopausal phase (to use the
language of the system). In Paradise a woman like
myself will have none other than her husband. What a disaster! To
have my husband chasing me in life and after death!
That is why I have always chosen writing. I
came to realize even as a child that I was not to to have the
fate of my mother, my Grandmother or, for that matter, of any other
woman. Why I had this conviction is not totally clear to me. One reason may have
been that I saw my father's great admiration of the Prophet and I wanted to get
my father's admiration. One day I dreamt I became a prophet and my father looked
at me admiringly. When in the morning I told my Grandmother about that dream,
she just hit her chest in disbelief. She heated some water for me to cleanse
myself of the guilt. A woman could never be a prophet, she told me.
That day I took up my pen and jotted down
angry words on the page. My brother who failed his exams every year could become
a prophet while I, who succeeded every year, could not.
My anger was directed at a power I did not
know. My Grandmother said it was
God who preferred my brother though he failed his exams every year.
There is certainly a connection between
creativity and anger. The little girl is taught to conceal her anger and draw an
angelic smile on her face. But no connection exists between angels and
creativity. That is why in Arabic we have in the expression "the devil of
poetry" and "the devil of art".
I began to voice my anger against all
authorities from the bottom up, starting with the authority of my father.
My father noticing a frown rather than a
smile on my face told me that frowning made girls lose their femininity. So I
had to choose between femininity and writing. I opted for the latter.
In the dead of the night I hugged my anger
the way the woman carrying an illegitimate child hugged her secret. I told my
mother that if a woman did not get
angry at injustice she would not be human. She told me, being human was better
than being a woman. My Grandmother raised her hand to the chin
and said challengingly: "I bet you won't find anyone to marry you.
Obeying your father is obeying God".
In obedience to
my father I joined the Faculty of Medicine and put on the angelic white
coat. For years I lived with the stool and urine of patients, the rules of the
Ministry of Health and the instructions of the General Director and the
Minister.
When my father died, I was free of my
promise and started to live to please no one but myself.
Creativity only begins when man is free
from the wish to please others.
After my father's death I discovered that
there were other authorities trying to dominate my life. But I promised myself
that no one would have domination over me and that I would write what my own
mind dictated.
So the soldiers knocked on my door, broke
it open and dragged me to prison under the pretence of ensuring my safety. I
walked into prison as if into a dream. The trance was not unlike the one I had
when, under the illusion of love and the marriage bond, I walked back into my
second marriage.
The authority of the state and the
authority of the husband constitute one iron chain whose arch enemy is writing.
My husband used to fly into a mad rage whenever he saw me with pen and paper in
hand.
The jailer came every day into my cell,
turned it upside down, removed the
tiles under the toilet, dug deep into the floor and wall and screamed out loud:
"If I found any pen or paper, it would be far more dangerous for you than
finding a gun".
After the death of the president, I walked
out of jail and into a prison-like
existence. My name moved from the black list to the grey list, the only
difference between the two being the color of paper. I saw people's faces pale
and sallow. Nobody believed anybody and everyone accused the other. Accusations
flew downwards and upwards, from the tip of the pyramid where international
legitimacy resides to the bottom, to local governments, patriarchal and
legislative authorities, to religious institutions,
cultural institutions, the media, the press, the intellectuals, the
writers and the literary critics.
Everything seemed to be in a recession.
Even the loaf of bread, like justice, was
in short supply. I realized that writing was the substitute for justice, and
justice was beauty and love.
--
Writing is the vain attempt to find love.
--
Writing is the vain attempt to defy death.
--
Both love and death are ephemeral.
--
Nothing remains but the letters on the page.
--
Nothing remains of gods and prophets except the books.
Without the presence of creative art to
create hope from nothingness, all around us would be pure despair. Creativity is
like a spot of light in pitch darkness. It is this ray of light in the midst of
this massive despair which makes our suffering in writing worth while.
We pay a
high price for being creative,
a price which may be as high as death. If the creative artist happens to
be a woman, the price she pays is doubled, tripled or even quadrupled, according
to circumstances.
In addition to losing Eden, I have also
lost in my life what my Grandmother
used to call "the shade of a man", the shade provided by a man being,
as the saying goes, "better than the shade of a wall". Personally, I
have always preferred the shade of the wall to that of a man who got depressed
because of my creativity. This was how I lost my reputation on the personal as
well as on the public levels.
The men who tried to flirt with me but
found me unyielding called me an
unfeminine man-hater. The men who worked for God, the nation and for the oil
kings said that I worked for the Devil and that I was advocating permissiveness
and sexual freedom. The men who loved peasants and workers said that I loved
women better than peasants or workers, that I believed more in sexual freedom
than in class struggle. I was therefore the ally of imperialism and Zionism. The
men who loved the nation for its own sake and did not savor any talk of class
struggle said I was the ally of international communism because the the word
"class" is sometimes used in my writings.
My doctor colleagues who hated any talk
about politics and loved nothing better than their patients (men and women
alike) thought I was an utter failure having achieved none of the five goals of
the profession: a clinic, a car, a house, a
farm and a bride (or
bridegroom).
As for my literary colleagues of both sexes
who love to be in the limelight of the screen, the newspapers or the state
prizes and who consider that one could criticize anything or anyone under the sun except God and the head of state,
these believe I have failed in my literary career because I live away from the
spotlight in the area of the grey or black lists.
More than ten years ago, in 1980, one of my
books fell by chance into the hands of a small publisher living in South Africa.
Although he was white, he fought alongside the black Africans against the racist
regime of Apartheid. He was harassed and was in danger of getting killed in
Johannesburg but he managed to escape to London and started this small
publishing business.
This was the first book of mine to be
translated into a foreign language. With it I stepped out of local bounds to
English readership. And then to different languages.
From 1980 till now in 1992 sixteen of my
works, including novels, short stories and scientific studies, have been
published. My books are now read everywhere in the world.
This is how I escaped local confines.
In 1987, after the publication of my Novel The
Downfall of the Imam in Arabic, the telephone rang at home. The voice of an
official from the Ministry of the Interior told me that I was going to be put
under constant guard.
"What for?" I asked in surprise.
"To guard your life", he said.
"My life?" I asked.
""Yes. Your life is under
threat."
"Who's threatening it?" I asked.
"This is all the information I have.
We'll send the guards in an hour", he said.
"I don't want any guards", I told
him, "as long as you withhold information from me".
"We'll send you the guards all the
same, with or without your consent", he said.
"Will you protect my life against my
wish?" I asked.
"Yes", he said, "your life
is not yours. It's the state's".
The guards came to my house and stayed
there for two years. Then they
disappeared. Until this day I have no idea why they came in the first place or
why they left later. But I came to understand that my life was not mine.
In 1990 a journalist came along with the
copy of an Arabic magazine
published in London. In it was a list of "the dead"( or those who
ought to be dead). I read my my name on that list together with the names of
several literary figures, writers and poets.
"Who made this list?" I asked.
"The oil kings", was the answer.
At night while in bed I saw a small
butterfly, almost spider-like, getting attracted by the light of the lamp. When
it came too close it got scorched
by the heat and so withdrew little. This movement was repeated several times
until finally it got itself burnt and fell down dead.
I wondered while asleep about this
irrational attraction to the light and the flame.
In the morning, opening the magazine, I
realized the connection between the oil kings and international legitimacy. In
the magazine was written that the oil kings had paid the Western alliance the
cost of the Gulf War.
For the first time in history the slaves
are paying their masters the cost of their own enslavement.
Things being what they are, isn't the
connection between creativity and death more reasonable than the attraction
between the butterflies and the light? And since creativity was up against all
hierarchical authorities, both internally and externally, isn't it logical then
that the creative artist is threatened with imprisonment or death? All the more
so if that artist happened to be a woman?
From the the dawn of the history of
enslavement and the rise of the patriarchal class system, there has always been
a conflict between creativity and authority.
This is why restrictions are imposed on
free expression. Every creative artist, male or female, has a personal way of
surmounting these limitations. But simple, clear and direct
writing remains the most dangerous since it conveys its message directly
to thousands or millions who may be
incapable of deciphering the more intricate literary discourse
But
the creative idea imposes its own method of expression. In some of my works
symbolism and suggestiveness gain ground over directness. AT times I leave
meanings to be read between the lines. At others I leave spaces or even dots. I
may let out an unuttered sigh that
ends up in silence or a full stop. The creative reader has the task of reading
the unwritten script within the the written book.
When
I am overwhelmed by mad courage, I
write without caution. But what I write no one will dare publish. I put these in
a blue file on which is written “To be published posthumously”. These are
the writings I manage to produce away from the inner censor. This censor may
hide himself behind a military outfit and may carry in hand the
scepter of kings or presidents.
At
other times, he may wear the body of my grandfather who had died before I was
born. Or he may take off this body,
disappearing without a trace except for a small delicate cane like
the one that the teacher of Religious Instruction at primary
school used to carry in his hand.
The
censor is ever present, always looking at you as though through a spy-hole. There is
always a price to pay for creativity, a price which may be life itself.
But
for me it is a small price to pay because I'd much rather lose life than lose
my self. Without this self,
creativity can never be.
________________________________________________
Published in Fusul, January 1993