Time and again i am reminded how it’s really not necessary to write huge books to pen down something truly remarkable and highly intimidating. From the first line to the last, this tiny little book made my head swirl like anything. But every single word hit right on the head. It’s a tale of girl brought up in a regressive society, where body which was shamed since the childhood, loses her identity and struggles throughout in order to find meaning with her true self.
On the face of it Bahiah was, “hard working, well-behaved medical student”, but on the inside her entire being was churning to rebel against the societal norms set for the girls of her age and body restrictions placed by the families. Her family wanted her to be a doctor but she found her self expression in painting, which she had to keep hidden from her father who thought of it as nothing but waste of time. Having no control over any aspect of her life she finally found respite when she met a stranger with whom her mind and body got connected instantaneously.
Once she went on the round of self discovery after finding herself being connected with Saleem, she questions the choices made for her by others more rigorously than ever before.
‘It was her mother who had given birth to her and her father who had enrolled her into medical college. Her aunt, who suffered from a lung disease, wanted her to specialize in this particular field of medicine. Her uncle wanted her to be a successful, highly-paid doctor, who would marry his son, the business-school graduate. Her savings would grow thanks to his expertise in commerce, and they would raise children who would inherit their wealth and bear his name, and the names of his father and grandfather before him.’
Nawal openly questions the patriarchal norms of the Egyptian society in this book; as she points out the practice of inflicting shame towards the female sex organs to the point of creating identity crisis in our protagonist, female genital mutilation (FGM), dictatorial familial authority over the lives of the children. Her satire stands out as she points out the irony of selling the girls off against their will in the name of marriage and then turning them into sexual toys, whereas before marriage the sexual organs and the topic of sex was treated as a taboo.
“A girl moves from her father’s house to a husband’s and suddenly changes from a non sexual being with no sex organs to a sexual creature who sleeps, wakes, eats, and drink sex.”
Slowly and steadily she makes our protagonist stand on her feet as she guides herself to find her true identity starting with first painting in secret and later openly, exploring her sexuality with the man she found connection with and eventually shouting her lungs out during a demonstration against the draconian laws in Egypt.
Autobiographical elements can be sensed in the book as Nawal herself was a doctor who, as per her own words, was forced to become one against her own will. And her sense of defiance came when she chose to become a writer and a feminist.