A Woman for Love

She is the woman in the past of every Egyptian man. She is the one in the shadow. She hides in his imagination and memories. She is the woman who is cursed for being smart, or talented, or independent, or free thinking, or daring, or beautiful. She is attractive and intriguing. She's the one with whom you can never get bored, and with whom you can really have a conversation going. She may have a sense of humor and a quick wit. She may understand you from a glance and she may get under your skin in a blink of an eye. She's all that a man dreams of.. in love, only love, just love, no more.

When it comes to having a family, a man totally shifts his criteria. He wants the meek, the shy, the conservative, the veiled, the dependent, and, most important, the submissive. He wants someone who can never be his equal or pose a challenge to his mind. He looks for someone who is born for the home, with no ambitions of her own, no ideas of her own, and certainly no individuality. He looks for his mother, who was always there to take care of everyone while forgetting herself in the process.

It is amazing how the same man forgets his old love and what used to like in a woman. The spark of intelligence in his woman's eyes he now finds scary. How can he live under the same roof with such a tigress? How can he tame a woman who has her individual personality and independent thinking? She poses a threat to his manhood. She will never practice the blind obedience of his mother and grandmother. And she will definitely cause trouble.

But do these factors mark her as unfit to be a wife? I believe, in our male dominated society, they do. An Egyptian wife has a specific image. It is like a mold, if a woman can't fit into it, then she can't become a wife. If she really wants to have this "honor" she has to give up all her qualities and conform to societal demands. She has to become the typical woman who only cares about cooking, cleaning, satisfying her husband and getting him children. She must follow the footsteps of her master and never take decisions on her own. She must agree that she is less than him in everything. And she must raise her male children to think that she, as well as their sisters, are less than them.

So it's a woman's destiny to lead a life of sacrifice. She can sacrifice herself, her personality, her dreams, her ambitions, her humanity, or she can sacrifice her love, her right to start a family, and her motherhood. Her choices are limited into being a woman for love, or a tamed wife. I am afraid that in our societies a woman is squeezed into one of those two categories; she is either one or the other, but never both.