A Modern Love Letter by Nawal El Saadawi

It seems that there are two primary reasons for a person to write—the first being that of expression, perhaps catharsis, and the second, a desire to be understood, and to take the reader to the same place the writer is at the moment pen meets paper. Few words have grabbed me, spoken to me, moved me, and made me feel as though I myself could have written them the way Nawal El Saadawi’s A Modern Love Letter has mesmerized me—each and every line.

I could easily say that I identify with El Saadawi as a woman, or is it as a human that this parallel is stemmed from? For my own sanity’s sake, I have chosen to decide that it is as an independent and intelligent woman. Intelligent, because it is my belief that the greatest knowledge is realizing how little we truly know.

Each day, from the moment I awaken, before my eyes find a way to open, or my feet find the floor, I find myself in search of the answers to life—to understand and to be understood.

El Saadawi says the very same thing in the first sentence of her work—the moment that captured me. “…so that you may perhaps understand me or that I may perhaps understand myself. The attempt may come to nothing, for who is able to understand himself or the other? Who is able to break the shell? Just as attempting to break it merely confirms that it is not broken, so attempting to understand only increases the feeling of not understanding. And yet I try. I realize for certain that the attempt is futile but that does not stop me trying, just as I do not give up living my life, knowing that death is inevitable.”

The more I attempt to understand or to make myself understood, the less of an understanding there seems to be. Even when an understanding seems to have been achieved between two people, don’t we then realize that there are others that don’t understand us, or that we ourselves don’t understand? And yet, we continue to try. We forage for this understanding as if it were a life-sustaining nutrient. How many times will a person, tell the same story again? The beggar, sifting through debris, moving from dumpster to dumpster, looking for a morsel to appease the hunger, is he any different than the person who moves down a line of people relating the same incident looking for someone to understand? Are they not both looking for sustenance?

El Saadawi describes the happy medium that society has come to believe is what everyone should strive for. She describes it as the “halfway position,” loving but not loving, hating but not hating. And, as she states, this is how mental health is defined, and that to be considered healthy, a person must be dishonest with him/her self and not truly feel, but be somewhere in between.

I spent most of my life loving but not loving, hating but not hating. I denied myself to be expressive; I wanted to be viewed as healthy, sane, and yet, that is when I most felt as though I was balancing like a tightrope walker. Sanity lay on one side, and on the other, madness. One deep or rapid breath, and my balance could be lost—but which way would I fall? People are often afraid of those people who display or express intense emotion. We are terrified of the fire of one man’s wrath, and we dub the jubilant man crazy; we welcome the man in the middle—the man that neither loves nor hates—the safe man.

El Saadawi also writes of a feeling of loneliness, of being surrounded by people, and yet feeling isolated. She speaks of times with her friend and despite their close proximity, the lack of “touch,” and the push and pull of wanting to abandon the loneliness, and run away, push away, and hide from the very thing she seeks.

My life has been a constant push and pull of that which I desire, and that which I am afraid of. How many times I have been in the company of people, many people, and felt very alone. Is it because I am different and feel misunderstood, or is it because I have pushed them away? My entire marriage, I pondered how it was that I could share a living space and a bed with the man I called my husband, have one body against another, and yet feel that a touch never occurred.

“In truth, most of the time I live in my dreams for I can choose and change them, whereas it is reality which changes me without my choosing,” writes El Saadawi.

In my dreams, I can be a director, an editor. I can cut out the parts I don’t like, and replay the parts I do. I can change things to suit me—to encourage my sanity, or promote my madness. Sometimes, I feel that the division between the two is so fine it is almost nonexistent. My imagination, it is either my greatest ally or my most lethal opponent, depending on how I chose to use it. But, it is mine, and I alone have the choice.

Although El Saadawi never actually says to her friend that she loves him, she expresses passionately, intensely, that she is drawn to him, wants him, and at moments has come very close to telling him what he means to her, and yet she is afraid of losing her freedom.

So many American women lose themselves and their identity when they become involved in a relationship. They become someone’s mother, someone else’s wife or girlfriend, and they always remain another’s daughter, and frequently, somewhere while picking up these many titles, they misplace the most vital one, that of themselves. Having experienced that myself, I fought one of my most difficult battles, with everything inside of me, to regain my most precious title and my autonomy. To once again become Angela. It was that fight that has made me so guarded. No matter how important something or someone is to me, there remains a fortress around that title, protecting it as if it were the royal crown, the last remaining heir to the throne.

El Saadawi ends her letter asking, “after all this, can you still accuse me of being incapable of loving? Can you again tell me that I don’t understand…can you now understand me a little? And do I understand you a little?”

I could fill volumes with my written attempts to understand and be understood. My confessions, my questions, and all my emotions—my sanity and my madness, have found it safe to venture out from their hiding places most frequently when they could take advantage of the rendezvous between pen and paper.

There is not a line in El Saadawi’s A Modern Love Letter that does not hypnotize me. One does not have to be an Arab woman to identify with the work. One only has to desire to be understood, and to feel the conflict of wanting something so badly, and wondering if we are willing to gamble those things that we have fought so hard to obtain. After reading this for the fifth time, I can only wonder, could I have written this during some dissociative fugue? No? Oh, then El Saadawi and I must have spoken during one of my dreams, for it is all so real to me.

Milan Kundera's "Identity"

Kundera’s Identity is a novel which travels back and forth between the believable and the unbelievable. Kundera magnificently transitions between reality and fantasy. Often it is difficult to distinguish between Kudnera’s two worlds, if it is possible to make the distinction at all. There are many parts of Kundera’s story that seem very real, very normal; however, the bulk of the story has a surreal atmosphere about it.

From the beginning, the story reminded me of a dream. The way the story shifted from scene to scene without any warning and the way so many of the actions, attitudes and characters seemed out of place all gave the story an otherworldliness about it. I found myself thinking either the book consisted of dream scenes, or it was about people who were demented and was written by someone who suffers from severe psychological problems.

The novel beings like a passionate love story. Chantal is in Normandy waiting for Jean-Marc to arrive. She is in a restaurant when she overhears two waitresses talking about a television show, “Lost to Sight.” Chantal thinks about how difficult it would be for her to lose Jean-Marc, to never know what happened to him, and to have to live the rest of her days in misery, because suicide would be a refusal to wait for him. You get the impression she has as deep and intense love for Jean-Marc. For Chantel a life without Jean-Marc would be a life of misery.

Chantel has to spend one night alone in Normandy before Jean-Marc arrives. During the night, her sleep is broken, and she has a dream involving people from her past. She finds the dream disturbing. I think this is where the story shifts to fantasy. Although many parts of the first half of the story seem believable, Kundera never says Chantal went back to sleep after the dream. I think Chantal continued to sleep, and it was during her sleep that she dreamed the rest of the story. Perhaps it was sleeping without Jean-Marc that caused her sleep to be so restless.

The novel hints of having a surrealistic undertone early in the story. The story regularly shifts from scene to scene and has situations and conversations that seem out of place, much like the dreams so many of us have. From the beginning I found myself asking how certain situations could be true and thought it reminded me of a dream.

When Jean-Marc finds Chantal in Normandy, she is unable to embrace him. When he tries to comfort Chantal, after she says, “men don’t turn to look at me anymore,” she pushes him away. With the exceptions of how she came to live with Jean-Marc and when they met at the ski lodge, Chantal never mentions Jean-Marc with much affection. I found this to be rather peculiar since in the first chapter she thinks about how miserable life would be without him. If her love for him is so strong, then why can’t she embrace the man she loves or allow him to embrace her? This suggests the scene is Chantal’s fantasy.

Then there was the emphasis on Jean-Marc’s mistaking Chantal’s identity and his inability to recognize her form other women. In the beginning, when he first arrives in Normandy, he mistakes Chantal for a woman on the beach whom he describes as old and ugly. He questions Chantal’s identity again as the scene with the letters is unfolding. He beings to think she is a simulacrum. When Chantal’s sister-in-law is talking with Jean-Marc, he again thinks that the woman he loves is a simulacrum. His questioning Chantal’s identity is even evident on the train when upon seeing Chantal, he is unable to recognize her hand or her laughter and her happiness even though he knows it is indeed Chantal. I don’t think Jean-Marc caused the identity issues. I think Chantal is a very independent and strong person, but her love for Jean-Marc causes her to feel emotional vulnerable, and it manifests itself in her dreams.

Chantal believes the author of the letters to be the first man in the bistro, and later she believes the author to be the old man under the tree. When she begins to figure out that it is Jean-Marc who wrote the letters, instead of being touched, she is angry and paranoid that he is spying on her. This paranoia of being spied on leads her to a graphologist’s office. In the graphologist’s office, Chantal recognizes one of the men as the man from the café in Normandy, and again he makes her feel she is in danger. Most women would be touched if their husband or boyfriend sent them letters calling them beautiful. They would think it was very sweet. They would not be convinced he was spying on her. As for the man in the graphologist’s office being the same man from Normandy, sure, it could happen, but I find it highly doubtful. Besides, if the scene were real, why did it take Chantal so long to recognize him when he had cause do much panic in her in Normandy? Once again, Kundera was subtly telling his readers that it was all a dream.

It is odd that when her sister-in-law arrives with her children, of all the things to play with and to get into, the children find the letters under Chantal’s brassieres, thus causing Chantal to ask her sister-in-law to leave. Shortly afterward, Chantal also leaves the apartment. For a woman who loves a man so intensely that she could not bear the thought of losing him, Chantal finds it too easy to walk out on Jean-Marc.

The point when I could no longer believe what the author was writing in was at the train station and the succeeding scenes. Chantal leaves Jean-Marc and has no idea where she will go. She tells him that she has to go to London for work; however, once she leaves the apartment, she doesn’t know where she will end up. She decides to go to London for the evening, and she just happens to run into her colleague in London. Then, when Jean-Marc decided to go after her, he happens to go to the exact place that Chantal is at. In reality, what is the likelihood of that happening? From there the story only gets more bizarre and travels into the obscure at an even quicker pace. Chantal sexualizes the train ride, from the way she sees the train descending into the tunnel to the way she sees the older refined lady as the victim of an orgy. Her mind is constantly thinking sexual thoughts. When she is at the house of the orgy, Jean-Marc follows her there (red was a recurring color through out the story), he quickly gives up when he cannot gain entrance into the house. When Chantal is in the salon with the septuagenarian, the septuagenarian is calling Chantal the name Anne, again bringing up the issue of identity. This is the point in the story where there are the most dramatic scene shifts. It is at this point that it becomes obvious the story is a dream. The deeper our sleep becomes, the more obscure our dreams become. It is during sleep that we often find ourselves in situation that make no sense and that dreams are often the most disturbing.

I think in a very subtle way, Kundera may have been trying to tell his readers that he story was a dream. There are many scenes involving sleep, dreams, and consciousness. However, as readers, we have a tendency to believe what we are reading, and unless the author tells us otherwise, we rarely question it. I think Kundera tried to make us believe the story, and when we find out the story is a dream, it is more difficult for us to figure out which parts are reality and which parts are fantasy. Kundera tries to make the distinction even more difficulty by asking the reader who to whom the dream belongs.

It appears that the story shifts from reality to dream when Chantal is asleep in Normandy the first night waiting for Jean-Marc. However, her dream doesn’t become ridiculously far fetched until the scene at the train station.

For the most part, Chantal was the dreamer. In the beginning, while waiting for Jean-Marc in Normandy, she is sleeping and is awakens in the middle of the night by a dream involving people from her past. Kundera never says that Chantal stayed awake for the rest of the night. I think that Chantal fell back asleep after the first dream and that is when the rest of the story occurred. It is probably when Jean-Marc arrived, perhaps while Chantal was asleep, that he went to sleep beside her and woke her when she began to scream. It was in the salon that Chantal started to feel that sense of danger that one usually feels just before one screams during a dream. I think the dream belonged to Chantal entirely rather than to Jean-Marc. Jean-Marc did not seem as paranoid as Chantal, and the story focuses more her thoughts and emotions. Jean-Marc seems more like he is someone who is an actor cast in her theatrical production. Chantal is the one who screams in the dream, and it is Jean-Marc who comforts her and reassures her that “Chantal. Chantal. Chantal. It’s not real.” By doing so he returns her identity to her. At the very end of the story, Chantal does not want to let Jean-Marc out of her sight for fear that in the second it takes to blink, she could lose him. Jean-Marc doesn’t say much or show much emotion at the end of the book. It is Chantal who is emotional, just as someone who has had a very emotional dream. Had it been Jean-Marc’s dream with the thought of losing the woman he loves most, he likely would be more emotional upon waking from the dream.

Kundera does a wonderful job of making the reader question the reality of what is being read. For the first two-thirds of the book, almost any of the scenes could be perfectly believable on their own, but when they are added together, they become more difficult to fathom. However, I think if anyone has ever had an obscure or upsetting dream and pays close enough attention to Kundera’s clues, then he or she can see that the story is fantasy from the beginning.

Funkywinkerbean and Me

Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you gonna say, “Hi?” Don’t you love it? Who doesn’t love a good laugh? Okay, so it’s a really corny joke. It’s probably one of the first jokes we learn in school. Then we run home so eagerly to tell our parents, only to have them say with the most deadpan face, “I was telling that joke when I was your age.” They probably were. And, their parents probably said the same thing to them, with the same deadpan look when they ran home eagerly from school to share their new comedic line. But, for whatever reason, most humans love the opportunity to laugh, including me. Humor and laughter are and have been one of the few constants in my life. I never find laughter and humor boring.

My first true awareness of humor was as a child. I was five years old, and school always came very easy for me. My parents wanted me to go to summer school. Of course, I thought it was because I was so smart that I got to go to summer school, and unlike the “slow” kids, I had a choice. Summer school was for either really dumb kids who needed the extra help, or the really smart kids who were so smart they blessed the school by being there for the summer. I most certainly was not one of the dumb kids.

Being a parent myself, I now realize that neither of these is necessarily true. I think my parents wanted me to go to summer school, because they couldn’t fathom the idea of a whole three months with me home all day—just me and my parents. goodness, the thought of it makes even me shudder.

So, there I was, the summer between kindergarten and first grade, so excited to be one of the privileged kids who blessed the school with my presence during the summer months. Everything was going great. I loved it. On the third day of summer school, one of my little classmates had the teacher looking at her. I heard the teacher say something about chicken pox. Of course, I had no idea what chicken pox was. Well, my naiveté soon changed. My little classmate was so kind and generous; she decided to share her pox with me. Needless to say, I didn’t last too lnog in summer school.

My parents had my great-grandmother, Gram, babysit me while my pox ran their course. That same summer, Gram also babysat my cousin, Robbie. Robbie and I couldn’t read, but we loved to have someone read to us. We had Gram read the Sunday comics. We found them mildly entertaining, that is until Gram read us the title of one of the comics—Funkywinkerbean.

Funkywinkerbean—go ahead and say it. I dare you to try to say it three times without so much as cracking a grin. If you can do it, you are a tougher person than I am or ever was.

When Robbie and I heard the name Funkywinkerbean, we laughed hard. We could not stop. We laughed that kind of laugh that makes your stomach and cheeks ache, makes your eyes water, makes you look like you’re crying and makes you drool. We had Gram read Funkywinkerbean over and over for the rest of the day. It was like an addition. We looked forward to Funkywinkerbean every day. We were like little addicts, and Funkywinkerbean was our fix.

Funkywinkerbean always stayed with me and made me consciously aware of how pleasurable laughter can be. I wanted to be able to make people laugh the way Funkywinkerbean had made Robbie and me laugh. I began to really observe what make people laugh. I would listen attentively to my parents’ and other adults’ conversations. I wanted to master the art of humor.

As the years passed, I became more proficient in my art. During my adolescent and preadolescent years, not only did I become more humorous, but I also became more sarcastic.

Oh, sarcasm—we are all familiar with it. We all know a few sarcastic people. Those people who can make everyone laugh. Unfortunately, it is usually at the expense of someone else. The one victim I terrorized more than anyone else was Sony.

Sony was a really sweet girl a few years younger than I was. She was non-confrontational, and albeit, she was very intelligent, her wit was not very quick. Sony and I had a few mutual friends, so unfortunately for Sony, we were often in each other’s company. Of course, I would tear Sony apart. “Sony, when you laugh, your eyes disappear. Can you even see when you laugh?” I didn’t care that Sony wore glasses and that without them, she was legally blind. I honestly can’t remember any of the other things I used to say to Sony. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that everyone around us was laughing hysterically, and I was the cause of their laughter.

During this period, I never once thought my cynicism was my way of hiding—hiding my vulnerabilities and insecurities. As time passed, I only got better. I became more quick-witted and more sharp-tongued.

In high school, I met Tom. Tom was a male version of me, except he had a few more years of experience under his belt. We were both scared of being hurt and terrified of our own insecurities and fear of rejection. We had what is commonly called a love-hate relationship. Tom was my first love, but there was no way I was going to let myself be hurt, so I used every weapon I had to defend myself. The most powerful of these weapons was my sarcasm and my humor. That is until one night with a large group of friends, I verbally tore Tom up one side and down the other. Sure, everyone was laughing, including Tom. Later that night, after everyone left, Tom repeated everything I said to him—verbatim. To this day, I still remember all those words he spoke. They have stuck with me better than the many times my parents told me “never talk to strangers.” After Tom repeated all the cruel things I said to him, he told me, “Ange, you can rip someone up, tear them apart, and leave them for dead all within a matter of moments. Why don’t you just try listening some time and not being so quick to put someone to their death?”

Although I didn’t change my ways, those words have stayed with me forever. It devastated me to hear the things I said to him. Knowing I was capable of saying those things to someone I cared for, then what was I capable of if I had no feelings for someone?

As the years passed, without realizing it, I had begun to take Tom’s advice. Maybe it was maturity. Maybe I was losing the fear of feeling vulnerable. As I got older, I became less sarcastic. I still had it in me; I just didn’t feel the need to use it as often as I once did. It was similar to having a gun in your house. If you are really scared, the gun is loaded. If you aren’t scared, then you still have the gun, only it’s locked up and unloaded. You feel much better just knowing the gun is there if you ever need it. I stayed that way until I moved out of my family’s home. I guess moving out on my own gave the courage to feel fear and vulnerability.

When I moved out on my own, I moved in with my girlfriends, Nicki and Jackie. We had a great time. I still look back on those days as some of the happiest times of my life. Jackie and I quickly became best friends. We hung out all the time. It was while I was hanging out with Jackie that I found a new way to play with my humor. Jackie and I would do things that were simply silly. There was no victim. If ever there were one, we were our own victims.

One evening, Jackie and I were waiting for some friends to get off work. They were running late, and we had time to kill. We decided to put on a dance show for all the people in the Downtown Plaza. It didn’t matter that I had never been a dancer. There we were in all our glory, two girls in our early twenties, singing and dancing to the Village People’s YMCA. Let me add that the song and dance were performed a capella. I have no idea if the passers-by thought we were entertaining, but Jackie and I were laughing in the same hysterical way that Robbie and I has laughed the first time we heard Funkywinkerbean. I had rediscovered my childhood humor.

I no longer needed a victim to be funny, and I found that I could still make people laugh or at least smile. It was a wonderful feeling. If I ever did need a victim, I was the victim. I learned to poke fun at myself. I quickly realized that people responded better when they were laughing and there was no victim in the humor.

I still seize the opportunity to make people laugh, only now it is with some clown-show antics or silly, corny, kid-type humor.

Once at work, one of my mangers got a promotion. During the meeting announcing her promotion, I ran through the conference room door with pom-poms. The pom-poms were made from the perforated sides of computer paper, and they were bound by rubber bands. As I ran through the conference room, shook the pom-poms in the air and sang a little cheer, congratulating my manager. The entire staff at the meeting began laughing. It took the edge off all of us being called into a meeting, because meetings had been traditionally become something to fear and be nervous about.

As a result of my victimless humor, I have been given the moniker “Sunshine” because I “always bring sunshine to a situation.” I know. It’s corny, and I sometimes find myself thinking, “what, are you crazy? If this is sunshine, then I’d hate to see your gloom and doom.” Instead, I bite my tongue, say a gracious thank you, and feel a little warm, knowing that I brought some happiness to someone’s day. It’s a good feeling knowing you have a positive impact on a person’s day.

It has been through the use of humor, both positive and negative, that I have become who I am today. I still sometimes hide behind my humor, and I often laugh when I am nervous or feel shy. However, for the most part, humor has given me the strength and confidence to be my true self. Humor and laughter have been constants in my life. I often get bored and restless with so many things, but laughter is one of the few things I have never gotten tired of. Humor has helped me make new friends and provided things to share with old friends. Humor has given me strength when I felt the most weak and vulnerable, and it has helped me feed my imagination. Humor is a nice ice breaker, and I can use it to disarm people. It is really difficult for people to be angry and offensive when you make them laugh.

Humor and laughter have been my life boats to jump into when I was drowning, as well as my gun when I was feeling scared and vulnerable. However, humor and laughter have ultimately allowed me to be relatively stress free, friendly, and approachable. It is humor that has been the “twist of lime” in my personality. It is what gives me zing and makes me unique. It is what I have become known for. After all, when people call me silly, crazy, or a nut, I always tell them it must be my dad. You know, he had a big orange Afro, a red bulbous nose, and he wore big floppy shoes.

Nana: Saturday June 26, 1926—Wednesday, July 29, 1992

To some of us, Geraldine Budmark was a mother. To some she was a grandmother, a sister-in-law, or an aunt, and to others a friend. However, to most of us, she was all of these people while bearing the title of one. She was an incredible woman who bestowed upon us many of the most wonderful gifts in life. Not the kind of gifts we can hold in our hands, but the gifts we can forever hold in our hearts. She gave to us her humanity, her compassion, her wisdom, her strength, her unselfishness, and her kindness. But most importantly, she gave us her love. Not ordinary love as we often think of when we hear the word, but unconditional love. Love that is forever. A true love for the people we are within, not for our material wealth.

When she left this life, a part of her entered into all of us and her gifts were even stronger. Now, we must take those gifts graciously and use them the way she would like. We must allow them to help us grow. We must pass them on to others as she passed them on to us. Although we all miss her greatly, she will forever be in our hearts. And although it may not seem fathomable right now, she would not have left us if she thought there would be even one of us who was not strong enough to make it through this. July 29, 1992, was not the day of her death but the day of her birth. Her birth into a new life—a life of infinite peace, love, and happiness. On July 29^th, she became a guardian angel to all of us, and she continues to watch over us, encourage us, and love us unconditionally—just as she did when she was with us physically. Although it pains us to not have her with us in the physical world, we can find comfort in the knowledge that she is now with the angels. She is at peace, and she is happy. Now she can do all the things and visit all the places she once could only do in her dreams. She was a wonderful woman, and she was loved for all that she gave us and all that she was. She will love forever in our hearts and in our memories. I love you, Nana, and I miss you.

Angela S. Henderson

Sunday, August 1, 1992