Being naked is no longer the same.
Growing up in a conservative household, one of the reasons I feel at home in Egypt, is the fact that both the Dutch and Egyptians believe being naked should be confined to the bathroom. Not having any brothers I was completely oblivious to the fact there was an anatomical difference between men and women. I thought the doctor presiding over the delivery was the one making that distinction. My father was teasing me one day about being the third girl in the family—according to him I should have been a boy. I told him primly that he should have taken it up with the doctor instead of complaining to me. My notion up to that moment was that birth had something to do with a bed, a mother, sheets, some noise and then the doctor holding up a baby and saying: ‘It is a Girl!’
When my father stopped laughing he sent me to my mom for an obviously overdue explanation. She dwelled on physical differences, but forgot to inform me that private parts are exactly that. This innocent but important lesson became clear the next day when I asked a boy in my class if I could see what he had and I didn’t [his pipi]. The teacher sat me down to fill in that void in my knowledge after one terrified boy ran to her, screaming about my bad behaviour. I was quickly forgiven, in the end I was only five years old. But I learned that lesson well.
Fourteen years later I found myself confronted with having to breach that barrier when I had to give my first patient a sponge bath. I was a young student nurse and part of my training was giving patients basic care. After one of the most uncomfortable half hours in my life thus far, I left with a very valuable realisation: no matter how awkward I felt about seeing a patient naked, they were much more embarrassed than I was. This did not mean it was smooth sailing from then on; nursing still had some very interesting surprises for me in store.
Responding to a buzzer in a room full of men I was told by a newly admitted, heavily moustached, bedridden patient minus one appendix that he needed to pee. I left to get him a urinal, a bottle that could hang on the side of his bed, only to be told on my return that ‘that would not work’. Asking me to close the curtains around his bed he lifted the covers. He was right; peeing in a bottle was not something he could do, not yet anyway. Besides having no appendix, this patient was also halfway through the transformation from woman into man, and the half that was untouched was most certainly female. It is not often that I find myself at a loss for words, or blush, but that most definitely was one of those times.
Working as a nurse for many years confronted me with naked-ness in many of its forms: unmasked pain in someone’s eyes at the death of a loved one, the unveiled joy at birth, or naked longing for good news when the results of the tests are in.
As I grow older and life enriches me with more experiences, the meaning of being naked for me has shifted from losing one’s clothes to being without a façade. Not that I now recommend happily going around in the nude, the social mores of Egypt bode with mine quite well. Life has nonetheless taught me that it is not always a good idea to show people exactly who you are from the first moment you meet them. Mind you, I don’t pretend to be what I am not, but a little social veneer makes life go smoother and stops me from getting hurt easily.
Living in a different culture does not always make it easy to keep the balance between being who I am while fitting in a society that is in many ways so different from what I was used to. It has taken time to understand the rules, learn what façades people are prone to wear, and how to interpret the words beneath the words.
I have learned that some things are true no matter what nationality you have. The more experienced we become at dealing with life while showing who we really are, the more we long for a place where we can truly be ourselves.
The feeling that I can be safely naked, as in be who I am, warts and all, with a trusted girlfriend or the man I love, is one I treasure. It makes all the fuss about showing skin seem silly. When being naked is being without defences, it is much more intimate than being undressed could ever be.
