Chapter Seventeen
________________________
What Are the Origins of Woman?
It is He who created you from a single person, and made his mate of like nature, in order that he might live with her in love. When they are united, she bears a light burden and carries it about unnoticed. When she grows heavy, they both pray to Allah their Lord, saying: “If you give us a goodly child, we vow we shall ever be grateful.” (Koran, 7:189)
What then are the origins of woman? All the stories have her born of man’s clay or man’s rib. But she gives birth to men, rather than men giving birth to her. Can all the oldest stories be wrong?
The new science says we first came out of water, and our ancestors, odd fish from the salt sea, flopped onto shore on stubby fins like legs and with rudimentary lungs breathed the sulfurous air before retreating to the ocean. And, oh, we liked the air! More and more often we stumbled ashore and stayed longer and longer, so that eventually some of our old folks stayed behind when the tide withdrew, making a life free of the vagaries of the tides and subject to the new light of the sun and the cool reflections of the moon.
But clay? But ape? But man?
All these stories whirling about on the fumes of a newly explosive land, where after the heat settled and the chemistry of place set in tiny green plants clung to the rocks and small insects whirred through air warmed by fire. First clay? First ape? Did we all come from clay and then did woman break free of man’s clay and become a creature of her own? Or did the salt sea creature with lungs one morning a million million years ago ascend a tree as fish and descend some millions of years later as ape?
What are the origins of woman?
The first upright female wondered, turning her liquid eye to the moon, and breathed a sound of surprise.
What are the origins of man?
The first upright male turned his blinking eye to the sun, and looked away, down at his shadow.