The Girl in the Mirror

yasmin Safieddine

Ten more minutes. Again, she had instructed herself, gripping the pen in her hand like a dagger, tight enough for the blade to draw crimson: ten more minutes. Ten minutes had died and been shaken awake again; ten minutes had been rebirthed, pushed to twenty, drawn out to thirty.

Salma’s eyes wandered to her white bedroom wall, noticing for the first time its unpolished coat. Who had painted this room? When? Had it always been this dismal shade of empty, sad white? In a strange and disorientating illusion, Salma felt herself fall, as she stared, captivated, at this white wall, this black hole, this gaping void.

With a jarring creak, Salma scraped her chair against the floor, staggering to her feet. Her throat was sore with the ache of ignored thirst. Ten more minutes. She couldn’t do it anymore. Her skin felt as dry as her throat, her eyelids as heavy as her legs. When she stood, she swayed, with the uncertainty of a prisoner, daylight-starved. Her feet felt like sandpaper, and, at the same time, like nothing at all; like she was hovering inside a cloud, one festooned with thorns. 

An hour ago, Salma had the urgent need to shower. Now the time told her it would have to be a swift affair, for already she was starved of sleep. There was no chance for her aching limbs to seek refuge in the soothing, numbing weight of hot water and rising steam. She just had to get rid of this withered feeling. 

Her feet skittered across the carpet as she hopped out of her school trousers. Next, she attempted to tug off her shirt, grumbling when she realised she had forgotten to unbutton it. Stubbornly, she made several fruitless endeavours to yank it free; when she recognised such a fuss might tear off her eyeballs, she gave up. 

Salma hated being naked. It was a kind of humiliating thing which she never gave herself space to dissect, and besides, there was nobody she could reveal this to. It was like a burning secret, her nakedness, despite the fact she was, undeniably, not the only person in the world to have a bare body—a bare female body. It was an unspoken, unthought custom for Salma to rip her eyes away from the mirror, cheeks flaming, if she caught sight of the curves of her breasts, or the dark spot between her thighs. The last time she had looked, really looked at her naked body, was some few weeks or months ago. It was the kind of incident she attempted to scrub from memory, like a blotch of ink; such attempts were always futile, however. 

A different memory swam to the surface of Salma’s mind, bubbling up with a haunting reverberation: her mother’s voice. Salma, you are looking different. 

How, Mama? Salma had asked, tensing. She remembered feeling affronted, attacked, alarmed. Different, how? Her shoulders had hardened to slabs of rock, two boulders fastened at her sides. Her skin had gone hot, burning. 

I told you, you haven’t been eating. You look—skinny.

Timidly, Salma shuffled towards the full length mirror in her bedroom. It was tucked away inside her wardrobe, safely hidden from regular viewing, much to her relief. In those rare and unfortunate moments where Salma glimpsed her reflection, she was quick to avert her gaze, like Medusa staring into her own eyes. 

The stranger hunched in front of her mirror, unclothed and unable to steady her thundering heart, and her shivering. 

First, she began at her head, grimacing whenever her eyes darted towards her breasts. 

From a young age, Salma had been routinely complimented on her luscious curls, thick and dark in a spectacular array of chocolate ringlets. Salma had first straightened her hair when she was twelve years old, in a bizarre attempt to court the attention of a crush. Whilst his eyes did not linger on her, despite her much evolved appearance, her mother’s eyes had, cloudy with disapproval. Her hair had been thin and shapeless, and her small face seemed to shrink now that they were not framed with curtains of dense curls. Her crush’s ignorance, coupled with her mother’s distaste, had made Salma feel foolish and humiliated: she had never straightened her hair again. 

Yet, despite her allegiance, the stranger in the mirror did not have a jungle of curls nestled atop her head. Where there had been curls, Salma found limp, thin strands of hair, that slipped free from their prison with ease when Salma gently pulled at some. Horror plastered itself plainly onto her face as she watched a clump of dead hair sink to the ground, as though in defeat—miserably. 

Eventually Salma decided to wrap her breasts with her arms, to stifle her curiosity. That was when she noticed how bony they were. Her elbows jutted out like weapons protruding from her body. She felt sick analysing them, pulling them away, catching sight of her body, as her mother had pointed out, sloping. She had always thought of herself as someone quite podgy, with an obvious albeit timid stomach, and a rectangular shape. She had heard the phrase—hourglass. She was no hourglass, no curvy goddess. She was more like an awkward deer, tumbling over its own legs, hunched over, eyes to the ground, uncomfortable in its own skin, unsure of how to command anything close to elegance or poise. 

Certainly, Salma was still awkward, her familiar hunch pushing her shoulders forwards so she gave the impression that she might fall over at any second. Yet, even with her grotesque posture, a new and bizarre truth—a new body—reflected back at Salma, undeniably, unbelievably, in her full-length mirror. She was slim. She had no stomach. Below her breasts, her shape began to slope—no, it rushed to slope, veering off course with dangerous acceleration, dipping inwards suddenly, before spilling outwards again at her hips. Where she once had a small belly, she found only a flat pane. Even when she forced herself to exhale, the pane did not inflate into anything bigger, no round and adolescent shape, no ball of fat. 

The awkward, podgy, tall teenager called Salma Al-Alwani was now looking at a living, breathing doll. Not the faintest flicker of doubt dared to ignite itself in Salma’s mind, to distract her from this unexplainable, unfathomable new belief. 

Salma had never worn heels before because her mother told her she was too tall. ‘Who would marry a girl so tall?’ she bemoaned. Salma grimaced at the word, marry. ‘You’d threaten your husband’s masculinity—just by standing next to him!’ 

Despite her mother’s initial demurral, Salma had to wear heels to the first and only wedding she would ever attend, some few months ago. This fateful night would cement itself as one of the worst events of her life, with the reasons ranging from traditional symptoms of social anxiety and its odious consequences, to that wicked disposition of a young woman’s crumbling self-esteem. 

Salma tottered in her heels, stumbling with almost every step, cheeks flushed in humiliation and twisted agony, head bowed so her eyes ogled the ground. When she was forced to hover awkwardly in photos, squeezed between her two older sisters, she did not linger afterwards to examine and pick apart the photographs, as they did. That night, when she crawled into bed, she found she could not silence the buzzing storm. She opened her phone and stared at the photos of a girl with a strained smile, and a stomach that bulged in her tight coral dress, and a back arched so low she could see the tops of her breasts peeking out from under her dress. 

When had that bulge disappeared? When had she lost so much weight? She didn’t dare pull out the scale from under her mother’s bed, didn’t dare to confront the truth, beyond what she could see in this mirror. How much weight had she lost? 

At least I haven’t gained any weight, thought Salma, before instantly grimacing, guilt squeezing her organs and shaking her. She felt herself shying away from a traitorous feeling that burned in her (missing) belly. Some kind of exhilarating, lustful hum, a feeling she did not recognise. Salma, who hated to acknowledge her reflection, was drinking in this painting, watching intently the woman who gazed back at her. Salma, who dubbed herself a feminist, and fervently dismissed contradictory and damaging notions preached to young girls like herself, was drinking in the sight before her, blushing with pride as she ogled her curves and her new shape. Hourglass—not quite, but almost. 

Stop it, demanded another voice. She tore herself away from her mirror—albeit with thick reluctance—and staggered towards her bathroom. As she stepped into the shower, she felt her thoughts, briefly, charge backwards in the direction of her studies, plastering her eyes to the invisible memory of calculations lining a computer screen. The scalding water forced these thoughts into silence, and Salma thought, perhaps, she was free now. 

With an impulsive tenderness, Salma raked her hands over her body, and felt her burning, soaked shape slope under her palms. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling sick and, treasonously, elated.