The eyes of the beholder

By Fayza Hassan
There was a time when I refused to look at myself in old photographs. I found the reminder embarrassing. I was no longer that child in the picture, I told myself. I wanted to forget the spectacle of my large body and round face. My clothes, my hair, and later my makeup had been all wrong, and although I clearly saw it then, there was little I could have done about it. Youngsters in those days were not permitted to worry too much about their physical attributes. A submissive character and assiduous attention to one's studies were the only traits valued. It was different now; I had grown up and managed to improve considerably the hand dealt to me by nature. I needed no reminders of the clumsy girl I had been for the first 20 years of my life.
Once, just before I married, my mother gave me a pile of our childhood pictures -- my share of the family's memories, she said. We went through them together. Those of the first few years showed a little girl in elaborately embroidered dresses, with little face showing, more hair than child, heralding the unending battles I have had to wage against my unruly mop.
There were more black-and-white snapshots of our summers in Alexandria, where I featured as an awkward, fast-growing pre-teen, with scarred knees and a long, heavy tress dangling on either side of my fat face. Others showed the whole family vacationing in Cyprus, Switzerland, France or Italy, with mountains or sea in the background. My father had taken those: my mother looked tall and slender, always elegant in her high heels; my brother smiled shyly, while my skinny sister invariably made faces at the camera. I always hid behind my siblings, in the vain hope of minimising my hefty size, my chubby cheeks quite visible nevertheless over their heads.
One of those photographs painfully reminded me of an instance when I had been very much aware of my shortcomings. It was taken on the deck of a ship at the beginning of the school holidays, right after I had obtained my baccalaureate. Many of my classmates were going to France with their families on that particular voyage. In the picture, Michele, my best friend of the moment and the most beautiful girl in the world, I thought then, is leaning against a pole, wearing Capri pants and a smart little shirt with an upturned collar. Her long, smooth blond hair is blowing in the wind. Robert, a teacher at the school, the object of my admiration, but whose heart is taken by Michele, is wearing dark shades and looks very romantic. They are talking to each other and look like a couple. Further away, and to Robert's left, I have hoisted my heavy self onto the railing -- undoubtedly to show that I was light enough to do it -- and am obviously doing my best to look happy. My inordinately large smile is a give-away, however. "Look at my thighs," I told my mother as she passed me the photo. "I didn't have a hope in the world of attracting anyone, let alone Robert, who was so picky." She disagreed. Mothers generally do.
I had not been pleased with her gift at the time. As a soon-to-be-married woman who had finally managed to overcome many of her physical flaws, I was in the process of editing my painful adolescence out of my life. I needed no mementoes. My future husband, on the other hand was delighted. It gave him an insight into my personality, he said, and, as I was soon to find out, the occasion to remind me that I had not been such a great catch after all. It also inspired him to buy a camera. I own half a dozen albums that retrace the various steps of my children's lives.
My older daughter recently claimed her share of that lot. She is blessed with a total absence of self-doubt and was overly pleased with the selection I sent her. With the younger one, it is different. "Oh yuck," she wails whenever she sees me leafing through an album. "Hide those, I don't want a living soul to see me. How could you have let me look like that?"
These days, I have revised my opinion of our family's photos. Age has a tendency to mellow the past and soften the wounds. I no longer hate myself. I look at Michele in the yellowing print and notice that she had a prominent jaw and an overly narrow forehead. My own appearance, on the other hand, seems to have improved somewhat. I was not that fat, just healthy looking, I tell myself; and Robert's hair was already thinning. I catch myself smiling wistfully at the memories. "You were absolutely stunning," I tell my daughter with confidence. In time, she will come to accept herself and feel good about the many different people she has been.
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