Woman at Point Zero

“Murderer or not, she’s an innocent woman and does not deserve to be hanged. They are the ones that ought to hang.”

Saadawi meets a female warder at the prison where Firdaus is being held, and the woman vehemently defends Firdaus’s honor. Saadawi isn’t yet sure of the context of this defensiveness, but it’s an early representation of the novella’s experimentation with guilt and innocence and how these concepts are much more subjective than initially realized. Patriarchal domination resulted in Firdaus’s life of abuse, captivity, and fear; for this reason, both she and the warder believe that Firdaus and all other women are innocent of their crimes.

“It looked to me as though this woman who had killed a human being, and was shortly to be killed herself, was a much better person than I. Compared to her, I was nothing but a small insect crawling upon the land amidst millions of other insects.”

Before even meeting Firdaus, Saadawi already feels insignificant and small in comparison to a woman whom she knows must be filled with bravery and spirit. The narrative explores the theme of The Subjectiveness of Guilt and Innocence as Saadawi develops a fast and deep admiration for Firdaus—not despite the fact that she murdered someone but because Firdaus seems totally unafraid. Saadawi metaphorically compares herself and the rest of humanity to insects, given that most haven’t overcome even half of what Firdaus has.

“The sky was blue with a blueness I could capture in my eyes. I held the whole world in my hands; it was mine.”

Firdaus represents all the women of Egypt and around the world who have been subjugated, punished, abused, and held back from the world under the guise of patriarchy. When Saadawi receives the news that Firdaus has finally agreed to meet her, Saadawi feels as if she’s gaining access to something vital to the truth behind all of humanity. Firdaus embodies this truth.

“I saw them as they watched what went on around them with wary, doubting, stealthy eyes, eyes ready to pounce, full of an aggressiveness that seemed strangely servile.”

This phrase repeats several times throughout the novella when Firdaus observes the men around her. Even at a young age, before most of the experiences that shape her worldview, Firdaus already instinctively knows that she must guard herself in some way. Eyes are a recurring symbol illustrating intentions, emotions, and Firdaus’s keen ability to understand people just by looking at them.

“It was as if I could no longer recall the exact spot from which it used to arise, or as though a part of me, of my being, was gone and would never return.”

The first time Firdaus’s uncle molests her, it’s as though she’s suddenly robbed of her inborn ability to feel pleasure from touch. The loving experiences she had with the boy in the field were good memories for Firdaus, and it seems as though her emotions are temporarily revived when she later meets Ibrahim, but for most of her life, she’s no longer able to feel anything resembling sexual pleasure. Eventually, this becomes part of her liberation from desire and hypocrisy, as she’s able to rise above it all and become totally unaffected.

“Back in my father’s house I stared at the mud walls like a stranger who had never entered it before. I looked around almost in surprise, as though I had not been born here, but had suddenly dropped from the skies, or emerged from somewhere deep down in the earth, to find myself in a place where I did not belong, in a home which was not mine, born from a father who was not my father, and from a mother who was not my mother.”

After spending time with her uncle and thinking about what life in Cairo might be like, Firdaus feels as though she no longer belongs with her parents, if she ever did at all. For a long time, Firdaus hates herself for being her parents’ child, and not until she’s much older can she reconcile her anger, forgive her mother, and grieve the loss of her father.

“A sinking feeling went through my body. I neither liked the look of my nose, nor the shape of my mouth. I thought my father had died, yet here he was alive in the big, ugly, rounded nose. My mother, too, was dead, but continued to live in the form of this thin-lipped mouth. And here I was unchanged, the same Firdaus, but now clad in a dress, and with shoes on her feet.”

After living a life of extreme deprivation, Firdaus looks in the mirror for the first time when she moves with her uncle to Cairo. She doesn’t like what she sees because her appearance reminds her of her parents, and she wants desperately to let go of that part of her life. The symbolism of Firdaus’s appearance relates to her slow transformation from a girl who despises herself and fears the world to a woman who props herself above it all.

“My face was turned towards her, and my eyes looked into her eyes: two rings of pure white, surrounding two circles of intense black, that looked out at me. As I continued to gaze into them, the white seemed to turn even whiter, and the black even blacker, as though light flowed through them from some unknown magical source which was neither on the earth, nor in the heavens, for the earth was enveloped in the cloak of night, and the heavens had no sun nor moon to give them light.”

Eyes are an important symbol in the novella, and the imagery of the black-and-white eyes repeats three times: once when Firdaus, as a child, looks at her mother, once when Firdaus shares a moment with Miss Iqbal, and again when she shares a similar moment with Ibrahim. In these moments of staring into the eyes of Miss Iqbal and Ibrahim, Firdaus falls in love; sadly, her love isn’t returned in either case, but this lack of reciprocation only builds her sense of agency in a world that seems to only use and reject her.

“The sudden contact made my body shiver with a pain so deep that it was almost like pleasure, or a pleasure so deep that it bordered on pain. It was a remote pleasure, buried in such far away depths that it seemed to have arisen a very long time ago, longer than the length of memory, older than the remembered years of life’s journey.”

Saadawi’s writing frequently features repetition, alliteration, and emotional imagery. In this instance, Firdaus touches Miss Iqbal’s hands for the second time, and feels within her a deep sense of love and need. Throughout her life, Firdaus’s experiences of pain and pleasure intermix, and eventually she loses the ability to feel anything but pride in herself for remaining resilient through it all. The few times that she does experience joy and pleasure in her life, it isn’t only fleeting but seems to come from elsewhere rather than within her.

“She replied that it was precisely men well versed in their religion who beat their wives. The precepts of religion permitted such punishment. A virtuous woman was not supposed to complain about her husband. Her duty was perfect obedience.”

The first time that Firdaus’s husband (by arranged marriage), Mahmoud, violently beats her, she turns to her uncle and his wife for support. Instead, she’s met with cruel apathy, as her uncle’s wife has seemed to fully accept the patriarchal stance that a woman’s position in life is being subservient under patriarchal domination. During her life, Firdaus observes that this need to dominate is in many ways tied to religious dogma, and religious ideas are often hypocritically twisted to serve desires and excuse cruel behavior.

“I ran out of Bayoumi’s house and into the street. For the street had become the only safe place in which I could seek refuge, and into which I could escape with my whole being.”

Countless times in her life, Firdaus is forced out onto the street by the brutality of a man. Eventually, she reaches a point where she can trust no one and feels safer on the street caring only about herself than left vulnerable to a man claiming to protect her. The dark irony of her circumstances speaks to the extent of pain that she endured.

“The black pupils in the center of her eyes seemed to have turned green, a powerful dark green, like the trees on the bank of the Nile. The waters of the river reflected the green of the trees and flowed by as green as her eyes.”

Sharifa’s eyes seem to reflect the world around her, as if it has shaped and imprinted upon her a sort of attitude that only women hardened to life can embody. Eyes are a recurring symbol that the narrative uses often and in different ways: One is to illustrate Firdaus’s ability to read and understand others through their eyes; the eyes also represent the connection that she feels to others. In this instance, Firdaus feels connected to Sharifa because they’ve both endured pain at the hands of men and have both remained resilient. Sharifa becomes the woman to teach Firdaus the value of letting go of emotion and of biting the world before it can bite her.

“Can the Nile, and the sky, and the trees change? I had changed, so why not the Nile and the color of the trees?”

The setting of Cairo reflects Firdaus’s changing emotional state. As she learns from Sharifa about a different type of woman—one who doesn’t allow men to abuse her—she feels herself changing and experiencing a desire to have the same power over men that they once had over her.

"From that day onwards I ceased to bend my head or to look away. I walked through the streets with my head held high, and my eyes looking straight ahead.”

After earning her first 10-pound note, Firdaus sits in a cafe pondering the nature of money (a recurring motif) and its relationship to power and domination. She notices that the waiter treats her with cautious respect, avoiding looking at her plate or directly at the money in her hand—an experience that’s the complete opposite of what she’s used to. After this moment, Firdaus’s attitude toward her own sense of agency changes: She realizes that all she needs to earn the respect of others is money.

“Wherever I went the words clung to me cold and sticky like spit, like the spit of an insult echoing in the ear, like the spit of insolent eyes over my naked body, like the spit of all the degrading words I had heard ringing in my ears at one or other time, like the spit of all the brazen eyes that undressed me and examined my nakedness with a slow insolence, like the spit of courteous eyes that looked aside as I shed my clothes, hiding their contempt under a respectful guise.”

In this extended simile, Firdaus compares the phrase “not respectable,” uttered by a man who was making use of her services, to something most offensive and disgusting. It’s as if the words cling to her, infest her, and assault her. She hadn’t previously considered sex work a disrespectable profession but now suddenly becomes determined to find what society deems proper work.

“I came to realize that a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life. An employee is scared of losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute’s life is in fact better than hers. She pays the highest price for things of the lowest value. I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one.”

While Firdaus is working in an office job, male executives regularly proposition her in exchange for raises and other benefits. She always declines, considering it an insult to her dignity to accept their pathetically low offers. After three years of this, and of considering how many other women apparently must agree to such propositions, Firdaus realizes that every woman is exchanging her body to get ahead or even just to survive. She believes that patriarchal domination results in an inescapable expectation for women to trade dignity and self-worth for pennies. Shortly after this, Firdaus decides to return to sex work because she feels that if she’s going to trade her body for money, she may as well be paid reasonably and have agency to control her own life.

“My heart faltered, overcome by its frightened almost frenzied beating because of something I had just lost, or was on the point of losing forever.”

When Firdaus falls in love with Ibrahim, she experiences a repetition of events in which she falls instantly and deeply and is swiftly rejected and forgotten. Because of these negative experiences, she buries her ability to love deep within herself, shutting it out and denying it to herself and the world.

“To protect my deeper, inner self from men, I offered them only an outer shell. I kept my heart and soul, and let my body play its role, its passive, inert, unfeeling role. I learnt to resist by being passive, to keep myself whole by offering nothing, to live by withdrawing to a world of my own.”

In order to survive her life as a sex worker, Firdaus must distance herself completely from the work. She retreats from her own body, letting it take over and perform its services, never giving herself, her emotions, or her desire to any man she services. Firdaus’s ability to separate herself from desire is, in her opinion, what allows her to be free.

“I was like a woman walking through an enchanted world to which she did not belong. She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it. She experiences the rare pleasure of having no ties with anyone, of having broken with everything, of having cut all relations with the world around her, of being completely independent and living her independence completely, of enjoying freedom from any subjection to a man, to marriage, or to love; of being divorced from all limitations whether rooted in rules and laws in time or in the universe.”

After experiencing the pangs of rejection when Ibrahim doesn’t love her, Firdaus quits her job and wanders out into the familiar streets. There, she finds peace with the prospect of living as a sex worker because it will allow her the agency that she so desperately needs. She feels as though she has grown far beyond everything, so that nothing can touch or affect her; even when she’s sentenced to death, Firdaus remains unaffected.

“All women are prostitutes of one kind or another.”

Firdaus’s opinion of the dynamics between men and women, and how patriarchal domination serves only to harm women and empower men, is extreme but not without cause. Throughout her life, she has been subjected to all varieties of cruelties and abuses, and from her perspective, every woman alive is being used by men in some way.

“It was as though I was destroying all the money I had ever held, my father’s piastre, my uncle’s piastre, all the piastres I had ever known, and at the same time destroying all the men I had ever known, one after the other in a row.”

When an Arab prince pays Firdaus 3,000 pounds for her services, she suddenly becomes emboldened and deeply frustrated, tearing up the money before his eyes. In this symbolic gesture, Firdaus rejects the sexual attention that she has received throughout her life. For much of her adult life, Firdaus ironically pursued money and power just as the men whom she despised did. She holds this power over them until her last day, refusing to live or to fear death.

“I am speaking the truth. And truth is savage and dangerous.”

Firdaus notes that she didn’t kill her pimp with a knife but with truth—the truth that led her to lose her fear, the truth that led her to see how patriarchal domination affected Egyptian women, and the truth that helped her rise above all rules, expectations, and ideals.

“I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die. I want nothing. I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. Therefore I am free. For during life it is our wants, our hopes, our fears that enslave us.”

Firdaus feels she has overcome everyone and everything that ever held her down by no longer having any concern for it or allowing it to affect her in any way. These repetitively phrased affirmations become a mantra for Firdaus, which she says to herself as a reminder of why she has chosen freedom over all else. She frees herself from desire and hypocrisy forever.