Nawal El Sadawi was an Egyptian feminist writer, political activist, and physician. She has written many books on women in Islam, their suppression in the name of religion, and their discrimination on gender basis. This novel is a memoir of her non-fiction writings. Firdous is the protagonist of the novel 'women at point zero', a prisoner in the Qanatir prison. She is the primary narrator of the story. She is the actual woman whom Nawal El Sadawi’ met in the Qanatir prison when she was researching the prison abilities of a group of women prisoners accused of various offenses.
At the beginning of the novel Firdous appears as a silent character who does
not want to meet anyone and when the author shows her desire to meet a
She refuses to meet the author because she suspects that 'Nawal El
Sadawi' is a member of the authorities. Firdous has been imprisoned in 'Qanatir
prison' as she has killed a man and she feels no guilt for her crime. The author suspects that Firdous is accused of a crime, but she is not a criminal. She says,
“To be honest, I do not feel she is a murderer. If you look into
her face, her eyes, you will not believe that so gentle a woman can commit
murder.”
Firdous is a young woman who tells her life story to the author who is a secondary narrator of the novel. She tells
her how as a child she survived and from her childhood since now what sort of
life she has spent. By birth she belongs to a lower middle class, from her
Secondary School Certificate she comes from a middle class, and afterward,
when she becomes a prostitute, she puts up expensive clothes and makeup making her appearance as if she belongs to an upper-class family.
She is innocent by nature but her sufferings and society's behaviors change her into a cold-blooded and thick-hearted woman.
In her childhood, she was deprived
of parental love. Her father used to offer 'Friday prayers' and being a
religious person, he beats up his wives. He was not interested in his children,
he never took interest in children’s hunger rather he used to satiate his stomach or hunger. Once Firdous; asked her father for a coin but he beat her
and gave her brutal punishments. He was harsh towards her but gentle towards
money as he never played with his children rather he preferred to play with coins
and money to feel pleasure. His children go to sleep without eating anything
but her wife saves food for him. He beats his wives over female children and loves them when he becomes the father of a male child.
Firdous in her life does not
get anything from her father except a ‘piastre’ after doing labor work as
a child,
“On the occasion of the Eed El
Sagheer, I said to my father,” “Give me a piastre”. He said, “ Do you ask for a
piastre? Go and clean under the animals and load the ass and take her to the
fields. At the end of the day, I shall give you a piastre’. And, when I
returned from the fields at the end of the day, he gave me the piastre.”
Her mother also beaten when she
lost a piastre in the market. She learned that money is much more valuable and
reverent than a human being.
In her childhood, her friend
‘Mohammadain’ played with her “Bride and Bridegroom”. He used to play with her
until sexually assaulted her until his father called him from the fields to go home
now. After her father's death, her ‘uncle’ took her with him built up a sexual
relationship with her, and then sent her to a school. Her life of deprive of
true parental love and when her uncle marries a rich woman, she becomes
unbearable for her and her uncle puts her into a school hostel. She started reading books in the library and read a lot of books on History and Rulers. She
comes to know that,
“ I discovered that all these
rulers were men. Whatever they had in common was an avaricious and distorted
personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex, and unlimited power”
Her goal is to become a doctor, an
engineer, or a leader. Once at night when she is sitting in darkness her
teacher 'Miss Iqbal' approaches her and asked her and asks her why she is
sitting alone and what sort of problem
she has. S he feels deep intimacy with her and finds a ray of motherly love. However, after that meeting, she does not give her any specialty and treats her
like all the other students. On the day of the ‘Prize distribution ceremony’ no one
came to receive her prize she gained a second position in school and seventh countrywide’, Miss Iqbal came to the stage to receive it. after that day,
she did not see her and bade farewell to the school.
She returns to her uncle's house,
where there is no room for her and she sleeps on a sofa outside their bedroom.
All the day she has to work in the kitchen and take care of her aunt and her
child but she remains unhappy with her.
For huge money in dowry, they fix her marriage to a sixty-year-old man “Sheikh Mahmoud”. She decides to flee from home and experiences an extremely unfavorable environment for a lonely girl outside the home. She again runs back to her uncle's house. She accepts her fortune and marries Sheikh Mahmoud’. He used to live with her 24/7 hours and beat her up on minor mistakes. She cannot eat well with him as he keeps an eye on her plate all the time. She complains to her Uncle about his husband’s harsh treatment, and he simply tells her, that all men often beat their wives, her wife says,
“It was precisely men well versed
in their religion who beat their wives. AA virtuous woman was not supposed to
complain about her husband. Her duty was perfect obedience.”
Eventually, she decides to leave
him to get rid of oppression and violence. She runs from home and reaches a
cafe-house where she asks a waiter for water and the manager of the cafe-house
takes her to his home and provides her refuge. She sees his real face when she
tells him that she will soon leave him to find a job. He exposes himself by
revealing his hideous attention towards her, slapped on her face, beating her
severely and he seduces her daily and his friends are also her rapists. His name is
“Bayoumi”. She escapes from his house by taking help from a neighbor woman and
flees from Bayoumi' s flat and is once again caught by a policeman at night, who
seduces her by promising money and does not give even a single penny.
A woman named “Sharifa Salah El
Din” comes to her and tells her how precious and expensive Firdous is. She
takes her with her home and makes her a prostitute. Sharifa tells her that,
“They’re all the same, all sons of
dogs, running around under various names. MAHMOUD, Hassanein, FAWZY, Sobri,
Ibrahim, Awadain, Bayoumi.”
‘Sharifa’ uses her as an item,
and generates a huge amount by selling her body. FIRDOUS is a victim of a
brutal society where is is used as an entity by both sexes, but majorly her
dignity is exploited by men. Her innocence fades, and ‘Sharifa” advises her
that,
“You must be harder than life,
Firdous. Life is very hard. The only people who live are those who are
harder than life itself.”
Prostitution was her profession and
she never gave extra time to any of her customers. A journalist, whose name is "Di'a" sarcastically says to her that her work is like a clinic and she is like
a doctor. The main difference is doctor's profession is ‘respectful’ whereas her
profession is not respectable. The words are not respectable and are like a knife to
her ears and head. She flees from there and finds a job in a reputed company.
There she observes the exploitation of female employees by the higher officials
or authorities.
“I came to realize that a female
employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is losing her life.”
She is considered the most respectable employee in the office because she has gained nothing by sleeping with higher authorities
One night when she stands alone in
the office front ground, one of her fellow employees, ‘Ibrahim’ came forward to her, and asks the reason for her sadness. When she tells him nothing, she
feels tears in her eyes, however, she feels the same vibes that she had in the
company of Miss Iqbal’.
“I could feel it somewhere in my
being, like a part which had been born with me when I was born, but had not grown with me when I had grown. Or like something I had known before being
born and left behind.”
“Ibrahim” is a short, stocky man, with rather fizzy
black hair and black eyes. She falls in love with him and he is the first man
to whom she falls in love in her whole life. After that night they do not talk
to each other but inwardly her love for him grows. She does
not express her love. He is the Chairman of a revolutionary committee and raises
his voice for justice and abolition of privileges enjoyed by management as
compared to the worker.
One day when is waiting for a bus,
‘Ibrahim’ comes near to her and asks whether she will go directly to her home or
would like to take him somewhere for a while, She replies that she wants to
take him. He expresses his feelings to her and the same she does.
Firdous becomes relaxed after falling
in love with him. One of her colleagues asks her that there is an inner glow on
your face, what is the reason behind that glow and she tells her that she is in
love and the glow on her face is the glow of love. Her colleague replies to
her,
"Your poor, deluded woman, do
you believe that is any such thing as love?"
Firdous doesn't believe in her arguments and ignores her. She does her
level best to defend Ibrahim as he is looked at like other men, but his nature is
different. He is fine and revolutionary.
He is the only one from whom she can feel love vibes and to whom she is impressed because he is fighting for
Justice. She replies to her colleague,
"But he's a revolutionary.
He's fighting for us and for all those who are deprived of a decent life."
Her colleague further argues with
her and speaks to her that what he is saying is not true and you are living in
illusions. But Firdous ignores her. She was shocked on the l day when she
observes that Ibrahim behaving like a stranger and does not recognize her in
the party crowd. The words she listens to in the crowd are like knives to her ears
and head. She hears that,
"He got engaged to the chairman's daughter yesterday. He's a clever
lad. And deserves whatever good fortune may come to him. He has a bright future
to look forward to, and will rise quickly in the company ."
She leaves the office that day with a broken heart and runs through the streets. She is like a dead body because there is no desire, fear, or hope left in her body. As a prostitute, she has fallen from the status of human being but it is the love that makes her a human being. But it is the love that gives her dignity back and that helps her to forget her miserable past. It is the love that gives her a new life. But now she has nothing, with the loss of love, she has lost everything.
I fear nothing, I am free."
Ibrahim was also an illusion. He
was also like the other men. He has
deceived her,
" Revolutionary men with
principles were not really different from the rest. Revolution for them is like
see for us. Something to be abused. Something to be sold."
She is different from the word dignity. So she starts prostitution once
again. This time she becomes a successful prostitute. She asks for money of her
choice as well as the quality of time that she lets anyone touch her. Once
a politician from a foreign state came to her country and he wanted her but she
refused. Local officials threaten her and
Police come to arrest her because she's doing prostitution. She hires a
lawyer and spends over him heaps of money and court releases her as a 'Respectable
Woman's. She learns that everything is possible through money.
"Now I had learned that honour required large sums of money to protect it, but this large sums of money
couldn't obtained without losing one's honour."
She is much experienced at that
time and has learnt many lesson from life. She learns that her profession is
created by men, not by women. Furthermore, all women are prostitutes of men,
women are married and they give themselves to men at cheaper prices they
also suffer from male dominance, violence injustice, and oppression like their
mothers as she herself experienced as a wife of Sheikh Mahmoud. Prostitutes are
free in their choices and they give themselves at higher prices.
"I preferred to be a free
prostitute, rather than one enslaved woman."
Then another man whose name is 'Marzouk'
Comes to her and speaks to her that
he is a pimp and he is here to protect her. She refuses and says that she needs
not to be protected by a pimp, he proposes to her but she rejects his proposal. He
is dangerous in the sense that him
lot of prostitutes work and he has connections with higher authorities,
doctors, lawyers, and everywhere.
"I realized (that)I was not
nearly as free as I had hitherto imagined myself to be."
He argues with her for hours but
she refuses to become his slave as to her a woman should be free and she is
free. When the pimp finds her obstinate and sees that she is going to leave the
apartment and find a job through her secondary school certificate, he slaps her, but now she has no fear of
anything. She raises her hand higher than his and slaps back
on his face with her full power. He has a knife in his pocket but she is
quicker than him and snatches his knife from her pocket.
"I raised the knife and buried
it deep into his neck, pulled it out of his neck and then thrust it deep into
his chest, pulled it out of his chest and plunged it deep into his belly., I
stuck the knife into almost every part of his body. "
Finally, she kills him and goes
into the street. She is walking like a princess hence, she is relaxed, peaceful, and free. A foreign prince comes near to her in a luxurious car and asks her
for sex. She demands three thousand and he accepts it. When he gives her
money, she shatters it into pieces. The Arab prince is shocked by her actions
and thinks that she is a princess but he considers her a
prostitute. She tells him that she is not a prostitute and her father is king
by his actions, but he doesn't teach her how to kill someone. She abruptly
slaps him and he becomes afraid of her. He begins shouting for help and his
guards call the police and she is arrested by the Police immediately. Police have cuffed her and
put her into prison. They call her a criminal and she replies,
"My mother was not a criminal.
No woman can be a criminal. To be criminal one must be a man."
She further says that,
" I am saying that you are criminal, all of you: the father, the
uncles, the husbands, the pimps, the lawyers, the doctors, the Journalists and
all men of all professions."
happily embraces the gallows. Nawal
El Sadawi says,
"Her voice was not silent, but
it's echo remained in my ears,"
She further says that,
"I realized that Firdous had
more courage than I."
To conclude, we can say that 'Woman at Point Zero' is a voice of oppressed, suppressed, and exploited women, who have no hope of getting justice from men. Firdous is the representative of an Arabian woman minority, who is disappointed by her society. She is the voice of truth that is harsh. She is the woman to whom death is more pleasurable but life is strangled. She is the voice that echoes how women's dreams are buried in the ground eventually making a woman harder than men, and their fearlessness leads them to end their innocence to kill any man. She is a character who has exposed the moral corruption of men and exposes how men misuse their authority to let down women by raping them just for the sake of their pleasure and honour.
