Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi

Nawal El Saadawi has gained international acclaim as both a psychiatrist and a writer. Despite her village upbringing, she earned a medical degree from the University of Cairo in 1955. Woman at Point Zero developed out of her research on neurosis in Egyptian women during the 1970’s, which led her to interview female prisoners.[1] Yet after reading the story of Firdaus—a woman awaiting her execution after killing a man—the reader is more likely to be afflicted by chills of anxiety than the heroine who transcends it

Half-fact, half-fiction, Woman at Point Zero is, at heart, a fable about male hegemony and abuse with Firdaus as its anything but passive focal point. Growing up a peasant in the Egyptian countryside, she watches her father beat her mother regularly. Her uncle takes her to Cairo after her parents die and sends her to school, but also molests her. “I was trembling all over, seized with a feeling I could not explain, that my uncle’s great long fingers would draw close to me after a little while, and cautiously lift the eiderdown under which I lay.” Her first husband—a man three times her age—beats her “whether he had a reason for it or not.” Bayoumi, a coffeehouse owner, offers her shelter in his flat when she flees her husband, but then locks her in it by day and rapes her by night when she states her intention to find work. There are the countless men she lies beneath as a prostitute, first for the wealthy madam Sharifa Salah el Dine, and then working on her own. There is Ibrahim, the “revolutionary”, who wins her love and spurns it. Lastly, there is Marzouk, a pimp who forces his way into her life and drives her to kill.

Despite its predominantly harsh content, moments of tenderness are present in Woman at Point Zero. One evening, Firdaus is sitting in the playground at her boarding school, contemplating what will happen when she graduates. A teacher discovers her and expresses concern. Without meaning to, Firdaus starts to cry. After a few minutes, she looks up and discovers that her young teacher is crying too, though she attempts to hide it. Shortly before her graduation, Firdaus finds out that she has received a certificate of merit in addition to her diploma; however, no one from her family attends the ceremony to sign for them. When her name is called, the same teacher ascends the stage with her and signs as her guardian so that she can receive her awards. Firdaus never sees the teacher again. In a second instance, when Firdaus overhears her uncle and his wife discussing their plans for her marriage, she considers running away. As she is packing her bags, her youngest cousin discovers her. Unable to understand what she is doing and barely able to talk as a toddler, she can only utter ‘“Daus, Daus”’ as Firdaus flees her uncle’s house. Such moments lend humanity and affection to a narrative that is otherwise starkly bereft of either. That they occur exclusively between female characters underscores the extent to which women are each other’s’ only allies in a world shaped around the desires and expectations of men.

While much of the discussion of the book centers around the behavior of the male characters alongside discussion of Firdaus, the supporting female characters are equally worthy of examination, particularly in terms of how much they are complicit in the violence that Firdaus experiences in her life. It is her mother who subjects her to the ritual of female circumcision, which is carried out by another woman from their village. When Firdaus complains to her uncle about her husband’s beatings, his wife reassures her “that her husband often beat her” and “that […] men well versed in their religion […] beat their wives.” While meeting Sharifa Salah el Dine serves as a climactic moment in the novel in which the expectations of womanhood that have been imposed upon Firdaus are challenged, she reduces her to a pawn in her own scheme for profit. “Day and night I lay on the bed, crucified, and every hour a man would come in.” When a particular man expresses his desire to marry Firdaus, Sharifa becomes indignant, and it is revealed that he once fell in love with another one of her prostitutes and may have been in love with Sharifa at one point. While Sharifa yields to his advances and has sex with him, Firdaus decides to escape the apartment, determined to live on her own. Thus, while compassion is solely the domain of women, it is a scarce resource; in a world that has so little to offer them, the majority of women are reduced to perpetrating violence against and exploiting one another in attempts to raise their status in society.

At its finale, the murder that happens is almost an afterthought. That Firdaus was driven to kill seems inevitable—the man she kills is no more or less deserving of death than any of the other men she has met—rather, it is her evolution as a character that leads her to take his life. “When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife”, Firdaus insists on the eve of her execution. It is a testament to Nawal El Saadawi’s palpable retelling that this “truth” has survived four decades after Firdaus’ life was taken from her.

[1] All biographical information regarding Nawal El Saadawi sourced directly from the book edition.