Background:
Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian psychiatrist, activist, scholar, and public figure. She previously worked as Director General for Public Health Education in Egypt starting in 1966. However, she lost her position in 1972 following governmental pressure to remove her from her role. Following her unemployment, El Saadawi furthered her personal research on the lives (and oppressions) of Arabic women. It was this research that lead to her writing Woman at Point Zero which was published in Beirut in 1973. El Saadawi was imprisoned in 1981 for speaking out against then Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, only released after his assasination. Much of Nawal El Saadawi’s activism focused on the mental and physical health of Arab women, she spoke out frequently about the harmful practice of female genital mutilation, which she survived as a young girl herself. In March of 2021, Nawal El Saadawi passed away in Cairo at the age of 89.
Woman at Point Zero is described as a work of creative nonfiction, it states in the foreword by Miriam Cookethat that “it does not matter if this story is true, or made up, or a bit of both (which it is)”. This story, allegedly told to El Saadawi by Firdaus, a woman on the eve of her own execution for murder, as one that transcends the ways in which the reader can think of truth and fiction. What matters is that the story of Firdaus is one that pulls the reader in and forces them to sit with the discomfort of her truths, her abuse, her life story, and find themselves in her place (and in the place of so many women worldwide).
In El Saadawi’s preface, she describes the research she was doing on mental illness in Arab women. She developed an interest with the ways in which prison affects women, and ended up befriending a doctor working at the Women’s Prison in Qanatir. This doctor tells El Saadawi the story of a woman awaiting execution for murdering her pimp, her name is Firdaus. After refusing to speak with El Saadawi several times, Firdaus relents and begins to tell the psychiatrist her life story which later becomes the semi-fictionalized Woman at Point Zero.
Overview:
The narrative story itself begins with the premise that Firdaus is telling El Saadawi her life story on the eve of her execution. Firdaus begins by speaking about her disdain for men. She goes on to describe her work as a sex worker, detailing how expensive and elegant her makeup was as well as the success she found within sex work in Egypt. Firdaus speaks on how her appearance and financial success gave her the look of an upper class woman, but her school certificate and “repressed desires” stuck her within the middle class, she was, however, born into the lower class.
Firdaus narrates her childhood, born into a poor family of farmers. She recalls the abuse her father inflicted upon her mother, and ruminates on how she enjoyed working in the field and with the goats in particular. Firdaus develops a friendship with a young boy her age. They play “bride and bridegroom” together, a game consisting of the two children rubbing against each other to stimulate their genitalia. It is as Firdaus begins to discover her body, exploring masturbation and other forms of sexual gratification, that her mother has her circumcised. Female circumcision removes external genitalia, largely consisting of removing the clitoris via knife or chemicals. Following the trauma of her genital mutilation, Firdaus describes how she could never reach that pleasure again.
It is not long after this that Firdaus details how her uncle began to molest her when he would visit. She eventually moves in with her uncle permanently after the death of her parents. It is with her uncle that Firdaus is able to attend primary and secondary school, but the sexual abuse continues until her uncle is married, after which he reverts to nearly ignoring Firdaus completely and sending her to finish her education at a boarding school.
While attending boarding school, Firdaus becomes infatuated with one of her teachers, a young woman named Miss Iqbal who comforts her when she has a breakdown after classes one day. Firdaus falls for her kindness, however Miss Iqbal maintains a strict distance from Firdaus following their moment of tender comfort leaving her confused and heartbroken.
As soon as Firdaus obtains her secondary school certificate, her uncle and his wife marry her to a man forty years her senior named Sheikh Mahmoud. She is disgusted by his age and his ailments, and he quickly begins to physically abuse her.
Firdaus runs away, finding shelter and kindness in the form of a shopkeeper by the name of Bayoumi. He proposes that she stay at his apartment and he will care for her until Firdaus is able to get a job of her own. Their relationship quickly becomes demanding and controlling, Bayoumi physically, emotionally, and sexually abuses Firdaus (and invites other men over to do the same), going so far as to lock her inside during the day while he is away at work.
With the help of a female neighbor, Firdaus escapes Bayoumi’s. She once more wanders the city until she finds refuge with a woman, Sharifa Salah el Dine, who runs a high class brothel. Firdaus speaks of the power she feels as a sex worker, she is treated with kindness by Sharifa and is given nice clothes and food. She eventually leaves after seeing a high paying client overpower and assault Sharifa, horrified at discovering how the woman she revered had no true authority.
Firdaus begins her independent career as a sex worker, finding great financial success and a sense of self autonomy she relishes. With her career she is able to afford to support herself, and she delights in the power she has to reject men. Firdaus is independent, physically and financially, and is employed by many upper class, powerful clients. She eventually quits sex work after being told by a friend she is “not respectable”, taking a job at a local office. She falls for one of her coworkers, Ibrahim, and the two begin a sexual relationship. Firdaus is crushed to learn he is engaged and was only using her for sex, following this revelation Firdaus returns to sex work.
The climax of the novel comes when a man forces himself onto Firdaus as her pimp, physically assaulting her and threatening to have her arrested should she not pay him more and more of her wages. When Firdaus attempts to leave him, he threatens her with a knife. She is able to gain the upper hand and stabs him to death. Leaving the scene of the murder, Firdaus is stopped on the street by a prince in a private car. He offers her a great deal of money for her services, she refuses until his price climbs higher and higher, eventually telling him that she just killed a man. The prince doesn’t believe her at first, but eventually has Firdaus arrested where she is then sentenced to death. She ends her narrative by saying that she is being executed because “they” (men in authority) are afraid to let her live.
El Saadawi’s character is left in stunned silence as the guards arrive to take Firdaus away for her execution, shame building inside her as she realizes that Firdaus was much stronger and courageous than she could ever be.
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