Woman at Point Zero

Again, Firdaus finds herself on the street alone at night. It’s the middle of winter and is very cold, but she feels neither cold nor fear; instead, Firdaus feels as though she has been “transported into another woman’s body” (61). As she walks, she’s approached by a policeman, who pulls her back to his apartment and promises to pay her a pound, assuming she’s a sex worker. After the act, he refuses to pay her, and she leaves to walk the streets again. As she sits in the rain, a man pulls up in a car and takes her back to his home, where he bathes her and then does what every other man has done. Unlike the others, he’s clean and pays Firdaus 10 pounds the next morning. It’s an illuminating moment for Firdaus, as she realizes she has agency to earn her own money. It reminds her of the first piastre her father gave her as a child and of her own independence. The 10-pound note is the most money Firdaus has ever had, and it brings a new type of pleasure “so strong, so poignant that it was almost bitter” (65). Like her first piastre and the candy she bought with it, Firdaus uses her first earnings to buy a roast chicken, which she savors. The waiter doesn’t pry or berate her for eating it all, and Firdaus realizes the power that money can have. She notices how the waiter seems to glance cautiously at the money in her hand, much like how men often stared at her body. For her entire life, the people around Firdaus treated their money as secret and something to withhold from her, which conditioned her to see money as forbidden. After her experience with the waiter, Firdaus no longer turns away from others or acts fearful in their presence; instead, she walks with confidence, looking others straight in the eye. She feels as if she has come across a long-kept secret and must now hold it close. As men begin to approach her, Firdaus says “No” to them the first time. She realizes she can decide whom to do business with and whom to reject. She firmly determines her price and wastes no time arguing.

With her newfound sense of agency, Firdaus looks back at her past and realizes how much time she has wasted succumbing to the whims of others. By the time she’s 25, Firdaus can afford her own apartment, a cook, and someone to book her appointments. She’s selective about her clientele and enjoys her leisure time. One of these men, named Di’aa, at first he seems kinder than others, wanting to talk rather than have sex; but when he compares Firdaus’s work to that of a doctor, noting that the difference is that her work is “not respectable” (70), Firdaus’s world is shaken once more. She wishes she could have remained in a state of ignorant bliss to this fact because she was able to sleep and enjoy her life. Now, the words “not respectable” won’t leave her mind and follow her everywhere, clinging to her “like the spit of an insult echoing in the ear” (72).

Determined to find what society considers a more respectable job, Firdaus looks for work until she finds a meager office job. It affords her a small room to live in and nothing more, and she had to ride the bus crammed in with dozens of men who ogle her. When one day an executive offers to drive her home, she immediately knows his intentions and tells him her price is too high for him. She can tell by the look in his eyes that he intends to use the prospect of a raise as bribery. Firdaus works the job for three years, and men occasionally approach her, but she always gives the same response. She eventually realizes, however, that other female employees must agree to the propositions she turns down and comes to believe that all women are “sex workers” of some sort. She realizes that “a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life” (76) and understands that if she must participate in this patriarchal world, she can so while earning more money and living where she likes. Still, she enjoys her work and the women she works with—at least more than she enjoys her tiny apartment.

One day, in a moment that echoes the one in which Miss Iqbal comforted her, Firdaus is sitting alone at work when a coworker named Ibrahim approaches her. She narrates in an identical way the moment that they share, in which he tries to tell her not to cry and holds her hands, staring into her eyes with his in such a way that they appear blacker than night. All of it is the same as the night during which Miss Iqbal approached her at school. Firdaus holds his hands “with such violence that no force in the world” (79) could tear her from them. Then, just like the last time she fell in love, Firdaus finds herself unable to approach Ibrahim, and thinks he has no interest in her. When Firdaus tries to talk to her friend at work about it, she once again can’t find the words, instead becoming consumed by the vision of Ibrahim’s eyes. Firdaus admits that she doesn’t consider herself worthy of Ibrahim’s attention.

She joins a committee at work and feels a sense of purpose. Things that once bothered her, like the size of her apartment or riding the bus, no longer do. One day, Ibrahim finds her on her way to the bus and offers her a ride. Firdaus gets in, her heart beating wildly, and Ibrahim compliments her work ethic before asking if she wants to go somewhere and talk. Firdaus and Ibrahim admit their feelings for one another and, after three days together, make love to one another. Firdaus feels light, free, and happy with the world around her—until a coworker criticizes her for living a fantasy. Soon, Firdaus overhears that Ibrahim is marrying someone else, and her entire world feels shaken. She leaves the office and weeps until she has nothing left inside. That night, Firdaus goes back to collect her things and leaves her work with a feeling of loss and longing for Ibrahim. She feels robbed, as though she gave everything of herself to love and got nothing in return. She compares the painful experience to the numbness and emotional distance of sex work, in which she refused to let herself feel anything at all—but the pain of love rejected is far worse than anything she experienced as a sex worker.

Firdaus decides that life as a successful prostitute is better than the illusory life of a woman obedient and subservient to men. She views men, relationships, marriage, and everything that goes with these things as “built on the most cruel suffering for women” (86) and believes that only sex workers see reality for what it is. Firdaus walks the streets with a new sense of lucidity and calm, as if nothing can reach or harm her. She feels a true, innate independence that can only come from within, from already having endured everything worth fearing, and from having nothing left to lose. She doesn’t hope for, want, or fear anything.

Four years pass, and Firdaus encounters Ibrahim again but refuses him her services. Years later, she finally gives in to him, and realizes he never loved her at all, but was merely using her. Over the years, many men offer to “save” Firdaus from her circumstances, but she always refuses, preferring to maintain her agency above anything and always remembering the ways men have failed her before. Important politicians, some of whom are from other countries, offer her large sums of money, but she always refuses. She’s once sent to prison for this but finds a good lawyer and is quickly released. Firdaus remarks on the irony of her circumstances: “Now I had learnt that honor required large sums of money to protect it but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one’s honor” (91). She finds that the more she refuses, the more men will pay, as if power and domination matter more than anything.

Firdaus is soon approached by a pimp who says he can protect her from the police and other pimps. She refuses, insisting she can protect herself, but he continually advances on her and one day follows her into her home, brandishing a knife, and forces her to comply. He intrudes on her life and takes most of her earnings, and because of his many connections with lawyers, police, doctors, and other powerful clients, Firdaus is unable to use her own connections to escape, until one day she decides she must leave anyway. As she attempts to do so, he stops her at the door, saying she’ll never leave and can’t possibly be a “master” in a world of “masters” and “slaves.” Firdaus sees fear in his eyes for a moment, and just before he can do so, grabs the knife from his pocket and stabs him repeatedly. She realizes she’s completely unafraid of men, after having been afraid of them for so long before.

Firdaus walks down the street with an air of confidence and assuredness that no one can match. She wonders if those around her think she must be royalty of some kind. She’s soon stopped by an Arab prince, and she refuses to go with him until he offered 3,000 pounds. After their encounter, however, Firdaus becomes irate and tears up the money he gives her. In doing so, she feels as if she’s destroying every man that has ever harmed her. She tells the prince that the men in her life—and life itself—have taught her to kill, and he questions her capability to kill anything at all. Firdaus then slaps the man as hard as she can, sending him into an immediate state of panic. The man starts screaming, the police soon arrive, and the prince tells them that Firdaus is a killer. She insists that “no woman can be a criminal” (100)—that instead all the men of the world are the criminals. She’s arrested and kept in confinement, where she reflects on her acquired truth and the power it brought her as she let go of all fear and attachment. She knows that by refusing to ask for pardon, and by refusing to fear execution, she isn’t allowing herself to be controlled anymore.