Woman at Point Zero

Firdaus embodies resiliency and agency. She doesn’t represent just any type of resilience or agency but a sort that exists as a source of power, as something that allows her to overcome the patriarchal system that constantly tries to beat her down. For most of her young life, she has no sense of agency or experience being her own person; she tends to the house, bakes bread, and doesn’t go to school. She does recall how her father once gave her a single piastre and how the ability to choose what she did with it was most meaningful for her. In addition, she shows incredible resilience as she survives extreme abuse and subjugation.

Firdaus’s uncle sends her to school later in her childhood, and by becoming educated she develops even more agency. She learns of the patriarchal systems of the past and becomes intelligent enough to eventually use the system to her own advantage. When she grows up and becomes a sex worker, she has a long, confusing period of trial and error in which she figures out what female agency means to her. At first, Sharifa takes advantage of her, but Firdaus soon learns she can work for herself, deciding her own prices and clientele. When she receives her first 10-pound note from a client, it’s a moment of sheer liberation and represents her newfound control over her own life. In general, women in Egypt during the 20th century had little to no agency in their lives or relationships, and it’s therefore particularly significant when Firdaus finds hers. In murdering the pimp, Firdaus frees herself once and for all:

I was like a women 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 (87).

Continuous attempts are made to rob Firdaus of her agency, including the abuse, control, and captivity she experiences, but she refuses to let it be taken from her when her life concludes. Instead, she remains independent and autonomous by choosing to die.

Firdaus’s life is defined by the hypocritical desires of men in 20th-century Egyptian society. As a young girl, Firdaus feels as though her ability to feel pleasure is robbed from her by the sexual assaults that her uncle regularly perpetrates against her. From then on, she views desire only from the angle of greed and domination; it became something that embodies the men she encounters and that she therefore took great efforts to avoid herself. Desire seemed to make men “piggish,” uncouth, and grossly self-serving. They frequently take advantage of, buy and sell, and violently abuse Firdaus and other women around her. Firdaus often notices that men look at her as if she’s their property: “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” (13). The hypocrisy of the society in which Firdaus lives stems from the religious doctrine that permeates it; this doctrine proclaims to encourage fair and respectful treatment of women but simultaneously props men up and positions women as “lowly objects,” servants, and sources of sex. Firdaus thus sees the men around her as deeply dishonest: They claim to be one way and act another. Firdaus sees a side of these men that everyday society doesn’t.

After enduring a lifetime of being surrounded by hypocrisy and what Firdaus views as foul desires, she learns to rise above it all and use the corruption around her to her own advantage. She lets go of her fear of men, a fear instilled in her from birth, and emerges victorious amid the impossible: “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” (101). Although Firdaus’s execution approaches, she remains utterly calm, and Saadawi sees her as the most courageous of women. The murder that Firdaus committed is one which she believed was necessary to expose a dark truth about men, and she harbors no shame, guilt, or regret. Saadawi reflects on Firdaus’s rare and emboldened perspective on truth and desire, calling Firdaus’s sentencing a reaction to “the fear of the truth which kills, the power of truth, as savage, and as simple, and as awesome as death, yet as simple and as gentle as the child that has not yet learnt to lie” (108).