Nawal El Saadawi (1931–2021)

#ReadAroundTheWorld #Egypt

“A man does not know a woman’s value, Firdaus. She is the one who determines her value.”

Woman At Point Zero is a powerful feminist work written and published in the 1970s by prize-winning Egyptian author Nawal El Saadawi. El Saadawi began as a psychiatrist before becoming Minister for Health. Her writings and activism lead to her being removed from this role and to her imprisonment. At one point she fled Egypt due to death threats, but has continued to campaign strongly for women’s rights.

El Sawaadi writes about her prison visitation to Firdaus, a woman awaiting execution. As Nawal sits on the cold prison floor Firdaus recounts her life story. The book is a fictionalised account of this story, a story of sorrow, hardship and difficulty, yet strength and perseverance. Firdaus is physically and mentally abused in turn by each man in her life. From a lecherous uncle who marries her off at nineteen to a man in his sixties who beats her, to her colleagues, and even men who begin as kind and seemingly well-intentioned. As Firdaus sums up: “All women are victims of deception. Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows.”

The book is written in a lyrical almost dreamlike fashion. As tragic events shape Firdaus’ philosophy and thinking. The story ends with Firdaus facing her jailers with her truth.
“They said, 'You are a savage and dangerous woman.'
I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.”

“It is my truth which frightens them. This fearful truth gives me great strength. It protects me from fearing death, or life, or hunger, or nakedness, or destruction. It is this fearful truth which prevents me from fearing the brutality of rulers and policemen. I spit with ease on their lying faces and words, on their lying newspapers.”

I found this book sad as it contains so much violence against one woman but nevertheless it manages to convey strength and truth and highlight the plight of many women around the world. A powerful read.… (mais)

It's hard to know what is fact and what fiction in this short novel by one of Egypt's most renowned feminist writers. In her introduction, El Saadawi writes that she wrote this novel after an encounter with a woman in Qanatir Prison. El Saadawi had been fired for writing things "viewed unfavourably by the authorities" and was doing research into the psychological problems of Egyptian women and the links between mental illness and oppression (she's also a medical doctor). She was interested in prisons in part because her partner had spent 13 years in prison as a "political detainee". Little did she know, when she was interviewing female prisoners as a psychiatrist, that several years later she too would be a prisoner there.

The prisoner that most interested El Saadawi was named Firdaus, a woman who had been convicted of killing a man and was sentenced to be executed, which she was in 1974. Her interviews with Firdaus would become the inspiration for Woman at Point Zero. The novel is told in the first person, as though Firdaus is speaking to El Saadawi, further blurring the lines between fact and fiction. In addition, the narrator repeats herself at times and has phrases which she uses over and over. Was this characteristic of Firdaus herself, or is it a literary technique introduced by the author? Perhaps it doesn't matter where the line is between fact and fiction, because in some ways it is the story of oppressed women everywhere.

Firdaus grew up in squalor with a brutal father and a mother whose eyes were dark and resigned. Her uncle saw potential in her, and took her to live with him and attend secondary school. When he marries, she is sent to boarding school. After graduating, she is married off to an elderly widower, and her life goes downhill from there. I'm not going to say much more about the plot, but it is related in a deadpan tone that only serves to emphasize the brutality and despair. The effects of poverty and oppression play out to the ultimate end in Firdaus' life. She reflects bitterly:

For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them. And truth is like death in that it kills. When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife. That is why they are afraid and in a hurry to execute me. They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them.

A few years after this book was published, El Saadawi might have felt that these words were prophetic, for she too would be punished for speaking her truth. She would later say, "Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies." She was released one month after President Sadat was assassinated.… (mais)