Woman at Point Zero

Nawal writes this after she has finally met Firdaus, on the day that Firdaus is scheduled to die. Nawal immediately senses that there is something about Firdaus that is different from everyone she has ever met. When she says that Firdaus is a “real woman,” she means that there is something painfully real about Firdaus and her experience in jail. Firdaus becomes more than just a case study for Nawal. She becomes a symbol of truth: a living demonstration of all that is wrong with their shared society. Firdaus is undeniably an individual.

Because she has always had to fight for the right to be herself, and because she is in prison for killing a man in order to achieve self-determination, Firdaus seems more real than anyone Nawal has ever met. When Nawal describes Firdaus’s voice echoing in a sealed cell, she reminds her audience that prison has not lessened Firdaus’s personality. Because choosing imprisonment has made Firdaus more free than at any other time in her life, the force of her personality has grown. The cell is a symbol of how the world thinks it can contain and control Firdaus, but to Nawal that is absurd. Prison and the threat of death have no power over Firdaus. She has finally gotten control of her own life, and has undeniably become an individual.

When Nawal first meets Firdaus, Nawal marvels at how cool and collected Firdaus seems. She wonders why Firdaus has decided not to appeal her sentence and try to live longer, and why Firdaus remains so calm in the face of impending death. Firdaus explains that she doesn’t fear death. In fact, she’s looking forward to it. Since her whole life has been spent under someone else’s control, and because that life has never really brought her any happiness, she is looking forward to ending it. She says that her whole life has been a quest to prove to herself that she was as good as, if not better than, the men who control her world. She has nothing but contempt for these rulers. All she sees of them is hypocrisy and deceit. They deceive their subjects and abuse their power, and yet are terrified of being less powerful than they think they are.

Firdaus discovers how vulnerable these men are when, as a prostitute, she refuses to sleep with some of them. They panic and offer her ever-increasing sums of money, simply because it terrifies them to think that their power might not have the reach they think it does. Still, though Firdaus proves in this way that their power is incomplete, she knows full well that her own is even more precarious. Only in death will she be free from them. Choosing to die is one of the first real choices that Firdaus has ever made, and in doing so, she challenges the power of those who think they are punishing her. Also, Firdaus explains, she will die before these powerful men die. She will be a pioneer, no longer afraid of the thing that all of these powerful, hypocritical men fear most. Only in this way can she finally feel superior to them.

Bayoumi asks Firdaus this when she is coming to his house for the first time. The question is striking because Firdaus realizes she has never been asked whether she had a preference for anything before. It has never mattered what she preferred. If her father wanted lamb for dinner, the whole family would eat lamb. If Firdaus’s husband wanted to eat at 6:00, Firdaus would also eat at 6:00. Because she’s never been offered a choice before, Firdaus does not know what she prefers. Only after she stammers out an answer does she realize that she’s answered incorrectly. She says tangerines and realizes that she in fact prefers oranges, but she was ashamed to say so because oranges are more expensive. This is the first conscious choice that Firdaus has ever had to make. Though she leaves her husband, she does so unthinkingly, simply fleeing his violence. Though she stays with Bayoumi, she does so mainly because he tells her to. But in asking her this simple question, Bayoumi forces Firdaus to realize that she is capable of making her own choices.

Firdaus’s departure from Bayoumi much more deliberate than her departure from her husband. In order to leave Bayoumi, she has to beg for help from a neighbor woman and break out of the apartment. Bayoumi has created in Firdaus an obsession with the ability to choose for herself and determine the course of her own life, and she uses it to escape him. The simple question about citrus fruits changes the way Firdaus sees her life. When Firdaus becomes an independent prostitute, she finally has the money and the power to make choices for herself. This gives her a false sense of independence and self-determination. It is not until the pimp demands control over Firdaus that the illusion of choice is shattered. Firdaus realizes that she’s still a woman, even if she has money and power, and she is still under the control of men. Even with the newfound freedom of a prostitute, what men want matters more.

Firdaus asks this of Di’aa, a client of hers who tells her that she is not respectable. Di’aa has been stung by Firdaus’s professional attitude about prostitution, and tells her that she should hang out a list of prices, as a doctor would do. Firdaus asks him if he’s being sarcastic, and he says yes. He says that a doctor charges by the minute as well, but a doctor feels he is worthy of respect. Prostitutes, according to Di’aa, deserve no respect. Firdaus responds with the quote above. For Firdaus, this exchange is typical of the hypocrisy of men. She and her clients are both having illicit sex, and yet only Firdaus is considered shameful. Di’aa’s comments only reinforce her idea that men and women live in separate worlds with separate rules, and that there can be no reconciling them. Still, she tries to point out to him that though he considers himself respectable, he is also engaging in an activity not worthy of respect. Di’aa is unfazed, and tries to kiss her. Firdaus kicks Di’aa out, but his words haunt her. This is the first time it has occurred to Firdaus that she might be unworthy of respect. Because of this, she stops prostituting, and goes to work in an office, trying to learn what it means to be respectable.

Nawal writes this after hearing Firdaus’s story and watching Firdaus be escorted to her execution. Nawal leaves Firdaus’s cell feeling light-headed. She gets in her car and begins to drive home, still hearing Firdaus’s voice and its undeniable truths echoing in her ears. She considers accelerating the car into people in the street, but does not. Firdaus’s story and personality have convinced Nawal that their society is a lie, and that the destruction of it wouldn’t be so bad. Nawal’s conversation with Firdaus seems to lift a veil from Nawal’s eyes. It is as if Nawal had spent her entire life believing in an illusion, and that simply speaking with Firdaus had made her realize that her whole life, and the lives of those around her, was based on lies. The simple facts of Firdaus’s life, and her apparent joy at her approaching death, reveals this.

Nawal also realizes at this point that Firdaus is not really in prison because authorities fear that she will kill again if released, but because they fear the truth that she now possesses. Because she dared to seize control of her own life and deny the power of those around her to control her, she threw into question a fundamental truth of their society. Women, and especially women like Firdaus, are not supposed to have the kind of freedom and power Firdaus aspired to have, nor are women supposed to fight back when men try to put them in their place, as the pimp tried to do. When she fights back, and later refuses to beg for mercy from the powerful men, Firdaus becomes incredibly threatening to them and to everyone else who works to ensure that the illusion of their power is sustained. Killing a pimp is not Firdaus’s real crime. Her true crime is in exposing the hypocrisy and powerlessness of the leaders and princes she so despises.