1. The woman sitting on the ground in front of me was a real woman,
and the voice filling my ears with its sound, echoing in a cell where the
window and door were tightly shut, could only be her voice, the voice of
Firdaus.
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.
