It starts when the narrator is a visit by Firdaus. She leaves the prison, frustrated. “Whenever I remembered the expression in the eyes of the warder, or the prison doctor, as they spoke of…her refusal to see me, the feeling that I was helpless, and of no significance grew on me” (4). Such is Firdaus’ power, after a life of powerlessness.
When she finally does look into Fridaus’ eyes, “It was as though I died…They were eyes that killed, like a knife, probing, cutting deep down inside…” (7). El Saadawi does not dance with subtleties. Yes, these are the eyes of a woman who killed with a knife. Yes, these eyes would kill again if put back in that situation. Or, as Fridaus says at the end of the book, “If I go out once again to the life which is yours I will never stop killing” (111).
As Firdaus takes us through her life of sexual abuse and betrayal by men, it always measured through her eyes. First there was the boy who made her lie down in the field with him. Then, her uncle starts sexually abusing her. “I closed my eyes and tried to reach the pleasure I had known before but in vain. It was as…though a part of me, of my being, was gone and would never return” (13).
When El Saadawi introduces the mother’s eyes, she is not just describing a physical being, she is introducing a powerful device throughout the book. “They were eyes that I watched. They were eyes that watched me. Even if I disappeared from their view, they could see me, and follow me where I went, so that if I faltered while learning to walk they would hold me up” (15). Is she describing love? “I only had to look into them for the white to become whiter and the black even blacker, as though sunlight was pouring into them from some magical source…” (16). Recognition from this magical, mysterious source is something she hungers for throughout the book, yet this is what wounds her the most. Even with her mother, the light from the eyes goes out, leaving her in darkness. One day, “They were not the eyes that held me up…No light seemed ever to touch the eyes of this woman…her eyes remained dull, impervious to its light, like two extinguished lamps” (17).
These same “magical, mysterious” eyes return later when her teacher, Miss Iqbal, briefly sees her. Later, she falls for a workmate. “My face was turned towards his face, and my eyes looked into his eyes. I could see two rings of pure white surrounding two circles of intense black looking out at me…as though light flowed through them from some unknown, mysterious source…” (85). When he betrays her, Firdaus says, “My eyes could see nothing…” (91).
Every time Firdaus is betrayed, however, her vision grows clearer, another veil is removed. The first time she escapes her uncle’s to the streets, she notes, “A new world was opening up in front of my eyes…I had never seen it...How was it that I had been blind to its existence all these years? Now it seemed as if a third eye had suddenly been slit open in my head…” (42).
It isn’t until a man finally pays for her body that she begins to understand power. “It was as if he had lifted a veil from my eyes, and I was seeing for the first time” (68). She sits down at a restaurant and is amazed to be treated with respect. “I realized this was the first time in my life I was eating without being watched by two eyes gazing into my plate to see how much food I took” (71).
From that point on, Firdaus begins looking people in the eyes, a huge shift in power and identity. She learns to say no to men, to choose, to set her price. Still, when she prostitutes herself to men she keeps her eyes tightly closed the whole time until “the weight pressing down on me had lifted from my body” (75). So she spends her days walking the streets, looking men in the eyes, but pays for this freedom and self respect with these moments of blindness.
The pivotal moment of her life fate comes down to a fleeting expression in the eyes of a man trying to, once again, impose his will on and take advantage of her. “I continued to look straight at him without blinking…I saw from the expression in his eyes that he feared me as only a master can fear his slave, as only a man can fear a woman. But it lasted for only a second.” This is perhaps the single most important second of her life. He hits her. She hits him harder. Then she stabs him, cuts him ‘til he dies. “A question flashed through my mind. Why was it that I had never stabbed a man before? I realized that I had been afraid, and that the fear had been with me all the time, until the fleeting moment when I read fear in his eyes” (104).
El Saadawai ends this story with her narrator. She walks out of the prison with her head down. The weight of Firdaus’ truth shames, angers, and humbles her. She can’t look up at this world which took Firdaus’ life. “I got into my little car, my eyes on the ground…At every step, wherever I went, I could see the lies” (114).
Evan: I think you've provided an elegant reading of the eyes motif that we see throughout the book. Particularly compelling, I think, is the way you identify the moments that Firdaus has the different veils pulled from her eyes. The contrast you draw between the way Firdaus walks the streets with her eyes wide and the way she sleeps with men with her eyes closed is also beautifully stated. There is another moment in the book where I found the eyes motif to be especially compelling. Twice, Firdaus recognizes a light in the eyes of somebody she comes to love (Ibrahim and Miss Iqbal), which we understand to be tears. When they stifle their tears, the light goes out. These strike me as beautiful moments, moments when Firdaus has her own guard down and recognizes in others the vitality of pain or sorrow. She sees the eyes of these two people brimming with emotional life, which they snuff out by force of will, much like Firdaus refuses her own (and certainly not without good reason!). Here, though, she seems to long for that emotional life to be free in a way that I don't see in other areas of the book.
ReplyDeleteEvan and Garrett: I really loved how you both brought up the significance of the eyes. I hadn't thought about how the holding back the tears may snuff out the light, but I love this idea. Regarding: "as though light flowed through them from some unknown, mysterious source…” I wonder because Firdaus has seen mostly such ugliness in the world (the Earth and even the Sun) perhaps even if high above the world is that the light she speaks of coming from an unknown source is the symbol for the human soul?
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful post. You did an amazing job of unpacking the significance of the eyes how they functioned in the novel. Personally, I got so annoyed by eyes, eyes, eyes, that it was hard for me to really be articulate about their role. You really opened up my eyes :) I won't says eyes again...
ReplyDeleteAlso, I loved this: "El Saadawi does not dance with subtleties. Yes, these are the eyes of a woman who killed with a knife. Yes, these eyes would kill again if put back in that situation."
Garrett,
ReplyDeletevery clear observation of how her motif is strung through the book. Not only in the sense of this doing that, but how, the levels and so on. You have also done a good job at influencing your colleagues.
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