Nothing out of the Ordinary

One of the most incredible aspects of Firdaus’s narrative in Woman at Point Zero is the sense of the everyday that is given to so many of the events in her life. What I mean is that there is a way these extraordinary events are told that makes them seem so ordinary for the women in her society. What’s incredible is that Firdaus does this without appealing to some abstract Egyptian Everywoman, or representing herself as one. The events of her life are unique and terrible. And, though she often speaks frankly about the gender politics that make living so difficult for women at large in her society, she explains the events of her life to be uniquely her own.

So then why does it feel like this could have so easily been the life of any of the other women who grace the pages of this work? Why, when Firdaus lives a life so terribly her own, does it seem it could have just as easily been the life of her mother, Miss Iqbal, Wafeya, Fatheya, or the author Nawal El Saadawi herself?

There are a great number of moments that I think help to explain this, and I hope to speak to enough of them to work the idea through.

There are, of course, some traumatic experiences in Firdaus’s life that are explicitly common and ordinary. Top among these are the beatings: “… my uncle told me that all husbands beat their wives, and my uncle’s wife added that her husband often beat her…” (46). That particular passage goes on at length. And, in the parts of the book leading up to Firdaus’s life in prostitution, we do in fact find that no matter who she ends up with, she gets beaten, from the “respectable” Mahmoud to the at-first gentle and kind-hearted Bayoumi.

And beatings do not only come from husbands, or men. Firdaus is beaten regularly by her mother, and one of these beatings precedes another shockingly ordinary moment: “First she beat me. Then she brought a woman who was carrying a small knife or maybe a razor blade. They cut off a piece of flesh from between my thighs” (12). In the example of the beatings, the book at least explains that there is a shared experience. We see and hear about other women being beaten. In this case, something else is going on altogether. Female circumcision is not something that we hear about in the rest of the book, or in the context of other women. We barely hear about it here. And yet, the scene is so extraordinarily casual, the description so matter-of-fact, the actions so without pomp and circumstance, that I can’t help but read it as though this is just something that happens, the mother and the woman just doing a chore they had been waiting for the right day to get done.

Then, as we get into her transition to prostitution, a number of scenes stand out.

“In the dark, I suddenly perceived two eyes, or rather felt them, moving towards me very slowly, closer and closer. They dropped their gaze with slow intent down to my shoes, rested there for a moment, then gradually started to climb up my legs…” (44).

This is perhaps the earliest scene where Firdaus is being pursued sexually in a public space. At first, it’s easy to write it off as a creep leering in the street, and perhaps at this point in her life Firdaus does just that. Later, though…

“He said, ‘I’ll pay you. Don’t think I want to have you for nothing. I am not like other policemen. How much do you want?’” (66).

Even at this point, Firdaus has not actually taken on the profession. And still the police officer not only notices her sexually but sees it as a matter of course to proposition her. If Firdaus faces these kinds of leering eyes and propositions whenever she steps out into public on her own, from strangers and authority figures alike, without expressing any real surprise either time, then how ordinary must it be? Still later…

“There I was, lying in an elegant bedroom, with a stranger standing in front of me. I got up quickly and put on my dress and shoes. As I picked up my little bag and started to move towards the door, he stretched out his arm and slipped a ten pound note between my fingers. It was as if he had lifted a veil from my eyes” (68).

This man had picked her up in the rain, driven her to his house, and forced himself on her, no less a matter of course than it had been with the policeman. He simply drove up to her, asked her into the car, and assumed that the rest would happen. The revelation in this scene is key. It is not surprising for Firdaus to be picked up by a man, nor raped. The only surprising thing, the only thing out of the ordinary, is that she can get paid for it. And that revelation begins her life as a prostitute.

In each of these instances, whether the beatings or the circumcision or the casual rape, the events come with so little surprise to Firdaus that we almost have to not be surprised ourselves. This is what happens, the book tells us. Nothing out of the ordinary here. And the importance of this is that Firdaus never says, this is what happens to us all. She never says, mine is the experience of all of us. She simply says this is what happened to me. It is not the things that she says but the way that she says them that gives the events their greater import. Whether by showing other women being beaten, by showing how prepared the people in her life are to perform a female circumcision, or by showing just how frequently and easily her public propositions and rapes occur, that same sense – this is what happens – remains the same.