Summary
The novel opens with a psychiatrist explaining that this is the story of a real woman. The psychiatrist found out about the subject while conducting research on female prisoners and detainees. According to the prisoner doctor, the subject is unlike any other of the prison inmates. For example, she refuses to file an appeal with the president of Egypt to get her sentence commuted to life imprisonment instead of death. The psychiatrist is intrigued and asks for a meeting to be arranged. The subject refuses. It is finally revealed that the subject's name is Firdaus.
The psychiatrist was supposed to meet with other women prisoners, but she decides not to. She returns home and attempts to work on her latest book, but she cannot focus. Her mind is focused on Firdaus, who is scheduled to die in 10 days time.
The next day, she returns to the prison and asks the prison warder to see Firdaus, but the warder says that Firdaus will never see her. The warder seems upset that the psychiatrist continues to push to see Firdaus. She glares at the psychiatrist as if she will be one to hang Firdaus in a few days. The warder accuses the psychiatrist of working with “them,” an unspecified group of people who wish to harm Firdaus. In the warder’s eyes, although Firdaus murdered a man, she’s still an innocent woman who doesn't deserve her death sentence. She walks away and leaves the psychiatrist at the gate.
The psychiatrist returns to the prison multiple times trying to be meet with Firdaus, to no avail. At this point, she feels that her research and her life are in limbo. Firdaus’s rejection impacts the psychiatrist’s self-confidence, and she compares herself to a lowly insect. She begins to wonder if the refusal means that Firdaus is a better person than she, or even a better person than the Egyptian president.
One day, she begins to wonder if Firdaus knew who she was and rejected meeting her, or if Firdaus rejected her without knowing. The following day, she goes back to the prison to find out. She asks the warder, who claims that although Firdaus didn’t say if knew the psychiatrist, she (the warder) knows Firdaus does because she can sense Firdaus’s moods. This crushes the psychiatrist. She feels as if the whole world were pressing down on her, a feeling she only remembers from a previous unrequited love.
The psychiatrist returns to her car and starts to rationalize her feelings of self-derision. She realizes that Firdaus didn’t reject her personally, but rather the whole world and everyone in it. The psychiatrist rallies and her usual amount of self-confidence and pride return to her. She starts her car and gets ready to leave, but then hears the voice of the warder over the roar of the car engine. The warder is out of breath, having run after the psychiatrist to tell her that Firdaus finally wants to see her.
The news makes takes the psychiatrist's breath away. She feels elated, happy, and proud—she compares the feeling to that of meeting the first man she loved for the first time. She quickly enters the prison and approaches Firdaus’s cell. She attempts to compose herself outside the door, telling herself that she is a psychiatrist and shouldn’t feel cowed by a prisoner like Firdaus. Suddenly, however, the door opens and the women are face-to-face.
The psychiatrist is paralyzed and cannot even hear the door of the cell closing behind her. She looks into Firdaus’s eyes and feels as if she dies the moment she does—that’s how piercing her eyes are. Suddenly, Firdaus’s voice cuts through the air, and she tells the psychiatrist to close the window and to sit on the floor. The floor is freezing because it’s January, but the psychiatrist cannot feel its chill. All her senses feel muted, as if she were swimming through the sea. The only thing that reaches her is the sound of Firdaus’s voice, as she opens her mouth and begins her story.
Analysis
Woman at Point Zero opens with a frame story from the point of view of the psychiatrist who interviewed Firdaus in her final days. We can infer that the psychiatrist functions as a fictional proxy for Nawal el Saadawi herself, and she’s recounting her own feelings and thoughts from when she met Firdaus in 1973. Structuring the book this way, by opening from the point of view of the psychiatrist, allows the reader to see how the people and world around Firdaus view her, and what her impact on her society is. This is a characterization that occurs before we even hear from Firdaus herself.
The psychiatrist is also characterized in this first chapter. Normally a self-confident and successful researcher, she experiences moments of self-doubt because of Firdaus’s rejection. This theme of struggling with one’s self-worth is introduced by the psychiatrist and continues throughout the novel. The importance the psychiatrist places on Firdaus’s opinion of her also demonstrates the space Firdaus occupies in the minds of those who hear about her. The setting of the novel, 20th-century Egypt, means that very few women have killed men. This, coupled with Firdaus’s innate power and personality, makes everyone who encounters her desperate for her regard. Even the president of Egypt is alluded to when discussing Firdaus’s notoriety in her society.
This first chapter of the novel also establishes Saadawi’s writing style, but with one major caveat: it’s critical to note that the original novel was published in Arabic, and the novel was translated into English in 1983. Though translation is far from an exact science, there is only one published English translation of the novel to date, and so this is considered, by default, the canonical English version. Although we are receiving Saadawi’s words through a filter of sorts, we can assume that certain fundamentals are consistent between the original Arabic and the English translation.
Looking closely at the text, several elements of Saadawi’s writing style stand out. The expository nature of her writing demonstrates her background as a psychiatrist and researcher. She explains each moment and beat of the novel in detail, leaving nothing to guesswork. It’s also clear that Saadawi enjoys using figurative speech when writing, as the first chapter has an abundance of similes, metaphors, and examples of imagery. A clear example of this is when the psychiatrist uses a metaphor to compare herself to a small insect when Firdaus initially refuses to meet her. Imagery is in full use when the psychiatrist describes meeting Firdaus for the first time. The reader can feel her nervousness, excitement, and breathless anticipation.
Finally, 'anticipatory' is a good word to describe the mood of the novel as Chapter 1 ends. After struggling to meet with Firdaus and oscillating between moments of self-doubt and self-confidence, the psychiatrist is finally getting her wish. She is sitting across from the infamous Firdaus. What will this murderess have to say for herself? Both the psychiatrist and the reader cannot wait to find out.
