Summary
Firdaus starts her story by commanding the psychiatrist not to speak. She wants to get her story out before her executioners come and take her. Her hanging is tomorrow, and soon she will transition to a place unknown to everyone on earth. The idea of this fills her with pride and makes her feel superior to everyone, particularly kings, princes, and rulers.
Firdaus also admits that whenever she sees a picture of a man in the newspaper, she spits on him. She doesn’t know every man who appears in the paper personally, but every man she does get to know makes her want to smack him across the face. Because she is a woman, though, she was always afraid of doing that. As a prostitute, she hid her fear with her makeup. She explains that the makeup, hair, and shoes she acquired from being a prostitute were the only “upper-class” things about her. By birth, she was actually lower-class.
Her father was an illiterate, poor farmer. He knew very few things in life; they included how to grow crops, how to sell his sick farm animals to unsuspecting buyers, and how to beat his wife, amongst other unsavory talents. Every Friday, he and the other men of their village attend the imam’s weekly prayer. Firdaus sees them walking back from the sermon as she fetches water for the family. They all look so similar that she can’t tell which one is her father. She asks her mother how she had given birth without a father, and, in response, her mother has her circumcised.
ON that day, things change. Typically, Firdaus’s mother sent her to the fields with manure. After dropping off her load, she would play with a boy named Mohammadain. They swam together and “played at bride and bridegroom.” When Mohammadain touched her, she felt a sharp pleasure. After her clitoris is removed, Firdaus is given duties around her family’s hut. There, her uncle begins to touch her like Mohammadain does—but her uncle takes it even further. Firdaus no longer feels "the sharp pleasure." She tries to recall it, but it’s as if a part of her was gone and would never return.
Firdaus now shifts her focus to her uncle. He is an educated man who studies in Cairo and teaches her how to read. Whenever he would leave to go back home, she would follow him to the train station and beg him to take her with him. She says she wants to study at the university too, but her uncle says that only men are allowed to study there. Dejected, Firdaus walks back to her hut and wonders about her future.
Back at her hut, she thinks about her parents and wonders if they are her real parents. She remembers the first time she saw her mother, particularly her mother’s eyes. She would curl up next to her mother, seeking warmth, but if her father was cold, her mother would go to his side to keep him warm. In summer, her mother would wash her father’s legs to keep him cool.
One day, her mother is no longer there, and another woman takes her place. This woman looks exactly like her mother, except for her eyes. Her eyes seem perpetually dark and dull. Firdaus cries at night for her real mother, but it seems that she has died, similar to her many little brothers and sisters who don’t make it to adolescence. When her sisters die, Firdaus’s father doesn’t seem to care, but when a boy dies, he beats his wife before eating his supper. Sometimes there’s only enough food for him, and he eats like a camel in front of his starving children. This makes Firdaus think that her father is not actually her father, and once her uncle returns to their village, she begs him to take her to Cairo. One day, her father dies, and her uncle enrolls her in elementary school. Shortly after her mother dies, and her uncle finally takes her to Cairo.
When Firdaus enters her uncle’s apartment, the technology in his home makes her feel like she’s been born twice. Looking into a mirror for the first time, she struggles to understand that the girl standing there is herself. She sees her parents in some of her facial features and hates it.
In Cairo, Firdaus goes to a new school that she loves. It’s a coed school and she makes friends there. She excels in school and receives her primary school certificate. As a reward, her uncle buys her a wristwatch and takes her to see her first movie. The movie has a dancing woman who is scantily dressed. This embarrasses Firdaus. When she and her uncle return home, he tells her that dancing and kissing are sins—but later that night, he creeps into her bed, kisses her mouth, and sexually assaults her.
One day, her uncle marries the daughter of his teacher at the university. She is a cruel woman who doesn’t like Firdaus and considers her a burden on the family. She convinces Firdaus’s uncle to make her a boarding student at the school. At first, Firdaus is upset because they don’t even take her home on weekends like the families of her classmates, but eventually, she comes to love school. She makes a friend named Wafeya and talks of her hopes for the future. She dreams of being a doctor, engineer, lawyer, or judge. One day, she even attends a political demonstration against the government.
The school has a library, and after she finishes her schoolwork, Firdaus devours its books, newspapers, and magazines. She prefers books written about rulers, who are exclusively men. One night, she stays late at the library, and one of her teachers, Miss Iqbal, finds her. She sits next to Firdaus and asks her what’s wrong. Firdaus suddenly bursts into tears, and Miss Iqbal comforts her. Firdaus looks into Miss Iqbal’s eyes and feels connected to her. She begins to wonder if she loves Miss Iqbal.
Final exams fall upon the school, and Firdaus does extremely well. She scores second at her school and seventh overall in the country. At graduation, no one from her family is there to accept her secondary school certificate when the principal calls her name. Firdaus stands up and locks eyes with Miss Iqbal, who walks with her to collect her certificate. Shortly after graduation, the school year ends. The principal has to write a telegram to Firdaus’s uncle telling him to pick her up from school. The last day she’s at school Firdaus, looks furiously for Miss Iqbal, but she can’t find her.
Back at her uncle’s house, Firdaus feels out of place. Her uncle’s wife wants her out of the house because she thinks she’s too expensive to take care of. Her uncle thinks it will be difficult for her to find a job with just a secondary school certificate, and he refuses to send her to university for further study. His wife suggests that Firdaus marries her uncle, a man named Sheikh Mahmoud. At first, Firdaus’s uncle rejects the idea because the Sheikh is much older than Firdaus, but his wife slowly convinces him to support it.
Firdaus overhears them discussing her. The next day, she packs up her things, says goodbye to Hala, her only cousin who likes her, and runs away from her uncle’s house. As she enters the bustling streets, Firdaus sees everything with new eyes. She marvels at the hundreds of people walking the streets and sees the fear on their faces. By nightfall, she hasn’t found a place to stay, and she feels a pair of cold eyes staring at her body. She gets scared and decides to return to her uncle’s house.
Analysis
At long last, we hear from the infamous Firdaus herself. Firdaus starts her story urgently, commanding the psychiatrist not to speak. She quickly establishes the life-and-death nature of her existence when she says that, tomorrow, she won’t be alive. Rather than fearing death, she welcomes it, as it will take her somewhere no one else on Earth has been. After the experiences she’s had with men, Firdaus wants to feel superior to them, and she believes that embracing death and what comes next is one way to do so. Though this is an early point in Firdaus’s story, we are already getting a sense of who she is.
Several other important people are characterized in this first part of Chapter 2. Her father and mother are poor, fundamentalist Egyptians from a rural village. Her father is selfish and uncaring, whereas her mother only cares about Firdaus to a limited extent. She does take the time to ensure Firdaus is circumcised, a practice that Egypt criminalized in 2008. Firdaus’s circumcision references one of the major themes of the novel: remembrance and loss. The loss of her clitoris and the pleasure it used to bring her is a loss that Firdaus remembers when her uncle begins to assault her, and she continues to remember this for the rest of the novel.
A plethora of other central themes is also introduced in Part 1 of Chapter 2. When Firdaus discusses her father, she describes his religious hypocrisy. He may listen to the imam’s prayers and discuss Islam’s tenets with the other village men, but his actions contradict many of the teachings he claims to agree with. For example, he agrees it’s a sin to beat his wife, but he regularly hits Firdaus’s mother. This is just the beginning of religion’s role in Woman at Point Zero.
Eyes are another key motif of the novel. When describing her mother, Firdaus focuses on her eyes: despite their sometimes rocky relationship, her mother’s eyes held her up and support her. When her mother dies and her stepmother takes her place, one of the biggest differences Firdaus highlights are the women’s eyes. Whereas Firdaus’s mother’s eyes are filled with sunlight, her stepmother’s are like extinguished lamps, devoid of light. This symbolizes the difference in how the two women make Firdaus feel.
The last two critical themes referenced in this part of the book are interconnected. Firdaus’s education, her secondary school certificate, and her relationship to her uncle all bring up the themes of self-worth and independence/dependence. Firdaus’s education is a key aspect of her sense of self. Despite her impoverished farming background, she excelled at school and graduated top in her class. Her secondary school certificate symbolizes not only this achievement, but also Firdaus’s hopes for the future. She wants to use her certificate to find work and be independent, but her uncle claims that’s impossible and arranges a marriage for her. Thus, Firdaus is forced to remain dependent on the men in her life. Her uncle brought her to Cairo, educated her, and cared for her, but he also sexually assaulted her. We can only hope that Firdaus’s new husband, Sheikh Mahmoud, treats her better.
