Summary
Firdaus wanders aimlessly until she reaches the banks of the Nile. She sits down to enjoy the breeze, and she closes her eyes. Suddenly, a woman’s voice asks for her name. When she opens her eyes, she sees a woman with a green shawl and eye makeup sitting next to her. The woman peers at Firdaus’s face, and then asks, “what did the son of a dog do to you?” Firdaus is astonished that the woman can clearly see she was abused. The woman goes on, listing names of men, and asks who started the abuse, Firdaus’s father, brother, or uncle? Firdaus replies that it was her uncle, and then the woman asks for her name. When Firdaus asks for the woman’s name, she tells her it is Sharifa Salah el Dine and that everyone knows who she is.
Sharifa takes Firdaus home with her. When Firdaus enters her apartment, it’s like the first time she enters her uncle’s flat in Cairo all over again. Sharifa has hot and cold water, soft clothes, and good food. She cares for Firdaus until Firdaus feels soft and smooth like a newborn baby. Firdaus hugs Sharifa and asks her who she is. Sharifa replies that she is "your mother, your sister," to which Firdaus responds that all her family is dead. Sharifa tells Firdaus that everyone dies; what matters is how you live. When Firdaus says that life is terribly hard, Sharifa tells her that she must be harder like a snake, ready to withstand life’s bites.
Firdaus falls under Sharifa’s tutelage. Sharifa helps Firdaus see the beauty and worth in her body and mind. She praises Firdaus for her secondary school certificate, and says that none of the men in Firdaus’s life understood her worth because Firdaus failed to realize her own worth. When Firdaus questions how she can ask a man for anything, Sharifa replies that that's her job.
Sharifa is a prostitute and begins to find men to pay for sex with Firdaus. These men are clean and don’t hit her. Still, Firdaus longs to feel something, and she asks Sharifa why she can’t feel pleasure. Sharifa laughs and then asks Firdaus if she doesn’t feel pleasure eating good food, wearing nice clothes, and living in a beautiful house. This causes Firdaus to question her life in Sharifa’s house. She never leaves her bedroom, simply waiting for men to come in every hour. The men are usually married, wealthy, and always ask her if she feels good.
One man, Fawzy, doesn’t ask her if she feels good. Instead, he asks if she feels pain. When she says yes, but that Sharifa says work is work, he laughs and tells her that Sharifa is fooling her: she’s making money using Firdaus’s body, while all Firdaus gets is pain. This makes Firdaus cry. Fawzy comforts her, then forces her to sleep in his arms. When Firdaus wakes up, he’s gone, but she can hear his voice coming from Sharifa’s room.
Fawzy says he wants to marry Firdaus, and Sharifa accuses him of taking Firdaus away from her. The two argue back and forth until Sharifa threatens to get a man named Shawki involved. This enrages Fawzy, who begins to rape Sharifa. Firdaus listens until she can’t hear noise coming from Sharifa’s room anymore. When she creeps over and peeks in, she sees Sharifa lying naked with Fawzy next to her. Firdaus quietly gathers her things and flees to the streets once more.
Firdaus wanders the streets alone in a thin dress until a police officer comes up to her. He grabs her arm and tries to force her to come home with him for a price. When she refuses, he threatens to have her arrested for prostitution. Firdaus tries to break free, but he holds onto her and forces her to his house, where he rapes her. When he’s done, he says he has no money on him and tells her to leave.
Firdaus goes back on the streets, and it begins to rain. She takes refuge underneath a bus stop; she is drying herself off when a man pulls up in a car. The man gets out of his car, opens the door for her, and politely asks her to get in. At his house, he helps her undress and bathes her in warm water. He then carries her to his room and they have sex.
When Firdaus wakes up, it’s morning. She collects her things and begins to move towards the door, but the man stops her and gives her ten pounds. At this moment, a metaphorical veil is lifted from before her eyes. She recalls the first and only time she ever held money before: when she begged her father for a piastre and he gave her one in exchange for doing extra chores. She realizes for the first time ever that she has a whole ten pounds that belong to her.
She goes to a restaurant and orders a whole chicken for herself. As she eats, she notices that the waiter avoids looking at her plate and at the ten-pound note she has. She realizes that having money is making all the difference in how he is treating her. She also realizes that the people in her life hid their money from her, to the point that she unconsciously began to view money as shameful. She wants to ask the waiter who gets to decide for whom having money is permissible and for whom it is forbidden, but she realizes this is pointless. She decides to just pay for her meal instead.
From this day on, Firdaus walks through the streets with her head held high. She looks people in the eyes and does shy gaze away when she sees people with money. When men come up to her and solicit her for sex, she looks them over carefully, consideringly, before either saying yes or no. One man asks why she refuses to sleep with him, and she replies that she has standards. Another man comes up and says the secret word: "money." She goes with him.
From then on, Firdaus sells her body on her own terms and keeps all of the profit. She gets an apartment of her own and finally has free time to do as she pleases. She begins to make friends, and one such friend is a journalist named Di’aa. The first time she receives him, he asks to talk to her and accuses her of treating her work like a clinic. He also says that she is not a respectable woman. This deeply offends Firdaus, and she refuses to sleep with him. Di’aa leaves, but his words remain and resonate within her. She resolves that, no matter the cost, she must become a respectable woman.
Analysis
In this section, the question isn’t whether Firdaus will be betrayed again: it’s who will betray her next. After feeling relief that Firdaus found a mother/sister figure to care for her, it’s devastating when Sharifa’s abuse of Firdaus is revealed. Sharifa’s betrayal is multifaceted. First, she betrayed Firdaus on a personal level. She preyed upon Firdaus’s loneliness and naivety to lull her into a false sense of security. She taught Firdaus about self-worth and the importance of not undervaluing herself and her talents, only to sell Firdaus to men without Firdaus’s consent. This makes her no different from Bayoumi. Second, her betrayal of Firdaus hits on a universal level, as she’s a woman abusing another woman. This is another reason why Sharifa’s betrayal cuts so deeply.
Sharifa’s actions also call into question a central tenet of the book. The narrative of men as villains and women as mere victims no longer strictly applies. While it’s clear that Sharifa lives at Fawzy’s mercy and is a victim of rape and abuse as well, this doesn’t absolve of her blame for what she does to Firdaus. Making Firdaus a prostitute without explaining to Firdaus the situation or giving Firdaus some of the profits establishes Sharifa as a villain as well. No longer are men the main antagonists of the novel: rather, it’s the society that preferences male desires and lives at the expense of women that serves as the main source of conflict in Firdaus’s life. All the villains’ actions can be traced back to this one source.
Still, despite the negatives of Sharifa’s betrayal, there are a few positives from her presence in Firdaus’s life. First, she is the catalyst for Firdaus’s quest towards self-actualization and understanding her worth. She helps Firdaus realize that for most of Firdaus’s life, she has allowed men to determine her worth and identity. Though Firdaus hasn’t fully developed a sense of self by the time she leaves Sharifa’s house, the seeds of self-discovery are definitely planted. Second, Sharifa introduces Firdaus to a means by which Firdaus can provide for herself. Prostitution is often called "the oldest profession in the world," and once Firdaus realizes she can get money for selling her body, she achieves a certain level of independence. For now, she doesn’t rely wholly on men for her living.
Besides the themes of betrayal, independence, and dependence, imagery and symbolism are also key literary terms in this section of Woman at Point Zero. Saadawi uses a powerful sense of color to describe the moment when Firdaus and Sharifa meet by the Nile River. For example, the green of the water reflects the green of the trees on the riverbank, and Sharifa’s eyes reflect the flow of the green water as well. This, when coupled with Sharifa’s green eye shadow and shawl, surround Firdaus, lull her into complacency, and wrap her up in Sharifa’s spell. Symbolism comes into play once Firdaus receives her first payment for her sex work: money, once a foreign and forbidden object for Firdaus, becomes a symbol of her independence.
Still, although Firdaus has achieved a level of independence and has made great strides on her path to self-actualization, she still has a way to go. This is obvious when she takes Di’aa’s criticism to heart and begins to question her life as a prostitute. When Di’aa says she isn’t a respectable woman, this sets Firdaus on a quest for respectability. It’s unclear where this quest will take her.
