Summary
Using her secondary school certificate, Firdaus applies to jobs until, finally, something opens up at a big industrial company. There, she has her own small office and works under a chairman. Because her job pays less than her work as a prostitute, she can no longer afford her apartment and moves into a small room with no toilet. She must wake up every day at 5 A.M. and queue for the bathroom. To get to work, she takes a crowded bus. One day, a top executive from her firms sees her running for the bus and offers her a ride. When Firdaus looks into his eyes, she can see he’s judging her, so she refuses and says that the price of her body is higher than the price of a pay raise.
After 3 years of working at the firm, Firdaus realizes she was more respected as a prostitute than she is as a female employee. She refuses to “curry favor” with any of the top executives or officials, and she pities her female colleagues who give their bodies to these men in exchange for job benefits. Firdaus also realizes that all women are prostitutes of a sort—some are just in more control of their lives and livelihood, and thus more expensive. Ironically, because Firdaus wasn’t desperate to keep her low-paying company job, this endeared her more to company officials. She became known as an honorable woman, the most highly respected female official in the company.
One night, Firdaus is sitting in the company courtyard when a man approaches her. His name is Ibrahim, and he also works at the company. Similar to when Miss Iqbal found her sitting in the school courtyard, Firdaus bursts into tears and Ibrahim comforts her. She stares into his eyes, holds his hands, and feels a deep pleasure.
The next few days at work, Firdaus increasingly notices Ibrahim. She writes his name on her desk and tries to go speak with him, but she can’t strike up the courage. Her friend Fatheya notices that Firdaus is acting oddly and suggests that perhaps Firdaus is in love with Ibrahim. Firdaus denies this, but she begins volunteering for Ibrahim’s revolutionary committee. One day, Ibrahim gives her a ride home and compliments her on her work ethic. Instead of going home, they talk all day about their pasts and hopes for the future. The next day, they meet again and speak about things they hid in the deepest corners of their minds. On the third day, he takes her back to his house, where they sleep together.
Firdaus is overjoyed. Everything around her is bathed in light, and she feels as light as a feather. A colleague sees her and asks what’s wrong. When Firdaus tells her that she’s in love, her colleague says Firdaus is a poor deluded woman for thinking that love is real. Firdaus doesn’t believe her colleague; she says that love has made her a different person. She then goes to find Ibrahim and sees him surrounded by a crowd. When she walks over to him, she hears people in the crowd congratulating him on his recent engagement to the chairman’s daughter.
Ibrahim’s betrayal devastates Firdaus. She packs her things and leaves the company for good. She realizes that, as a prostitute, she never felt pain such as this. She decides that the time has come to shed the last grain of virtue: a successful prostitute is better than a misled wife. With these revelations, Firdaus enters a state of tranquility. She once again walks the streets and feels free and at peace. As she walks, a fancy car pulls up next to her. Firdaus laughs and gets in.
From then on, Firdaus is hateful and distrustful towards men. She especially cannot stand the ones who try to give her advice about her life. She wonders where these men were when her husband was beating her or when she was getting raped by Bayoumi and his friends. She also grows more selective in her customers, thereby becoming a very successful and high-paid prostitute. One time, she refuses to sleep with a very important government official, and he gets her thrown in prison. Firdaus hires a prominent lawyer and gets her released from jail. The courts apparently decided that she was an honorable woman. This makes Firdaus realize that if she ever needs a dose of honor or fame, all she has to do is withdraw some money from her bank.
Of course, a woman with copious amounts of money and no man in her life attracts attention. Before long, many men approach Firdaus, some asking to marry her, others asking for love. One of them, a man named Marzouk, demands to be her pimp. Firdaus offers to buy him off with money, but he refuses and insists on sharing her earnings. He claims that every prostitute needs a pimp for protection. When Firdaus argues back, he says that he will be forced to threaten her. She tries to report him to the police, but she finds that he has even better connections than she does. One day, he follows her home, forces his way into her house, and rapes her.
From then on, Marzouk takes most of Firdaus’s earnings for himself. She finds out that he is a dangerous pimp who controls many prostitutes, including her. She realizes that she wasn’t really free and that she’s no longer in control of her life. One day, she’s had enough and tries to leave, but Marzouk appears in front of her. He tries to prevent her from leaving, claiming that she can never work for herself as a woman. Firdaus looks up at him with hate as only a woman can hate a man. She sees fears in his eyes for a second, and she attempts to open the door of the apartment. Marzouk slaps her across her face, and Firdaus slaps him back. He reaches for his knife, but Firdaus is quicker. She grabs it from his pocket and stabs him to death.
Firdaus opens the door and escapes the street once again. She feels as light as a feather. She realizes that, all her life, she’d lived in fear, until the moment she saw fear in Marzouk’s eyes—then the fear left her body. She walks idly through the streets with confidence, like a princess. At the corner of the street, she sees a man hanging out a car window staring at her. He says he is an Arab prince, and he asks her to come with him. She refuses until he offers her two thousand pounds.
Back at the prince’s house, Firdaus does her usual ritual and lets her body slip away from her as they have sex. The prince continually asks her if she’s feeling pleasure, and she lies and says "yes" to him—until he annoys her. Then, she retorts angrily “No!” When the prince gives her the two thousand pounds, she tears up the money in fury. As she’s destroying the money, Firdaus feels like she’s also destroying all the men she’d ever known. The prince is astounded and says that Firdaus must be a princess. Firdaus denies this and tells him that she is a killer. The prince doesn’t believe her until she slaps him across the face. She then says that burying a knife in his neck would be as easy as slapping him. Shocked, he begins to scream and calls the police.
When the police arrive, they question Firdaus and ask if she’s truly a criminal. Firdaus answers that she is a killer, but she’s not a criminal for she’s committed no crime. She only kills men, all of whom are criminals. She then accuses all fathers, uncles, husbands, pimps, lawyers, doctors, journalists, and men of all professions of being criminals. The police call her a savage and dangerous woman, put handcuffs on her hands, and take her away.
In prison, Firdaus is put in solitary confinement and receives the death penalty. She says that this is because men know that her living means their death. She, however, has triumphed over death and life because she no longer wants anything, fears anything, or hopes anything. She is finally free. She waits in her cell for the hangman, filled with pride, because she’s about to journey to a place where no king, prince, or ruler has ever been.
Analysis
This is perhaps the most pivotal section of Woman at Point Zero. In it, Firdaus transforms into the poised, proud, unrepentant killer of men whom we met in Chapter 1. Her experiences at the company, Ibrahim’s betrayal, and Marzouk’s theft of her freedom harden her and make her truly despise men. We finally learn why she spits on newspapers whenever she sees pictures of men in it.
To get her company job, Firdaus must finally use her secondary school certificate. This is the fulfillment of one of the goals she’s had since she was a young girl: to use her degree to provide a life for herself. Ironically, Firdaus discovers that the life of a respectable, degree-carrying woman is worse than the life of a prostitute. She can no longer afford many of the luxuries to which she was accustomed as a sex worker. She also realizes that many of her female coworkers trade their bodies for things worth much less than the money she made selling sex. This leads Firdaus to the conclusion that all women are prostitutes of some sort—a controversial argument that perhaps explains why Woman at Point Zero is often left out of the feminist fiction canon.
Even as Firdaus is coming to these somber conclusions, hope and love are in the air when she meets Ibrahim. Passionate, seemingly honest and different from other men, Ibrahim seems like the love Firdaus has been searching for her entire life. His betrayal is what closes her off to men for good. It’s also what makes her decide to return to prostitution. This time, she is calculating and exacting, much like Sharifa Salah el Dine. She’s finally realized what she’s worth, and she refuses to settle for anything less than that. She also reaches a new level of freedom, for she thinks that she’s experienced every bad thing a woman can experience. Unfortunately, she doesn’t see Marzouk coming.
Marzouk is the personification of everything Firdaus has fought against her whole life. Calculating, manipulative, and well-connected, he strips Firdaus of her hard-won independence and forces her into a life of subjugation. And, unlike the other villains she’s faced, the only way she can be free of him is by killing him. Tragically, killing him leads to her physical imprisonment, but luckily for Firdaus, other forms of freedom are more important to her. Freedom from fear is one of them. At the moment that she kills Marzouk, she also kills the fear she’s carried her entire life.
Firdaus killing Marzouk is the climax of the novel. After she kills him, Firdaus heads to the streets, confident and strong, a woman who believes in herself and knows where she is going. This is clear when she meets the prince and isn’t flustered by his money and affluence. She remains herself, and tears up the riches he offers her. The prince’s reaction is comical, as is his reaction when he finds out that Firdaus killed a man. The fact that Firdaus doesn’t attempt to run when he calls the police is a testimony to the person she has become. She fears nothing, not even the police and the threat of incarceration, and believes steadfastly in the righteousness of her actions.
