Customer Reviews

Woman at Point Zero

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Woman at Point Zero is a thin little book, yet its message for the audience is incredible. From an interview with Firdaus, a prisoner who was charged with murdering a pimp, we can see the Egyptian women¡¦s lives and how they manage to survive in a male dominant society. Firdaus is executed in the evening on the same day of interview.

I think the book¡¦s name reveals the emotional situation of Firdaus as a woman who withdraws from human beings. She simply has neither love and hate nor fear and her heart is empty. In other words, there is no positive and negative, she is at point zero. Firdaus is different from other prisoners; she neither shows a great response to the execution nor tries to appeal for clemency. She was sitting in the prison quietly and waiting for the time to come.

It is understandable. In Fridaus¡¦ experience, frustrations and disappointments happened again and again as if a cycle of her life. As a child Firdaus was sexually abused by her uncle and a boy. Since sex is a forbidden topic in the society, she did not know what was going on. Growing up as a submissive girl, she was coerced into an arranged marriage with an old man, and life gets worse from that point. Firdaus experienced sexual and physical abuse from different men and eventually become a prostitute. As a prostitute, the novel shows us, her life is better. Even though prostituting is not a respectable job, Firdaus earned freedom and a degree of respect from it. She learnt about the price of her body.

In all parts of the world, there are a lot of women who are doing the same thing in order to survive in the world or in the work place. At the end of the story, --well, you¡¦ll just have to read it yourself to find out what happens. We may think terrible misogynist things will only happen somewhere far away from us. I recommend this book because if we think again, we see the disrespectful attitudes and immoral trade everywhere around us. Immoral trades are waiting for women who are not able to realize the existence of the traps in our societies. As a result, we too may pay ¡Ąthe highest price for things of the lowest value¡¦ (p.76).

This novel is a very fast read. I'm an average paced reader but got through this novella (about 105 pages) in about two hours which is hellishly fast.

The main story is framed between two smaller sections. Part one is only about 8 pages and the writing style within it is poor as is part three but this is purposefully done because it is from the point of view of a psychologist.

The meat of the story is heart-wrenching and ends in bittersweet triumphance. It's a gripping tale of a woman's search for freedom from the restrictions of her Egyptian/Arabic society. My only complaint is that the writing style isn't as great as I would have liked it to be but I have suspicion that this is the fault of the translator. It is certainly a page-turner that must be read in its entirity before a comment can be made. It gets better with each page. The storyline is excellent and it is very well constructed.

It questions male dominance in Arabic society while taking you on a saddening ride with Firdaus, the prostitue. We see the effects of the dominant men in her life including her uncle and father and how this leads to her desiring to be a prostitute. Perplexingly enough we see that she prefers the street-life.

Describing a woman looking for control and security, finally grasping it by commiting the ultimate sin which she finds to be no crime at all, Saadawi captures a disturbing picture of Egyptian society.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a good, quick, passionate read. One cannot help to sympathize with Firdaus and that's what makes this story so very sentimental.

Read it in its entirity, try to in one sitting if possible, it will truly make your day and leave a lasting impression in your mind, in your heart, and in your soul.

If you want to read about a strong, non-Anglo, feminist perspective, read Ms. Saadawi's work. After reading this book about battered souls and battered women, I was compelled to volunteer at a domestic violence center. This book doesn't just encourage you to read this story, and stew at home; it makes you want to act out and do something to prevent violence in any form.

When I was in highschool back home in Indonesia, our teacher chose this book (was translated into Indonesian) as one of our mendatory reading books for the year. I though it was boring at first but just after the first pharagraph of the book I changed my mind. Surely the book was truly worth to read.

I do not want to go through the details and the analysis to the book, but I must say, reading Woman At Point Zero was heart-throbbing and was exciting at once. I sure recommend anyone to read this book, to also feel the excitement and, as for informational, to see the lives of Egyptian muslims.

The book is written in a well-structured manner and is very easy to understand. Facts are provided and it is a book written out of first-hand experienced writer. Again, well-written that is. Another eye opener the world we're living now, one that my or may not surprise some, but is still is interesting to read.

The story takes place in the early 1970s. The author, Dr. Saadawi is a psychiatrist and consultant for the women's prison. A young woman named Firdaus is scheduled to be executed for fatally stabbing her pimp. Thus far Firdaus has refused to speak to anyone, but Dr. Saadawi breaks through and thus a novel is born.

Firdaus is born to a poor family. Her parents die and she goes to live with her perverted uncle. He gets married and wants to be rid of Firdaus so he sends her to boarding school. She finishes her secondary school exams placing 7th in all of Egypt.

Her uncle and his wife decide that sending her to university would be a waste of time as there aren't that many job opportunities available. So, they marry her off to a sheik, who's supposed to be a real catch. He's plenty old enough to be her grandfather, and prone to tirades and violence that cause his repulsive facial sores to ooze pusty goo. Prior to this "arranged" marriage Firdaus contemplates escaping, but realizing how limited her options are acquiesces. Eventually, the marriage becomes unbearable and she flees only to be "rescued" by a pimp. She goes through a series of pimps, and one madam, before having a major epiphany.

Firdaus realizes she has been selling herself short. Drastically raising her prostitution rate makes her a hot commodity. Being a product of American pop culture myself this came as no great surprise to me. After all, some of my compatriots have been known to spend as much as $50,000 for a handbag. This concept of setting the price too high in order to raise the product's perceived worth in the eyes of the consumer is known in the advertising industry as "prestige pricing."

Firdaus sets herself up as a freelance pro. She has a nice apartment and picks and chooses her clients, and has free-time to pursue intellectual interests. Before long she has another major revelation after a male friend, whom she believes respects her as an astute liberated woman, lets her know that she's "just a whore." She then decides to get an "honest" 9 to 5 job working for the government. In doing so she must drastically reduce her standard of living. She is in for a rude awakening as she discovers the subculture of office politics. Not only did she make far more money as a prostitute she got more respect. Putting out is one of the unwritten rules of the job description.

Coincidentally, two nights before I read this book I saw a TV show about one of Nevada's legal brothels. The pimp, or CEO, boasted that their top "girl" grossed half a million dollars last year. That's more than 10 times what the average teacher makes (if not for the union they would make even less) and five times that of a nurse practitioner (HMOs don't mind paying this because it's still far cheaper than hiring MDs). Firdaus' story takes place about 35 years ago and I know there have been a lot of positive changes since then, but I wonder how many of them are cosmetic.

Two days after reading Firdaus' story I came across an article about the human organ "business." (Buying and selling organs is illegal in the US, but entrepreneurs circumvent this bete noire by charging "service" and "handling" fees. Organ procurers can strip a body much like a car, fetching $250,000 through legal channels!) In China harvesting death row inmates to sell their organs is reported to be a booming business. Regardless of how one feels about the death penalty, once profit is factored into the equation look out! So, if Firdaus were executed today in China her body could continue to be a commodity post-mortem.

This novella bears uncanny similarities to Lao She's "Crescent Moon." It's a short story in an anthology by the same name. A widowed mother is forced to prostitute to support her daughter then the daughter ends up prostituting to support the mother. Neither of them is named but, the daughters observations are very similar to Firdaus', so similar I began to wonder if Saadawi has read "Crescent Moon." Lao She was a casualty of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

The motif of the stalking and judgemental green eyes can also be found in Li Ang's 1969 short story, "Curvaceous Dolls" that appears in The Colombia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature edited by Joseph S.M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt. Li Ang also wrote The Butcher's Wife. "Curvaceous Dolls" is about a young wife's saphic longings, not unlike Firdaus' feelings for Miss Iqbal.

The treatment is savage and exact--the only manner of writing that could do justice to the material. Because of this, the novel is a quick read, but it is not a light one. I haven't read a prose style this beautiful since Les Guerilles (Wittig) or Carver's "A Small, Good Thing." Combined with this, her understanding of the neurotic (and its origins) outpaces Margaret Atwood by leagues. Sadat imprisoned her for her writings, and I can see why. It's striking.

I had to read this book for a Non-Western Literature college course, and intitially I was suffering through it so I wouldn't look like a fool when called on in class. However, when I actually sat down and thought about the true meaning behind this book, I was blown away by the empowerment and strength it offered. It takes a little while to realize what the author is really trying to get through the reader's head, but once he or she catches it, it will open eyes.

Like many others, this book was one of our mandatory reads for school. However it is a tiny little book barely over 100 pages. Yet it is terribly sad and opens the reader to the many injustices of the world. It follows an Egyptian woman named Fridaul growing up in a peasent/farming enviroment to becoming a prostitute in Cairo. In this journey she encounters multitudes of deceptive and generally horrible people. Fridaus grows up naive and unaware she is taken advantage up and eventually becomes hardened by all the hardships she faces. This is a terrific book, a quick read, and one that will really leave a mark.

Women at Point Zero is a novel based on an actual woman that Al Saadawi met in a women's prison in Cairo. Firdaus, a woman on death row for killing a pimp, tells the story of her life. Firdaus begins life as a lower-class rural peasant, ending up as a high-priced prostitute with no illusions about her place in society. Awesome book.

Too often writers get lost in pretentious prose and ramble on needlessly. Not this book, it works like a well oiled machine, no line or word is wasted. The language is so precise and strikes with clarity. I love it. And it would be easy to write this book off as feminist, but there is an integral message here: the role we all play in exploitation. This should be a required reading for students across the world .