’’Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows. With these lines in her “Woman at Point Zero, ” Nawal El Saadawi has immortalized her writing in feminist literature of the third world. Not so much as her view of men but a view of women by the men of the third world is what makes her writing more perceptive. It is more an introspection of why men do what they do rather than a list of grievances about their doings. One of the most aggressive political/social writers of Egypt, Nawal El Saadawi herself went through a lot of pain to get her writings to reach the common public. Like her protagonist, Firdaus in Woman at Point Zero she went through a lot of oppositions through all walks of life to be educated and then to be published. She has stood up against the opposition of men who has constantly tried to oppress her voice about the treatment of women in third world societies like Egypt. Below are few of the quotes from the novel that ‘stand-alone’ say a lot about the condition of women in Egypt: ’’[Send her] to the university? To a place where she will be side by side with men? A respected Sheikh and man of religion like myself sending his niece off to mix in the company of men?’’ ’’I knew that women did not become heads of state, but I felt that I was not like other women, nor like the other girls around me who kept talking about love, or about men. For these were subjects I never mentioned. Somehow I was not interested in things that occupied their minds, and what seemed of importance to them struck me as trivial.’’ ’’When one of his female children died, my father would eat his supper, my mother would wash his legs, and then he would go to sleep, just as he did every night. When the child that died was a boy, he would beat my mother, then have his supper and lie down to sleep.’’ The passage in the book that talks about the influence of money on Firdaus is very insightful.
Money introduced Firdaus to a new relationship with the world--even the waiter looked differently at her and the plate of food he put before her. Her sudden clarity allows her to draw a line of equivalence that cuts through and binds disparate sites like food, a woman’s body and money. The book described Firdaus’s entry into the capitalist market as a wage-earner and her sudden power and pride. But, clearly, it was not the market itself that assured pride. Here are excerpts from that long passage in Woman at Point Zero: ’’The movement of his eyes as they avoided my plate cut like a knife through the veil which hung before my eyes, and I realized this was the first time in my life I was eating without being watched by two eyes gazing into my plate to see how much food I took.... Was it possible that a mere piece of paper could make such a change? Why had I not realized this before?.... The waiter was still standing upright by my side. His half-closed lids drooping over the eyes, his stealthy way of glancing aside were the same. I held the ten pound note in my hand, and he watched it through the corner of one eye, while his other eye looked away as though shunning the forbidden parts of a woman’s body. I was seized with a feeling of wonder. Could it be that the ten pound note I held in my hand was as illicit and forbidden as the thrill of a sacrilegious pleasure?’’ Also her social commentary is very visible. Saadawi is unflinching in her criticism of the men of the left. ’’Revolutionary men with principles were not really different from the rest. They used their cleverness to get, in return for principles, what other men buy with their money.’’ In this end the reader can’t help but empathize with Firdaus, emotionally alienated, physically mutilated, yet strong, proud. Even after she is arrested, she does not give in, she is not afraid, not anymore. ’’For death and truth are similar in that they both requie a great courage if one wishes to face them. And truth is like death in that it kills. When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife.’’ So what is her truth? The truth of how the men treat women, the hypocrisy of all people, who protect themselves and their lies with money, that no human can truly judge another? Because she is no longer tied down to the commerce of her body, she is not afraid to leave it. It is no longer an entity to be bought and sold. The song she sings, ’’I want nothing. I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. Therefore I am free.’’ Her detachment from the world around her is finally complete, and nothing or no one can hurt her anymore. They can kill her body, but her truth and her voice are immortal.