Summary
Soon after Firdaus returns to her uncle’s house, she marries Sheikh Mahmoud. At his house, she finally has a comfortable bed to sleep in, but her husband is constantly around her. Sheikh Mahmoud has an open sore on his chin, and it disgusts her. At night, he kisses her, touches her body, and sleeps with her. When he falls asleep, she slips out of bed and washes her body vigorously.
The Sheikh is miserly and a recluse. He has no friends and never leaves the house for fear of spending too much money. He watches Firdaus closely, and if he catches her wasting food or household goods, he beats her. One day, he hits her all over her body with his shoe, and her body swells up. Firdaus runs to her uncle’s house for protection, but he says that all husbands beat their wives; he returns her to Sheikh Mahmoud’s house that same day.
Back at her husband’s house, tensions are high. Sheikh Mahmoud ignores Firdaus until she tries to eat some of the breakfast she prepared for them. He jumps up and begins to yell at her, asking why she didn’t stay at her uncle’s house if she wanted to run away. He leaps at her, and Firdaus lies passively as he rapes her, all the fight drained from her body.
One day, the Sheikh beats her so badly that she begins to bleed. She leaves his house again, this time for the streets. Although her face is swollen and bloody, no one asks her what is wrong or if they can help her. She passes a coffee shop and asks for a glass of water. At first, the waiter is annoyed, but then he sees her face and takes pity. He brings her the water and then brings the owner of the coffee shop over to talk to her. The owner of the shop asks for her name and about her family. When Firdaus says she has no one, he offers to let her stay in his spare room at his apartment until she finds work.
The shop owner's name is Bayoumi, and he reminds Firdaus of her father. Looking at him, she feels no fear, for he seems calm, quiet, and incapable of being violent or cruel. At this home, Firdaus takes care of the house and cooks for Bayoumi. He refuses to let her sleep on the floor, and she feels embarrassed taking his bed, so they sleep together in his bed. He also never takes food from her plate, unlike Sheikh Mahmoud, and he doesn’t hit her.
Still, Firdaus grows restless at the situation. She passes schoolgirls in the streets and envies them. She goes to Bayoumi and tells him she must find work because they are living scandalously. Bayoumi argues that it’s impossible to find work with just a secondary school certificate, and Firdaus replies that she’ll go out on her own and look for work. This infuriates Bayoumi, and he slaps her across the face. Firdaus looks up into his face and no longer recognizes his eyes. He then punches her so hard in the stomach that she passes out.
Things change completely after this. Bayoumi now locks her in his apartment before leaving for the day. Firdaus now sleeps on the floor in the other room. At night, when Bayoumi comes home, he enters her room, slaps her across the face, and rapes her. She usually keeps her eyes closed as he rapes her, but one night, his body feels different. On that night, she opens her eyes and sees that another man is on top of her—one of Bayoumi’s friends.
The situation continues like this until a neighbor sees her weeping through the lattice door of Bayoumi’s apartment. The neighbor offers to call the police, but Firdaus is too afraid, so she calls a carpenter instead. The carpenter forces the door open, and Firdaus escapes to the streets.
Analysis
Firdaus’s marriage to Sheikh Mahmoud starts the next epoch of her life. Though her uncle was sexually abusive to her, he did educate and provide for her. Now, Firdaus is at the mercy of her husband, a cruel, reclusive man who beats her. When Firdaus tries to turn to her uncle for help, her uncle and his wife tell her that religion allows her husband to beat her. Here we see religion’s continuing role in the novel as a means of subjugating women. When Firdaus’s uncle immediately returns her to her abusive husband, this is a gross betrayal of the father-daughter relationship he had tried to cultivate for most of Firdaus’s life up until then.
As it turns out, betrayal is a common thread in most of Firdaus’s relationships. When she finally manages to flee Sheikh Mahmoud’s abuse, she is “saved” by a man named Bayoumi. What at first seems like a new start for Firdaus quickly becomes another hell. Bayoumi seems honorable and trustworthy at first, even offering to help Firdaus find work and become independent. The moment Firdaus crosses him, however, the flip switches and Bayoumi resembles Sheikh Mahmoud in his treatment of Firdaus. His change in personality is also demonstrated in his eyes: eyes that were once calm and relaxed become jet black, cold, and strike fear in Firdaus. Again, eyes play a pivotal role in characterization.
When Firdaus is raped by her husband, then Bayoumi, and then by Bayoumi’s friends, she does the same thing. She separates her consciousness from her body, lies passively, and doesn’t fight. She uses the simile of a piece of dead wood to describe how she acts during her rape. Abandoning her body and being like a corpse is how she copes with the abuse she experiences at the hands of men.
At this moment, it seems like the men in Firdaus’s life are the main antagonists of Woman at Point Zero. Starting with a father who fed himself while she starved, Firdaus experiences ill-treatment at the hands of men time after time. Because she relies on these men for her livelihood, she is unable to demand better treatment or advocate for herself. Her fear also prevents her from striking back. At first, her fear even prevents her from escaping unsafe situations, as we see when she returns to her uncle’s house because she’s afraid of the streets at night. Soon, however, her fear of violent men overpowers her fear of the streets, and she finds the courage to run away from both Sheikh Mahmoud and Bayoumi.
The content of this section of the novel changes the mood of the novel radically. When Firdaus is in school, the feeling is hopeful because her future seems bright. Like Firdaus, the reader wonders where Firdaus’s intelligence and work ethic will take her. And like Firdaus, our hopes are dimmed when her uncle limits her potential and arranges her marriage. Our hopes are completely dashed when we see how Sheikh Mahmoud treats her, and they are nonexistent after Bayoumi betrays her. Now, instead of being somewhat hopeful, the mood of the novel is bleak. We wonder what trials and tribulations Firdaus will experience next.
