Nawal El SaadawiRezensionen

#ReadAroundTheWorld #Egypt

“A man does not know a woman’s value, Firdaus. She is the one who determines her value.”

Woman At Point Zero is a powerful feminist work written and published in the 1970s by prize-winning Egyptian author Nawal El Saadawi. El Saadawi began as a psychiatrist before becoming Minister for Health. Her writings and activism lead to her being removed from this role and to her imprisonment. At one point she fled Egypt due to death threats, but has continued to campaign strongly for women’s rights.

El Sawaadi writes about her prison visitation to Firdaus, a woman awaiting execution. As Nawal sits on the cold prison floor Firdaus recounts her life story. The book is a fictionalised account of this story, a story of sorrow, hardship and difficulty, yet strength and perseverance. Firdaus is physically and mentally abused in turn by each man in her life. From a lecherous uncle who marries her off at nineteen to a man in his sixties who beats her, to her colleagues, and even men who begin as kind and seemingly well-intentioned. As Firdaus sums up: “All women are victims of deception. 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.”

The book is written in a lyrical almost dreamlike fashion. As tragic events shape Firdaus’ philosophy and thinking. The story ends with Firdaus facing her jailers with her truth.
“They said, 'You are a savage and dangerous woman.'
I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.”

“It is my truth which frightens them. This fearful truth gives me great strength. It protects me from fearing death, or life, or hunger, or nakedness, or destruction. It is this fearful truth which prevents me from fearing the brutality of rulers and policemen. I spit with ease on their lying faces and words, on their lying newspapers.”

I found this book sad as it contains so much violence against one woman but nevertheless it manages to convey strength and truth and highlight the plight of many women around the world. A powerful read.

This absolutely blew me away. It's been on my list for years now, and I am so glad I finally picked it up. ALL THE CONTENT WARNINGS for sexual violence and coercion. The energy kind of reminded me of SCUM Manifesto, except with literary motifs instead of manic energy.

Such a harrowing and moving and stark depiction of the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" bind misogynist cultures place on women. Read when you want to burn all men down to the ground.

i love

It's hard to know what is fact and what fiction in this short novel by one of Egypt's most renowned feminist writers. In her introduction, El Saadawi writes that she wrote this novel after an encounter with a woman in Qanatir Prison. El Saadawi had been fired for writing things "viewed unfavourably by the authorities" and was doing research into the psychological problems of Egyptian women and the links between mental illness and oppression (she's also a medical doctor). She was interested in prisons in part because her partner had spent 13 years in prison as a "political detainee". Little did she know, when she was interviewing female prisoners as a psychiatrist, that several years later she too would be a prisoner there.

The prisoner that most interested El Saadawi was named Firdaus, a woman who had been convicted of killing a man and was sentenced to be executed, which she was in 1974. Her interviews with Firdaus would become the inspiration for Woman at Point Zero. The novel is told in the first person, as though Firdaus is speaking to El Saadawi, further blurring the lines between fact and fiction. In addition, the narrator repeats herself at times and has phrases which she uses over and over. Was this characteristic of Firdaus herself, or is it a literary technique introduced by the author? Perhaps it doesn't matter where the line is between fact and fiction, because in some ways it is the story of oppressed women everywhere.

Firdaus grew up in squalor with a brutal father and a mother whose eyes were dark and resigned. Her uncle saw potential in her, and took her to live with him and attend secondary school. When he marries, she is sent to boarding school. After graduating, she is married off to an elderly widower, and her life goes downhill from there. I'm not going to say much more about the plot, but it is related in a deadpan tone that only serves to emphasize the brutality and despair. The effects of poverty and oppression play out to the ultimate end in Firdaus' life. She reflects bitterly:

For death and truth are similar in that they both require 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. That is why they are afraid and in a hurry to execute me. They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them.

A few years after this book was published, El Saadawi might have felt that these words were prophetic, for she too would be punished for speaking her truth. She would later say, "Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies." She was released one month after President Sadat was assassinated.

I picked up this book as a part of my worldbuilding research and as an input to my post last week: Politics, Power, and Women Protagonists. I blew through it. There is so much to say about it that I struggle with where to begin, but my very first response was a resounding WOW!

Summary
The story is one woman’s story. She is a woman condemned to death in and by a culture that (in my opinion) is very difficult for someone raised in the United States to understand or fathom. She has murdered someone and is unashamed of that fact. She tells her story passionately and with conviction and with no regrets, and the entirety of the story is an exploration of the power struggles between genders. Firdaus found her power and in turn, she was feared. This is a feminist piece, but it is also a cultural piece and a very human piece.

Some quotes I found particularly encompassing:

“That love of a ruler and love of Allah were one and indivisible.”

“Each time I picked up a newspaper and found the picture of a man who was one of them, I would spit on it. I knew I was only spitting on a piece of paper which I needed for covering the kitchen shelves. Nevertheless I spat, and then left the spit where it was to dry.”

“They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them.”

On my blog, I further analyze some cultural aspects, feminism aspects, and the worldbuilding. You can check that out here: Susan's Review of Woman at Point Zero

When all is said and done, I gave this a 4.5 star rating, because there is one aspect that I had to school myself to believe within the story. Out of all the men she encountered, it is hard for me to fathom that there was not a single one with whom we could believe there was any goodness in the gender. That alone felt a bit unreal. In stories, I also look for a ray of hope within the darkness, something that shows the opportunity for change. So, while this is a powerful in almost every way, I have trouble with the thought that all men represent the antagonist.

A haunting yet beautifully told story.

La caída del Imán, obra maestra de la narrativa árabe actual, no sólo constituye un testimonio humano excepcional, sino una insólita y bellísima pieza literaria de gran envergadura. En palabras de Doris Lessing, «el relato trata de las mujeres que sufren la áspera dominación islámica, pero podrían ser mujeres de cualquier lugar en el que haya crueldad y malos tratos. Es una novela diferente de todas las que he leído, es más un poema o una balada doliente, con una cualidad hipnótica que le imprime su lenguaje rítmico y acerbo, en el que describe el mismo hecho una y otra vez: una mujer a la que dan muerte, en nombre de la religión, los hombres que han abusado de ella.

i love

I had more profound thoughts stemming from this short 100-page book than I probably will ever have from any other book I will read in the future.

يبدو انني استسلمت لقوة بلاغة هذه الانسانة الرائعة اذ انني كنت متوجسا في البدء من القراءة لها بحكم سوء الظن الذي يلف فكرنا العربي المعاصر، اختلف معها في فلسفتها للحياة لكنني ارفع لها القبعة على كشفها اعراض المرض الاجتماعي في بلادنا الاسلامية فهي بلا شك طبيبة متميزة، لك ان تنتقدها لكن اذا كنت منصفا فستدرك انسانيتها العميقة ( من وجهة نظر د. عبد الوهاب المسيري الاله الخفي الذي بداخلها وداخل كل إنسان) اذا لم نستطع نحن الذين ندعي اننا مسلمون ان نوافقها على ازمة الانسان في مجتمعاتنا ذلك اننا لم نعد نفهم الاسلام كما جاء به سيد الخلق _ صلى الله عليه وآله وسلم _ ولم نستوعب درس الإيمان الحقيقي، الاديب انسان مفرط الحساسية للمشاعر الانسانية لذا فهو يملك القدرة على طول الخط أن يرصد الخلل ويشير اليه، عمل ابداعي يشدك ويفتح عينيك.

مجموعة قصصية جيدة، رمزيات ومعاني وراء قصص ممتعة ومكتوبة بلغة سلسة.
تتراوح القصص بين حكايات لنساء وبنات وحكايات لرجال: كُل يروي حدث معين يشهده أو يُروي لنا معاناتهم الخاصة.
هناك قصتين بالتحديد حملوا رمزية شديدة السريالية ولم يعجبني ذلك مقارنة ببقية القصص.
الرسومات الخاصة بكل قصة في طبعة مكتبة مدبولي رائعة.
عناوين القصص وتقييمي الخاص:
1- كانت هي الأضعف 4
2- العطش 5: شديدة البساطة وتحمل معنى رائع
3- المقال 3
4- الصورة 3
5- ليس بغلا 4
6- الكذب 3
7- المربع 2
8- الأنف 1
9- رجل 2
10- الرجل ذو الأزرار 3
11- هؤلاء 3
12- لا أحد يقول لها 5
13- بلد غير البلد 3

obv this was hard to read for me bc after attempting to avoid any spoilers by not reading anything about it, i didn't realize there was so much *tw* SA in it... besides that, i really felt her pain and anger, as i'm sure TONS of others feel towards m*n. i only wish she had k-worded way more of these m*n who treated her like this.

A disturbing history of women in the Arab world and how they have been brutalized and mistreated in many ways throughout history up to the present day. This isn't a happy read, but would be an important one, I think, if it weren't for the frequent and sometimes incredibly blatant inaccuracies included in the text. I assume the author knows her own subject (Arab women and their mistreatment) since she is a doctor herself and has treated and interviewed many Arab women and has extensively studied the subject. But she should have stuck to what she knows; she branches out into the history of mistreatment of women in other areas of the world, including ancient Greece and Rome, and she boldly states as fact - frequently without citing sources - wildly inaccurate and untrue ideas. This, as you can probably guess, drove me absolutely bananas.

This is a beautifully written, very violent story. The composition is indeed circular like the game in the title. Even though I wanted to skip over the graphic descriptions of violent I couldn't, because I lost my place in the circle if I did. It is not an easy read, but well worth it.

I didn't like this book at all. Part of me feels like I'm being a bad feminist because its important for the stories of victimized and oppressed women in fiercely patriarchal societies to be heard. But said biographies should also be well-written and this is yet another book in search of an editor, sadly.

I recieved a copy of this book from the publisher for review through GoodReads.

For some reason I missed reading Nawal Saadawi while I was growing up. I wish I met her writings before, she would have answered many of my burning questions and made me feel less alone in my rebellion against social norms. These books were published some 40 years ago and they are still relevant and revolutionary now as they were then. This in itself is a condemnation of our society which has failed for decades to redress the injustice suffered by most Arab women throughout their lives.
This edition contains early studies about men and women and society in addition to the book published in English as "The Hidden Face of Eve" .

sta ficção é baseada no relato verdadeiro de uma mulher que espera sua execução em uma prisão no Egito. Sua história chega até a autora, que resolve conhecer Firdaus para entender o que levou aquela prisioneira a um ponto tão crítico de sua existência.“Deixe-me falar. Não me interrompa. Não tenho tempo para ouvir você”, começa Firdaus. E ela prossegue contando sobre como foi crescer na miséria, sua mutilação genital, ser violada por membros da família, casar ainda adolescente com um homem muito mais velho, ser espancada frequentemente, e ter de se prostituir... até que, num ato de rebeldia, reuniu coragem para matar um de seus agressores, levando-a à prisão.Esse relato é um implacável desafio a nossa sociedade. Fala de uma vida desprovida de escolhas, mas que em meio ao desespero encontra caminhos. E, por mais sombrio que isso possa parecer, sua narrativa nos convida a experimentar um pouco dessa liberdade encorajadora através das transformações internas de Firdaus.O que acontece com ela é o despertar feminista de uma mulher

LECTURA 12/2021

“I hope for nothing
I want for nothing
I fear nothing
I am free.”

Wow!

Despite the orientalist book cover of a veiled woman and the fact that the original title was “The naked face of the Arab woman” and not the submissive “hidden face of eve” I would still recommend this dense and intense read. As a doctor and psychiatrist, Nawal el-saadawi has seen and heard many women pass through her clinic doors for issues related to gendered violence. Whether it’s circumcisions and general mutilations gone wrong, or bleeding out and infected from the cultural practice of a woman puncturing through the hymen with a finger to draw blood, or men coming over to demand to know whether their new wives were really virgins, or witnessing the psychological trauma they went through -- she was in direct contact with the culture and women she’s writing about. A generational epidemic where girls are sexually assaulted by older male relatives, girls who are killed for the sake of honour even if they are innocent, women who resort to dangerous home abortions so they can continue working at their exploitative jobs where they are paid less than men for more hours.She also makes the huge but important effort to point out the structural factors, fearlessly implicating religious culture and tradition as well, that continues to be used to justify horrific, systematic abuse against women. If you want to know of a struggle beyond what we usually hear about, I highly recommend this read. Nawal el-saadawi holds no punches.

Bodour is now a successful literary critic but as a first-year university student was attracted to Nessim, a political activist. For two years any relationship with him existed only in her dreams but they finally spent a night together but, before they could legitimise their relationship he was imprisoned. Finding herself pregnant, when she had the baby, Zeina, she felt forced to abandon her to a life on the streets of Cairo. She then married Zakariah, an ambitious journalist, and they had a daughter, Mageeda but guilt and regret eat away at Bodour and, pining for her abandoned daughter, she starts to write a novel, as a fictionalised means of understanding her past. However, during the revolution in Cairo, the novel goes missing and, hoping to be reunited with Zeina, she must find out who stole it.
This powerful, complex and disturbing story is set against the background of a deeply entrenched patriarchal society, one which is rife with religious hypocrisy (there are long quotes from the Qur’an to demonstrate how control over women is exerted), political corruption and the struggles faced by any woman who either harbours any ambition or questions the status quo. With no conventional chapters, multiple, constantly-changing points of view and shifts between past and present, much of the narrative has a dream-like quality, a metaphorical reflection of Bodour’s disturbing descent into psychosis. Initially I found this rather confusing and frustrating but once I allowed myself to just “go with the flow” and to lose myself in the elegant, lyrical language, I felt emotionally connected to this dark, haunting story. Once I’d finished it I felt that not only had I gained insights into a very different culture, but felt huge admiration for the author’s real-life brave activism in the face of so many challenges.

Throughout my holiday, I’ve been alerted to a steady uncertainty regarding my reading appetite. Most days it is inscrutable. Projects assemble but just as quick drift away.

A few hours ago I wasn’t reading this wonderful novel. My attentions were on Mahfouz. Then sunlight gilded our house. Each window was alive with possibility. I drifted upstairs and found myself pausing. There on the shelf was God Dies by the Nile. Agency reigns. I suppose that could be a subtitle for the novel. Sadat promised reform. That did not happen. The normalized atrocity depicted was more than expected.

The focus slips about, time is folded and then unrolled. The target of vengeance despite the title is secular. Think Weber. Disenchantment. This is an astonishing ensemble. Each perspective is indefinite, partial and flawed. The denouement while celebrated on the back matter remains shocking.

Because Walking Through Fire is memoir it is impossible for me to separate it from the factual details of Nawal El Saadawi’s life. While reading it I had an urge to learn more about her—and about the times in which she’s lived—in order to better understand who she was and why things happened to (and around) her as they did. Three main themes run through Walking Through Fire: exile, resistance, and feminism. Coupled with exile and resistance is the powerful idea of writing as a means of having a voice even when one has been exiled and one’s power has been taken away. Writing, then, is a means of resistance, and sharing one’s story with others is a means of empowerment and also motivation to others to seek their own empowerment. Feminism and women’s rights are also joined with ideas of empowerment and resistance, and tainted (to a degree) by religious ideologies that run counter to concepts of rights for women.

Nawal El Saadawi is an exile in many ways. She is exiled from her country when her name appears on a death list for being a heretic and she is also in some ways in exile from herself. On page 1 she takes us through a morning in 1993, she stretches, she rises, she refers to herself as “I” and we, the readers, know who we are experiencing this with. Then, curiously, she writes “I look down at her feet” (1). She is looking at her own feet, yet suddenly she distances herself from this woman. But why? Is it because she is reminded of her resemblance to her grandmother and her past in Kafr Tahla? Even in her memories she is separate from her own country during this time of exile.

She is also an exile because she was born a woman. Female children are not celebrated as male children are, and while pregnant with her own daughter she wonders “Why should my presence in the world be a cause for sadness in the family?” (65) and vows to celebrate her child, should she be a daughter. When she is engaged to Ahmed Helmi he gives her a ring but not the traditional shabka (a gift of necklace, bracelet, and/or earrings, literally meaning “the hook”) and her mother is horrified, worried about what people might think. Her friends are nearly as horrified, wondering what she is thinking, marrying a man who does not give her this traditional gift as an expression of financial stability.She, however, sees it differently, writing “The word shabka filled me with terror. Was I being hooked to the bridegroom?” (36)

Women are not valued in many ways in Egyptian society. They are to obey their husbands under Islamic law and El Saadawi is not pleased with this or other facets of this family law. “Honour was always linked to the behavior of women, to a particular part in the lower half of their bodies.” (63) Men have the right to kill their wives if they commit adultery and men also have the right to take multiple wives. El Saadawi chafes under this—and other—double standards. She is a doctor, she wants to be above and beyond a family law that treats her like a child or someone who is mentally defective and unable to care for him or herself.

Truly, though, Nawal El Saadawi is a resistor. When she relates to us (through her writing) the memory of her husband Ahmed Helmi choking her and trying to kill her she writes of how she does not call out for assistance: “Since childhood I had never called out for help. Instead I thought of ways to resist, or to escape.” (157) She uses her writing as a way to resist all the exiles in her life. “After leaving Egypt I started to write. The threat of death seemed to give my life a new importance, made it worth writing about.” (3) The reason behind why she writes instead of resisting in other ways is made clear in a section of the book on pages 162-163 when she discusses book burning with her friend Samia. Samia fears that Nawal’s books will burnt and Nawal says to let them burn because it does not matter. They engage in a conversation about where books are now stored, they are no longer only paper, they are not in computers, they are stored “on tablets of material which does not burn” kept in heaven. Samia thinks she means that books are stored in God’s keeping, but Nawal does not. She talks of storage on disc and how “millions of copies can spread out across space like viruses and be multiplied endlessly…” (163) “But what is most important,” she says, “is that books can no longer be burned.”

A novel about a prostitute in Cairo who kills a pimp. It tells about the brutalization of peasants and women in Egypt

In this 2nd part of her autobiography Nawal El Saadawi brings together thoughts on and descriptions of encounters, persons and events, at times with a bitter sarcasm like describing the behaviour of families visiting their family-graves (161, pages refer to the 2018 Zed Books edition) or of Captain Ala’a viciously beating a boy volunteer suffering from pellagra (115); She writes of her time as the medical doctor in her ancestral village and tells the story of being prevented from rescuing the girl Masouda from an abusive marriage (Ch.5); she writes of the extraordinary women she encounters (Om Ibrahim, then later Om Al-Fida’iyeen whom she brings back to life in her novel ‘The well of life’ (269), the encounter the night he dies with the young fighter Ghassam who had lost both his legs and an arm (270f); she talks of her two failed marriages - into the 2nd one she goes against her better intuition - the contradiction: „a need for company while yearning for solitude?“, she asks herself - and that she had to fight him to get a divorce (She had not forgotten her father saying: „If the price we pay for freedom is high, we pay a much higher price if we accept to be slaves“, 228), then meeting Sherif Hetata imprisoned for 15 years, her 3rd husband; about her feelings and different reactions at the death of her mother and 4 months later at the sudden death of her father.

Again and again the eyes: Her first silent encounter with Ahmed Helmi back in Nov. 1951 (39ff) of „eyes meeting that belonged to another world … outside time and place and words.“ She writes about the understanding or lack of it, in the eyes: the eyes of her 2nd husband: „There is no light in them.“ (203) - she wonders: was it the loss of hope in the class that rules Egypt and the despair: only prison, death or exile that was waiting for them, that was driving her towards marriage as a way out? (206) - ; how different her first meeting with Sherif: „I looked into his eyes. They were like windows wide open onto what was inside.“ (234); also Ghassam the night he was dying „staring at me with [his] one eye that gleamed like a star in the dark night.“ (272)

She writes about politics and religion, about the wars (1948, 1951, 1956, 1967,1973). Om Ibrahim: ‘our country is like a monster. It devours its own children.’ (121); ‘divorce is the prerogative of men only’ (228); adoption is forbidden in Islam (129); God does not forgive those who worship other gods, yet he is prepared to forgive any other sin, his authority as the one and only god is more important than principles of justice and mercy. (141f). She is tired of lies, of words which conceal the truth; she travels to Jordan in 1968 in the hope to find a genuineness of spirit amongst the Palestinians fighting for a homeland from which they had been driven away 266f).

El-Saadawi has written about the Egyptian Revolution Jan./ Feb. 2011 when there was still hope: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/5640.aspx
(VII-18)