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Woman at Point Zero
Nawal El Saadawi
(First published 1975)
Once back I do not know how I put up with life in my uncle’s house, nor do I remember how I became Sheikh Mahmoud’s wife. All I know is that anything I would have to face in the world had become less frightening than the vision of those two eyes, which sent a cold shiver running through my spine whenever I remembered them. I had no idea what colour they were, green or black, or something else. Nor could I recall their shape, whether they were large, wide open eyes, or just two narrow slits. But whenever I walked in the street, whether by day or by night, I would look around me carefully as though I expected the two eyes to rise up suddenly through some opening in the ground and confront me.
The day came when I departed from my uncles’ house and went to live with Sheikh Mahmoud. Now I slept on a comfortable bed instead of the wooden couch. But no sooner did I stretch out my body on it to rest from the fatigue of cooking, and washing and cleaning the large house with its rooms full of furniture, than Sheikh Mahmoud would appear by my side. He was already over sixty, whereas I had not yet turned nineteen. On his chin, below the lip, was a large swelling, with a hole in the middle. Some days the hole would be dry, but on others it would turn into a rusty old tap exuding drops red in colour like blood, or whitish yellow, like pus.
When the hole dried up, I let him kiss me. I could feel the swelling on my face and lips like a small purse, or a water skin, full of a stagnant greasy fluid. But on days when it was not dry I would turn my lips and face away to avoid the odour of dead dogs which emanated from it.
At night he would wind his legs and arms around me, and let his old, gnarled hand travel all over my body, like the claws of a starving man who has been deprived of real food for many years wipe the bowl of food clean, and leave not a single crumb behind.
He lacked the ability to eat much. The swelling on his face interfered with the movement of his jaws, and his shrivelled old man’s stomach was upset by too much food. Although he could only eat small amounts, yet each time he would wipe his place clean, sweeping the piece of bread held between his fingers round and round to make sure nothing was left. He kept looking at my plate while I ate, and if I left anything over he picked it up, put it in his mouth and after swallowing, quickly told me off for my wastefulness. Yet I was not given to wasting anything, and the only food I left on the plate were the scanty remains which stuck to its surface, and could only be removed with soap and water.
When his arms and legs let go of me, I would gently slip my body out from under him, and go on tiptoe to the bathroom. There I would carefully wash my face and lips, my arms and thighs, and every part of my body, taking care not to miss a single inch, going over it several times with soap and water.
He had retired from his job, was without work, and without friends. He never went out of the house, or sat at a coffee-house, lest he be obliged to pay a few piastres for a cup of coffee. All day long he remained by my side in the house, or in the kitchen, watching me as I cooked or washed. If I dropped the packet of soap powder and spilled a few grains on the floor, he would jump up from his chair and complain at me for being careless. And if I pressed a little more firmly than usual on the spoon as I took ghee out of the tin for cooking, he would scream out in anger, and draw my attention to the fact that its contents were diminishing much more rapidly than they should. When the dustman came to empty the refuse from the bin, he would go through it carefully before putting it out on the landing. One day he discovered some leftover scraps of food, and started yelling at me so loudly, that all the neighbours could hear. After this incident, he got into the habit of beating me whether he had a reason for it or not.
On one occasion he hit me all over with his shoe. My face and body became swollen and bruised. So I left the house and went to my uncle. But my uncle told me that all husbands beat their wives, and my uncle’s wife added that her husband often beat her. I said my uncle was a respected Sheikh, well versed in the teaching of religion, and he, therefore, could not possibly be in the habit of beating his wife. She replied that it was precisely men well versed in their religion who beat their wives. The precepts of religion permitted such punishment. A virtuous woman was not supposed to complain about her husband. Her duty was perfect obedience.
I was at a loss what to answer. Before the servant girl had even started putting lunch on the table, my uncle took me back to my husband’s house. When we arrived he had already eaten his lunch alone. Night fell, but he did not ask me whether I was hungry. He had his dinner alone and in silence, without addressing a single word to me. Next morning, I prepared breakfast and he sat down on his chair to eat, but avoided looking at me. When I sat down at the table he looked up and started to stare fixedly at my plate. I was terribly hungry and felt a crying need to eat something, come what may. I put my hand in the plate and raised it to my mouth with a morsel of food. But no sooner had I done this than he jumped up shouting:
‘Why did you come back from your uncle’s house? Couldn’t he bear to feed you for a few days? Now you will realise I’m the only person who can put up with you, and who is prepared to feed you. Why do you shy away from me then? Why do you turn your face away from mine? Am I ugly? Do I smell? Why do you keep a distance whenever I come near to you.?’
He leapt on me like a mad dog. The hole in his swelling was oozing drops of foul-smelling pus. I did not turn my face or my nose away this time. I surrendered my face to his face and my body to his body, passively, without any resistance, without a movement, as though life had drained out of it, like a piece of dead wood or old neglected furniture left to stand where it is, or a pair of shoes forgotten under a chair.
One day he hit me with his heavy stick until the blood ran from my nose and ears. So I left, but this time I did not go to my uncle’s house. I walked through the streets with swollen eyes, and a bruised face, but no one paid any attention to me. People were rushing around in buses and in cars, or on foot. It was as though they were blind, unable to see anything. The street was an endless expanse stretched out before my eyes like at sea. I was just a pebble thrown into it, battered by the waves, tossed here and there, rolling over and over to be abandoned somewhere on the shore. After some time I was worn out by walking, so I sat down to rest on an empty chair that I suddenly came upon placed upright on the pavement. A strong smell of coffee reached my nostrils. I realised my tongue was dry, and that I was hungry. When the waiter boy came up to me and asked me what I would like to drink, I begged him to bring me a glass of water. He looked at me angrily, and said that the coffee-house was not for passers by. He added that the Sayeda Zeinab mausoleum was very close, and that there I could find all the water I needed. I raised my eyes to look at him. He stared at me, and then asked me what had caused all the bruises on my face. I tried to say something in reply, but the words would not come so I had my face in my hands and wept. He hesitated for a moment, then left me, and came back after a while carrying a glass of water. But when I put the glass to my lips, the water stuck in my throat, as though I was choking, and trickled back out of my mouth. After some time the owner of the coffee-house came over to where I was sitting and asked me what my name was.
‘Firdaus,’ I said.
Then he added, ‘What are all these bruises on your face? Has somebody hit you?’
Once more I tried to explain but my voice choked again. I was breathing with difficulty, and kept swallowing my tears. He said, ‘Stay here and rest for a while. I will bring you a cup of hot tea. Are you hungry?’
All the time I kept my eyes fixed on the ground, and did not raise them to look at his face even once. His voice was low, with a slight hoarseness which reminded me of my father. After he had eaten his meal, and beaten my mother and calmed down, he would ask me,
‘Are you hungry?’
For the first time in my life I suddenly felt my father had been a good man, that I missed him, and deep down inside had loved him without really knowing it. I heard the man say,
‘Is your father alive?’
I answered , ‘No, he’s dead,’ and for the first time wept at the thought that he had died. The man patted my shoulder and said,
‘Everyone has to die, Firdaus,’ and added, ‘What about your mother. Is she alive?’
‘No,’ I replied.
He insisted, ‘Haven’t you got any family? A brother, or an uncle of some sort?’
I shook my head, repeating, ‘No,’ then quickly opened my small bag, adding, ‘I have a secondary school certificate. Maybe I can find a job with my secondary, or with my primary school certificate. But if necessary I’m prepared to do anything, even the kind of work that requires no certificates.’
His name was Bayoumi. When he lifted my eyes and looked into his face, I felt no fear. His nose resembled that of my father. It was big and rounded, and he had the same dark complexion. His eyes were resigned and calm. They did not seem to me like the eyes of someone who would kill. His hands looked obedient, almost submissive, their movements quiet, relaxed. They did not impress me as the hands of someone who could be violent or cruel. He told me he lived in two rooms and that I could stay in one of them until I found work. On the way to his house he stopped in front of a fruit stall and said,
‘Do you prefer oranges or tangerines?’
I tried to reply but my voice failed me. No one had asked me before whether I preferred oranges or tangerines. My father never bought us fruit. My uncle and my husband used to buy it without asking me what I preferred. As a matter of fact, I myself had never thought whether I preferred oranges to tangerines, or tangerines to oranges. I heard him ask me again,
‘Do you like oranges or tangerines?’
‘Tangerines,’ I answered. But after he had bought them, I realised that I liked oranges better, but I was ashamed to say so, because the tangerines were cheaper.
Bayoumi had a small two-room flat in a narrow lane. It overlooked the fish market. I used to sweep and clean the rooms, buy fish from the market below us, or a rabbit, or meat and cook for him. He worked all day in the coffee-house without eating, and when he came back at the end of the day he would eat a heavy meal, and then go to sleep in his room. I used to sleep in the other room lying on the floor with a mattress under my body.
The first time I went home with him it was winter and the night was cold. He said to me,
‘You take the bed, and I will sleep on the floor.’
But I refused. I lay down on the floor and started to fall asleep. But he came over to me, took hold of my arm, and took me to the bed. I moved by his side with bent head. I was so embarrassed, that I stumbled several times. Never in my life had anyone put me first before himself. My father used to occupy the oven room in winter, and leave me the coldest room in the house. My uncle had the bed to himself, while I slept on the wooden couch. Later on, when I married, my husband ate twice as much food as I did, yet his eyes never lifted themselves from my plate.
I stood for a moment near the bed and murmured: ‘But I cannot sleep on the bed.’
I heard him say, ‘I will not let you sleep on the floor.’
My head was still bent to the ground. He kept his hand clasped around my arm. I could see it was a big hand with long fingers like those of my uncle when he touched me, and now they were trembling in exactly the same way. And so I closed my eyes.
I felt the sudden touch of him, like a dream remembered from the distant past, or some memory that began with life. My body pulsed with an obscure pleasure, or with a pain that was not really pain but pleasure, with a pleasure I had never known before, had lived in another life that was not my life, or in another body that was not my body.
I ended up by sleeping in his bed throughout the winter and the following summer. He never raised a hand to strike me, and never looked at my plate while I was eating. When I cooked fish I used to give it all to him, and just take the head or the tail for myself. Or if it was rabbit I cooked, I gave him the whole rabbit and nibbled at the head. I always left the table without satisfying my hunger. On my way to market my eyes would follow the schoolgirls as they walked through the streets, and I would remember that at one time I had been one of them, and had obtained a secondary school certificate. And one day I stopped right in front of a group of schoolgirls and stood there facing them. They eyed me up and down with disdain for there was a strong smell of fish arising from my clothes. I explained to them that I had been awarded a secondary school certificate. They started to make fun of me, and I heard one of them whisper into her friend’s ear:
‘She must be mad. Can’t you see, she’s talking to herself?’
But I was not talking to myself. I was just telling them that I had a secondary school certificate.
That night when Bayoumi came home, I said, ‘I have a secondary school certificate, and I want to work.’
‘Every day the coffee-house is crowded with youths who are out of work, and all of them have university degrees,’ he said.
‘But I must work. I can’t carry on like this.’
Without looking at me in the face, he said, ‘What do you mean, you can’t carry on like this?’
‘I cannot continue to live in your house,’ I stammered. 'I’m a woman, and you’re a man, and people are talking. Besides, you promised I’d stay only until you found me a job.’
He retorted angrily, ‘What can I do, get the heavens to intervene for you?’
‘You’re busy all day in the coffee-house and you haven’t even tried to find me a job. I’m going out now to look for one.’
I was speaking in low tones, and my eyes were fixed on the ground, but he jumped up and slapped me on the face, saying, ‘How dare you raise your voice when you’re speaking to me, you street walker, you low woman?’
His hand was big and strong, and it was the heaviest slap I had ever received on my face. My head swayed first to one side, then to the other. The walls and the floor seemed to shift violently. I held my head in my hands until they grew still again. Then I looked upwards and our eyes met.
It was as though I was seeing the eyes that now confronted me for the first time. Two jet black surfaces that stared into my eyes, travelled with an infinitely slow movement over my face, and my neck, and then dropped downwards gradually over my breast, and my belly, to settle somewhere just below it, between my thighs. A cold shiver, like the shiver of death went through my body, and my hands dropped instinctively to cover the part on which his gaze was fixed, but his big strong hands moved quickly to jerk them away. The next moment he hit me with his fist in the belly so hard that I lost consciousness immediately.
He took to locking me in the flat before going out. I now slept on the floor in the other room. He would come back in the middle of the night, pull the cover away from me, slap my face, and then bear down on me with all his weight. I kept my eyes closed and abandoned my body. It lay there under him without movement, emptied of all desire, or pleasure, or even pain, feeling nothing. A dead body with no life in it at all, like a piece of wood, or an empty sock, or a shoe. Then one night his body seemed heavier than before, and his breath smelt different, so I opened my eyes. The face above me was not Bayoumi’s.
‘Who are you?’ I said.
‘Bayoumi,’ he answered.
I insisted, ‘You are not Bayoumi. Who are you?’
‘What difference does it make? Bayoumi and I are one.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you feel pleasure?’
‘What did you say?’ I enquired.
‘Do you feel pleasure?’
I was afraid to say I felt nothing so I closed my eyes once more and said, ‘Yes.’
He sank his teeth into the flesh of my shoulder and bit me several times in the breast, and then over my belly. While he was biting me, he kept on repeating:
‘Slut, bitch.’ Then he started insulting my mother in words I was not able to follow. Later on, when I tried to pronounce them, I was not able. But after that night I heard them often from Bayoumi, and from Bayoumi’s friends. So I got used to their sound, and learnt to use them occasionally myself when I tried to open the door and found it locked. I would hammer on it and scream:
‘Bayoumi, you son of a …’ almost on the point of insulting his mother in the same way, but I held back the words on the tip of my tongue, realising that this would be wrong. So I resorted to insulting his father instead of his mother.
One day a neighbour saw me through the lattice of the door as I stood there weeping. She asked me what was wrong, so I told her. She started crying with me and suggested that we call the police. But the word police frightened me. Instead I asked her to bring a carpenter. After a while he came and forced the door open. I ran out of Bayoumi’s house into the street. For the street had become the only safe place in which I could seek refuge, and into which I could escape with my whole being. As I ran, I looked back over my shoulder now and again to make sure that Bayoumi was not following me. And every time I found that his face was not visible anywhere, I leapt forwards as fast as I could run.
