A female psychologist living in Cairo is busily doing a bit of research on women in prisons. Believing her work is part of a process to help the lives of these ‘unfortunates’, she finds her convictions shaken when she meets Firdaus…a high-class sex worker, condemned to death for killing a pimp. At first Firdaus will not speak with her; in fact, she’s not speaking much at all (refusing even an opportunity for a pardon if she would but write a letter to the president). There’s something about Firdaus that fascinates our psychologist…a light in the eyes, a pride evident in her bearing…SOMETHING. Then, the night before her execution, Firdaus summons the psychologist, and tells her story.
For a short volume, this book packs in a lot of detail…and very little of it is easy reading. Firdaus tells a tale of routine exploitation, cruelty and misogyny. Though she comes from a poor background, Firdaus takes pains to relate how every strata of society is rigged to terrify and subdue women, to render them objects for the consumption of foul men. The woman who works as a secretary in an office sells herself (body, time, dignity) in much the same manner as the sex worker…the sex worker, in Firdaus’s view, just tends to be a better negotiator.
Saadawi, an esteemed Egyptian author with a pretty amazing biography (seriously, look it up) clearly meant this to be a blasting polemic against patriarchy and misogyny, and it definitely succeeds at that. The book words as a novel because of the character of Firdaus; highly intelligent and persistent, it is ultimately less anger than her own sense of self worth that brings her into sex work, and inspires her to kill. This is perhaps the novel’s greatest, most subversive accomplishment: showing that an oppressed person murdering an oppressor to be an expression of self worth. Saadawi makes a good case for it, I’ll give her that. Food for thought! Me like books.
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