Woman at Point Zero

Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.

They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.

Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honour as a woman. I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another.

All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.

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.

She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.

Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.

I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die.

My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly.

I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master.

Everybody has to die. I prefer to die for a crime I have committed rather than to die for one of the crimes which you have committed.

Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful.

How many were the years of my life that went by before my body, and my self became really mine, to do with them as I wished? How many were the years of my life that were lost before I tore my body and my self away from the people who held me in their grasp since the very first day?

Who said to kill does not require gentleness?

But I feel that you, in particular, are a person who cannot live without love." "Yet I am living without love." "Then you are either living a lie or not living at all.

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

I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy.

I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one.

For truth and death 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 that frightens them.

You poor, deluded woman...do you believe there is any such thing as love?...You're living an illusion. Do you believe the words of love they whisper in the ears of penniless women like us?

Now i had learnt that honor required large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one's honor. An infernal circle whirling round and round, draggng me up and down with it.

Something I tried to hold onto, to touch if only for a moment, but it slipped away from me like the air, like an illusion, or a dream that floats away and is lost. I wept in my sleep as though it was something I was losing now; a loss I was experiencing for the first time, and not something I had lost a long time ago.

She replied that it was precisely men well versed in 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.

That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another. Because I was intelligent I preferred to be a free prostitute, rather than an enslaved wife.

I came to realize that a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life. An employee is scared of losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute’s life is in fact better than hers. And so she pays the price of her illusory fears with her life, her health, her body, and her mind. She pays the highest price for things of the lowest value. I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one. I also knew that if I lost my job, all I would lose with it was the miserable salary, the contempt I could read every day in the eyes of the higher level executives when they looked at the lesser female officials, the humiliating pressure of male bodies on mine when I rode in the bus, and the long morning queue in front of a perpetually overflowing toilet.

A successful prostitute was better than a misled saint. 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.

How is it possible to live? Life is so hard?’ ‘You must be harder than life, Firdaus. Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.’ ‘But you are not hard, Sharifa, so how do you manage to live?’ ‘I am hard, terribly hard, Firdaus.’ ‘No, you are gentle and soft.’ ‘My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite deadly.’ ‘Like snake?’ ‘Yes, exactly like a snake. Life is a snake. They are the same, Firdaus. If the snake realises you are not a snake, it will bite you. And if life knows you have no sting, it will devour you.

My work is not worthy of respect. Why then do you join in it with me?

I am speaking the truth now without any difficulty. For the truth is always easy and simple. And in its simplicity lies a savage power. I only arrived at the savage, primitive truths of life after years of struggle. For it is only very rarely that people can arrive at the simple, but awesome and powerful truths of life after only a few years. And to have arrived at the truth means that one no longer fears death. 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. 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.

My heart faltered, overcome by its frightened, almost frenzied beating because of something I had just lost, or was on the point of losing for ever. My fingers grasped at his hand with such violence that no force in the world, no matter how great, could take it away from me.