Caitlin Hoover

March 17th, 2016

Professor Campbell

Woman at Point Zero and Gods Bits of Wood Book Summary

INTRODUCTION

        Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi is a crucial piece of feminist literature in the world today. It follows the plight of the Egyptian woman named Firdaus who is oppressed by the standards of Egyptian society in the 1980’s. Saadawi uses Firdaus’ story of abuse, neglect, pain, cruelty and prostitution to show the world how the unequal standards forced upon women through the use of religious fundamentalism, government oppression, and gender bias destroys all opportunity for women and restricts their access to education and freedom. Saadawi argues that even though Firdaus was alive in Egypt, she never truly lived until she broke free from the standards of society and ultimately met her death by the prison gallows.

        Gods Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane is a story about the Dakar-Niger Railway strike and how the railway workers of these African nations decided to stand up to colonialism and demand to be treated as dignified human beings. Ousmane gives a detailed recollection of the tragedy and passion of the Railway Strikers and their families from 1947-48. Through the tribulations and stories of these people, Ousmane shows how women in Africa were the drivers of revolution and ultimately decolonization or destruction of the “colonial machine”, and how religion was used as a tool of female oppression.  For the workers of the Dakar-Niger Railway, the strike was never about hating the colonialists, it was about establishing their fundamental human rights as dignified people.

        This paper will first summarize the story of Firdaus in Woman at Point Zero, describing how her story shows the themes of religion used as a tool of oppression, gender inequality, and women as the drivers of liberation. Then the paper will summarize the story of the Dakar-Niger railway workers and women in Gods Bits of Wood, touching on the themes of women as leaders of decolonization and drivers of liberation, and religion used as a tool of oppression. Finally the paper will conclude with how the themes intersect throughout both books, and why they are important when studying the politics of Africa.

WOMAN AT POINT ZERO

        Firdaus story shows the reality which women faced in Egypt during this time period. The fact that no woman was truly free, but was instead viewed as an object to be controlled and oppressed. Religion was and still is used to exploit and control women, leaving them with nowhere to turn when they are abused. Saadawi used this story to expose the reality of female oppression and how it affects women. Woman at Point Zero is an exceptional piece of feminist literature and its themes of female oppression are still relevant to life today, not only in Egypt, but across the world. Women are still seen as lesser than men and thus forced into lives of servitude. Firdaus felt that she would only find freedom and happiness in death, but while alive, this could never be achieved in a patriarchal society which used Islam to oppress women. Firdaus fights throughout her life against the patriarchy, never giving up like her counter parts, striving for education and economic freedom from men, and ultimately unveiling the truth about gender bias and control so that she may liberate herself from it.

Firdaus’ story begins as a young child growing up in Egypt under the accepted standard of female oppression. However, even as a young child, Firdaus was not free of abuse. She lived with her father and mother and received frequent visits from her uncle who was attending University in Cairo. Her uncle was her first abuser, “My galabeya often slipped up my thighs, but I paid no attention until the moment when I would glimpse my uncle’s hand moving slowly from behind the book he was reading to touch my leg. The next moment I could feel it travelling up my thigh with a cautious, stealthy, trembling movement. Every time there was a sound of a footstep at the entrance to our house, his hand would withdraw quickly.”^[1] As a young girl she was unaware that what her uncle was doing to her was wrong, nor would her awareness have mattered, because as a female in this society bodily autonomy was not her right.

        Even at her young age, Firdaus knew that the lives of men were regarded differently than those of women and she learned quickly not to question this after asking her mother about it, “No light seemed ever to touch the eyes of this woman, even when the day was radiant and the sun at its very brightest. One day I took her head between my hands and turned it so that the sun fell directly on her face, but her eyes remained dull, impervious to its light, like two extinguished lamps.”^[2] It would take Firdaus only a short few years to realize her mother had become like this due to her experience of consistent oppression and abuse at the hands of men, and that soon, Firdaus would feel herself becoming the same way. She admired education and seeing her uncle attend university, she would beg to join him, “Then he would laugh and say that El Azhar was only for men. And I would cry […]”^[3] Firdaus desired an education so that she may economically free herself from her abusers, but in this patriarchal society women’s access to education was restricted, they must be given permission to pursue knowledge. Arguably, this is because with knowledge, women would learn they are being oppressed and abused and attempt to change that. Her father also showed little care for the life of females, “When one of his female children died, my father would eat his supper, my mother would wash his legs, and then he would go to sleep, just as he did every night. When the child that died was a boy, he would beat my mother, then have his supper and lie down to sleep.”^[4]

        When both of her parents died, Firdaus was forced to go live with her uncle in Cairo. Through constant abuse Firdaus learned to hate herself, “I was filled with a deep hatred for the mirror. From that moment I never looked into it again.”^[5] Firdaus was learning at this young age to see herself as a lesser human being, devoid of dignity, because that is what the patriarchal society was teaching. Her uncle continued to molest her in the evenings, and when he married his wife, Firdaus went to live with them, “He was extremely polite, but treated her with the peculiar kind of courtesy devoid of true respect which men preserve for women.”^[6] Firdaus’ uncle sent her away to boarding school when the wife became angry with him showing Firdaus attention. There Firdaus came to love education but she quickly discovered every book was written about the exploits of men, and she quickly felt the desire to read about the strength of women, which she was never allowed the opportunity to do.

Shortly after, Firdaus’ uncle decided to marry Firdaus to his wife’s uncle for money, “If he marries Firdaus she will have a good life with him, and he can find in her an obedient wife, who will serve him and relieve his loneliness.”^[7] This quote further shows how patriarchal Egyptian society used religion to teach that women were only good if they were obedient to men. The man she was married off to, Sheikh Mahmoud, was also abusive to Firdaus, mentally, physically, sexually, and would even starve her, feeding her only his scraps when he felt generous. “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 that my uncle was a respected Sheikh, well versed in the teachings 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.”^[8] This was the first time that Firdaus began questioning the teachings of religion, and how if religion preaches about humanity and mercy, why is the practice of it used to control? In this way, Firdaus quickly came to learn that religion was yet another tool used for the oppression of women and destruction of their basic human rights, and she was forced to go back and live with Sheikh Mahmoud.

        When she could take the beatings no more, Firdaus ran away from her husband with the intention of finding work with her secondary school certificate. While fleeing she met a man named Bayoumi at a local coffee house who, seeing her bruises, offered her a place to stay. In the beginning Bayoumi was kind to her, then as she insisted on finding work, he suddenly turned on her, “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.”^[9] Bayoumi then began giving other men access to his apartment to rape the girl. In this way Bayoumi was charging these men and exploiting Firdaus as if she was merely an object for economic gain rather than a human being. When Firdaus could finally stand no more, she ran away again and met Sharifa Salah el Dine.

Sharifa was a prostitute and offered Firdaus a place to live, and after a short period, began prostituting Firdaus and keeping the profit, “I became a young novice in Sharifa’s hands.”^[10] Later Firdaus explains, “I never used to leave the house. In fact, I never even left the bedroom. Day and night I laid on the bed, crucified, and every hour a man would come in.”^[11] It was not until a customer named Fawzy explained to Firdaus that Sharifa was keeping the profit and she could make more on her own, that Firdaus ran away yet again. Even though Sharifa did not really have Firdaus’ best interests in mind, she did plant a seed in her mind which made Firdaus begin to think she had some control over her life and body. While walking on the streets trying to find shelter, a policeman found Firdaus and offered to either pay her for sex, or take her to jail. Feeling no choice in the matter Firdaus obliged and after he had slept with her he stated, “What are you waiting for? I have no money on me tonight. I’ll give you money the next time.”^[12]

 And so, Firdaus ran from the policeman and while sitting at a bus stop in an attempt to flee the city, a man pulled up in a car and took her to his house, where he slept with her and paid her ten pounds. This was the first time Firdaus had ever held money, and it changed her life forever, “Was it possible that a mere piece of paper could make such a change? Why had I not realized this before? Was I really unaware of this throughout the years? No. Now that I thought about it, I could see that I had known about it for a very long time, right from the start, when I was born and opened my eyes to look at my father for the very first time.”^[13] 

Firdaus now began to hold her head high and realize that as long as she made her own money, she had power, even if it was only a limited amount of power. “How many were the years of my life that had went by before my body, and myself became really mine, to do with them as I wished? […] Now I could decide on the food I wanted to eat, the house I preferred to live in, refuse the man for whom I felt an aversion no matter what the reason, and choose the man I wished to have, even if it was only because he was clean and well-manicured. A quarter of a century had passed, for I was twenty-five years old when I first started to have a clean apartment of my own, engage a cook who prepared the food I ordered, and employ someone to arrange for my appointments at the hours which suited me, and in accordance with the terms which I considered acceptable.”^[14] For the first time in her life, Firdaus felt a slice of freedom through economic liberation, and so she continued to prostitute herself and raise her prices until she became very successful and even high level politicians were seeing her. It was not until a man named Di’aa told her that her profession made her unworthy of respect that Firdaus decided to live a life devoid of prostitution and become employed at a job which provided her the opportunity for respect.

Firdaus was hired at a company where she worked long hours and received very little pay. She began to live in a tiny apartment with shared toilets and showers and rode the crowded bus to work every day where she saw her fellow female employees fighting to keep their jobs while being treated as worthless, “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 life and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute’s life is in fact better than hers. I now knew that all of us [females] were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one.”^[15] In this quote, Firdaus is conveying that she was now beginning to understand that there was a division between economic freedom/liberation, and having human dignity. She was seeing that having both within this society was next to impossible.

During her time at the company she met a man named Ibrahim who worked there, and quickly fell in love. She opened up the deepest reaches of her soul and told him all about her life and he in turn opened up about his life. She slept with him, only to find out the next day that he was engaged and planning to marry another woman and did not truly care about her. “Never had I felt so humiliated as I felt this time. Perhaps as a prostitute I had known so deep a humiliation that nothing really counted. When the street becomes your life, you no longer expect anything, hope for anything. But I expected something from love. With love I began to imagine that I had become a human being.”^[16] After feeling this deep searing humiliation and heart break, Firdaus returned to prostitution because she believed she would never be able to live with dignity and so she might as well have economic freedom. “The time had come for me to shed the last grain of virtue, the last drop of sanctity in my blood. Now I was aware of the reality, of the truth. Now I knew what I wanted. Now there was no room for illusions. A successful prostitute was better than a mislead 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 then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows.”^[17]

Her success was short lived as a pimp named Marzouk found her and began stealing her profits, “I discovered he was a dangerous pimp who controlled a number of prostitutes, and I was one of them.” Marzouk had connections everywhere with men in power and he would hold this over Firdaus’ head as he beat her and stole from her. When Firdaus could finally take no more of her life of abuse she killed Marzouk by stabbing him and walked away from the scene of the crime with her head held high. Suddenly feeling a sense of true freedom. When the police came to pick her up she stated, “No woman can be a criminal. To be a criminal one must be a man. […] I am saying that you are criminals, all of you: the fathers, the uncles, the husbands, the pimps, the lawyers, the doctors, the journalists, and all men of all professions.”^[18] Firdaus did not take appeals which were offered to her which would have allowed her to live. She finally felt free because she no longer feared death. “I knew why they were so afraid of me.  I was the only woman who had torn the mask away and exposed the face of their ugly reality. […] I fear nothing. Therefore I am free. For during life it is out wants, our hopes, our fears that enslave us. The freedom I enjoyed filled them with anger.”^[19] Firdaus was not afraid of death, in fact she was excited because she believed only in death could she have dignity and true freedom from oppression and control. In the end, Firdaus was hanged by the Egyptian authorities.

GODS BITS OF WOOD

The story of the Dakar-Niger railway workers shows the true face of colonialism in Africa. African people were treated as subhuman with less rights than colonialists. They were then coerced or forced into labor and exploited for the economic gain on the colonial powers. IN Gods Bits of Wood, Ousmane details how these workers went on strike demanding to be treated with dignity and entitled to basic rights in the workplace and livable wages. Ousmane then shows how the true drivers of this strike, that made all of it possible, were the women. African women were the ones making sure children did not die from starvation or dehydration, fending off colonial police brutality, questioning the power of Imams, and ultimately the ones who volunteered and lead the march to Dakar where the strike ended in their favor with the colonialists finally backing down. These women challenged their oppressed gender roles and evolve from standing behind the men, to leading them to revolution which ultimately drove decolonization in Africa.

        Transportation was key to colonialists maintaining rule in Africa. The colonial powers used the railway to transport cash crops which they sold on the international market for profit. Ousmane refers to colonial exploitation of Africans as the “machine” which the characters in the book are fighting against. Africans were exploited and forced to work on these railways with next to nothing for pay. The colonialists treated them as less than human and did not allow them any of the basic human rights entitled to white works in Europe. This drove the workers to coordinate a strike throughout all of the cities connected by the railway where the people were being exploited. Bakayoko was considered the spirit and heart of the strike, constantly encouraging communities not to give up until their demands were met by the colonialists. Bakayoko travels between cities along the railway, unifying workers in the strike. Ousmane predominantly focuses on three key cities; Dakar, Thies, and Bamako which are the key drivers of the strike.

        The regional director of the railway was Monsieur Dejean and he was intent on continuing to exploit the workers from his comfortable office. When he learned of their strike and demands, “An unreasoning anger stirred in him now, as he walked back and forth, like a bear in a cage. That very morning he had refused to see the representatives of the workers. He knew that among them were the sons of the same men whose movement he had crushed nine years before, and he had no intention of yielding now. It was not a question of agreement or disagreement. First they must go back to work; that was all there was to it.”^[20] In the beginning Dejean was convinced he could destroy the striker’s movement as he had destroyed their father’s movement years before, but Dejean did not account for the women playing such a strong role this time or Bakayoko traveling to all of the railway’s cities to unite African workers. The strikers were asking for “A raise in the pay scale, four thousand auxiliary workmen, family allowances, and a pension plan[…]”^[21] Even though what the strikers were demanding were considered absolutely necessary for European men to work, they were denied these basic workplace rights because the colonialists viewed them as less than human.

        The women of the railway towns stood behind their men in the beginning while the men organized strikers meetings, and handled the food portions, but it quickly became clear that their fight could not be won without the help of the women, “And the men began to understand that if the times were bringing forth a new breed of men, they were also bringing forth a new breed of women.”^[22] When the colonialists discovered they could not persuade Africans to go back to work on the railways, they began to use different tactics. They shut off the water supply, told shops to stop loaning food to the people, and even tried bribing them, “All of the women were now crowded around the fountain, holding out pots and jugs, clutching at the babies on their backs to prevent them from falling. Their mouths hung open and their eyes were fixed hungrily on a single drop of water, which had appeared on the spout of the faucet, like a pearl held in the beak of a bird.”^[23] The colonialists kept up these tactics for the entirety of the strike and the women quickly began to see that unless they took water or food from other sources, they and their children would die. The women then began changing gender roles and started gathering food and water themselves, a role that was previously done by men.

        Ramatoulaye even kills a goat to feed the children and women, “The blood spurted out again, spraying over the trembling figure of Bineta. Ramatoulaye wiped the blade clean on the animal’s heavy fleece and stood up at last. There was neither pride nor arrogance in her attitude, but just a kind of satisfaction, as if what she had done had been only a duty she could not avoid.”^[24] In the beginning the women were uncomfortable taking on these new roles, but they quickly learned they must in order to survive. Another woman named Penda, led some children to the shopkeeper’s store and they tricked the shopkeeper and stole rice to feed the village for a short period. This kind of action was unheard of before the strike. The women also take control of distributing food rations in the village. The women even fought off the police when they came to take Ramatoulaye the first time, “And it was in the street that the battle between the women and the police began, though no one knew exactly how.”^[25]All of these are roles which women had no part in during the peak of colonialism, prior to the strike.

Later, the men refused the colonialists’ bribes which were clear insults to the dignity and self-respect of the Africans. So when the colonialists began to see that these tactics were not working they brought in Imams, which were local religious leaders to try and convince the Africans that women are to be obedient and subservient to men and that they must continue to work in unequal conditions because God wills it. This was a clear example of using religion as a tool of oppression not only on women, but on all Africans. However, the women were completely against listening to the Imams, “[…] I am sure it is not written in the mother of all books of the law that honest people should be deprived of water and starved and killed.”^[26] It was with this type of attitude that the women began questioning the true role of religion in oppression.

        The colonialist outrage at the strikers continues to accumulate and eventually erupts at the hands of a colonialist named Isnard who shoots some of the African children, “For a moment Isnard just stood there, dazed, his arm still stretched out in front of him, holding the smoking gun. Then, with a mechanical gesture, he put it back in his pocket and began to run toward the European quarter, muttering breathlessly to himself, ‘They were shooting at me! They were shooting at me!’”^[27] This unnecessary violence was the last straw for the women and shortly after the women, led by Penda, told the male strikers they would be marching to Dakar to declare that they would not give up on the striker’s rights and to raise the spirits of all the villages along the railway. This March of the women to Dakar was like a battle cry for all African people to demand decolonization and equality. Penda stated in front of the gathering of men, “I speak in the name of all of the women, but I am just the voice they have chosen to tell you what they have decided to do. Yesterday we all laughed together, men and women, and today we weep together, but for us women this strike still means the possibility of a better life tomorrow. We owe it to ourselves to hold up our heads and not to give in now. So we have decided that tomorrow we will march together to Dakar.”^[28] And so, the women march for several days to Dakar, where they meet other women and strikers and together the group demands equal treatment, and shows they will not give in until their demands are met. At the sight of such a large group and so much determination, the colonialists finally give in to the striker’s demands.

CONCLUSION

Gods Bits of Wood and Woman at Point Zero are both critical pieces of literature for studying the politics of Africa. These books show how African women were and still are the forefront drivers of revolution, independence from colonization and liberation. This is why religion is still being used as a tool to oppress the voices of women, in an attempt to maintain corrupt control in Africa. However, these books show that women cannot be oppressed forever, and that even if one by one, they are becoming more aware of this structural violence and working to bring people together to fight it. It is critical that we learn lessons from these women who are driving change and understand that women and all Africans will never truly be free until they are viewed as equal regardless of race and gender, and thus treated as dignified human beings worthy of respect.

WORKS CITED

Nawal El Saadawi. Woman at Point Zero. Zed Books, 1983. Pp.1-142. Print.

Sembane Ousmane. Gods Bits of Wood. Le Livre Contemporian, 1960. Pp. 1-248. Print