1. By Mia B, Mannie B, Ithan M, Laura P & Alice T
Pleasure and Pain
By Mia B, Mannie B, Ithan M, Laura P & Alice T

2. Argument
The author uses the contrast of pleasure and pain to show how FGM and constant suffering, clouds her physical and emotional pleasure.The incapability to feel physical pleasure has her constantly looking for meaningful relationships, which end up bringing more pain. These relationships reflect her naivety and desperation to accommodate for her incapability through emotional intimacy.

3. Mohammadain
“From some part in my body, where exactly I did not know, would come a sensation of sharp pleasure.”(17)
Mohammadain, along with the Uncle, is the only man we see actually give Firdaus this sensation of pleasure
She learns of this pleasure before her FGM, however he is brought up within the context of her telling us, the researcher, of her FGM
He does not cause Firdaus any sort of pain, emotional or physical, and is the only man to not do so
The painting shown is called lovers walking in the snow, they are described as walking together in an ai ai gasa pose or literally walking together under an umbrella of love. There is no pain, only pleasure

4. Uncle
“A strange thing was happening to me…somewhere in some distant spot within my body was awakening an old pleasure lost a long time ago, or a new pleasure still unknown and indefinable, for it seemed to arise outside my body” (28)
The image of sex remains roughly the same while Firdaus’ outlook on it changes. No longer is sex pleasurable as now it only brings about discomfort.
Sex for Firdaus is not what those around her experience, rather something she dreads due to her past trauma of the act.
Firdaus’s uncle is presented as a caring, sweet man but then he takes advantage of her. The black dye is used to represent the corruption and impact he had on Firdaus as he tainted the idea of love for her.

5. Miss Iqbal
“The sudden contact made my body shiver with a pain so deep that it was almost like pleasure, or a pleasure so deep that it bordered on pain.” (43)
This reveals how pain and pleasure have become illusioned
Her mental emotions are clouded due to the lack physical emotion she feels
The picture reveals two koi fish encircling one another to form the yin and yang symbol. This symbolizes the balance, the push and pull experienced between pain and pleasure throughout the book.

6. Sheikh Mahmoud
“On one occasion he hit me all over with his shoe. My face and body became swollen and bruised.” (59)
Her brief stay with her husband Sheikh was not one of her consensual relationships
He would physically beat her, mess with her emotions, and hurt her sexually, which he determined to be okay because he was her husband
The alligator symbolizes someone that is self serving, someone that attacks out of nowhere, has vicious speech which is destructive. This is a perfect representation of Firdaus’s husband.

7. Baouymi
When she resides with Bayoumi after fleeing from her husband, he has sex with her. She claims that her, “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…” (64)
Pleasure is referred to as painful showing how she no longer cares to find it
It becomes a destructive force as she is raped by Baouymi’s friends which gives her strength to make a change
Bayoumi is originally presented to us as a nice man that cares for Firdaus, however his disposition drastically shifts and flips to become that of a horrendous monster. This optical illusion can help to illustrate this flip, for if you look at it upside down it becomes a completely different face.

8. Ibriham
“The feel of our hands touching was strange, sudden. It made my body tremble with a deep distant pleasure, older than the age of remembered life, deeper than the consciousness carried within me throughout. (78)
This almost new experience of pleasure shows her life has been entirely the opposite.
In this case the pain that she ends up feeling is emotional pain that feels like a punch in the gut.
While relatively literal, the crying eye symbolizes the emotional pain that Firdaus goes through due to Ibriham.

9. Sharifa
“At first it was like pleasure, a pleasure akin to pain. It ended in pain, a pain which felt like pleasure”
Sharifa, while a strong woman, uses Firdaus’ body to make her money
Sex turns into an uneasiness in Firdaus’ brain She understands the unforgiving reality that constrained sex can bring and consequently adjusts along with her view of sex.
Green is obviously a big aspect of Sharifa’s character, however while green can be a symbol of life it also has many other forms. When applying it to the scale color of a dragon it tells you of the evil nature of the dragon, however vibrant the color may seem. Dragons are also a symbol of power.

10. Marzouk
“I continued to look straight at him without blinking. I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master.” (130)
Marzouk was her breaking point, where she had made up her mind that she would no longer be used as she was before by all the other men in her life. She unshackles the chains, similar to the forces, that bind her.
Marzouk has allowed Firdaus to overcome the societal forces that are entirely the root of her pain. The threshold established through Marzouk labels the turning point from naivety to acceptance for Firdaus.
Going literal with this picture, it shows us an image of a knife, which Firdaus uses to kill Marzouk and ultimately set herself free.

11. Relationship between Pleasure and Pain
Despite being opposites, pleasure and pain are the same to Firdaus. The pleasure Firdaus desires is so foreign to her that she views it as pain as well. She has lost what she was “born with,” meaning she has felt pleasure even before birth. Her life has been a string of suffering to the point where she does not recognize what she has experienced at birth. Ultimately what Saadawi is purposefully conveying, is that even in the contrast of pleasure and pain they fit together in a way, not in only in the life of Firdaus but everyone. They are parallel to each other because they both are required for one to feel in order to understand the other emotion. Without the pain Firdaus would never be able to cherish the pleasure in the small moments that she did experience in her life.

12. The Message
In the novel ¨Women at Point Zero, Saadawi uses the comparison of pain and pleasure to show not only the physical damage that FGM can have on women but the emotional damage it brings them. This is emphasized throughout the book as Firdaus confuses the two concepts. As she reaches this constant guttural ‘point zero’ she experiences a cycle that stems from her traumatizing childhood and FGM. These two acts have left her incapable to distinct between pleasure and pain and explain most of Firdaus’s horrible experiences as a women.