[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_88

Woman at Point Zero, Nawal El Saadawi, 1977

My mother was always an incredibly democratic spirit: she detested all men equally, from the adulterous womanizer next door to her father. Hers was never an unreasonable hatred; a valid and convincing argument always accompanied her contempt. “Look at them,” she said, commenting on the policemen who were stationed to check the documents of passers-by, “those are the great men who take care of our safety,” and she smiled with contempt, “do you know why there are three of them?” she then asked me, "because it takes three to do the job that a woman would do alone," and then added, "and also because they only feel strong if they are in a group."

Often, when we went to have breakfast at the bar, we were the only two women in the entire place. Silence fell when we entered; we felt all the gazes of the men, old and not so old, who were sitting at the tables with a glass of wine in their hand; then, when we had taken our seats and the visual inspection of our bodies was over, the buzz of chatter began again, and there was a furious flipping of newspaper pages, the clip clap of playing cards being shuffled, negative comments about government and politics, muffled laughter and requests for more wine shouted in an unkind way. “Look at them,” my mother said to me softly. “Those are the great men who command the women they have at home.” and then added, “Do you know why there are no women in the bars? Because they're all at home ironing their shirts and preparing their lunch." Usually between 11.30 am and 12 am, the place emptied: there was a sudden general stampede as if someone on the street had started giving away money, and everyone, as quickly as they could, gathered their things together, left the amount of their bill on the bar counter and rushed out. “Do you see them?” Mom asked, “It's feeding time. They will find it steaming on the plate as soon as they get home, and it will certainly not be good for them; it will lack salt and be cooked too much or too little". What my mother and I lived at home every day with my grandfather - a living stereotype of the father-master - was what all the women of the town lived in their homes with their men. In small towns, lost in the middle of the countryside, the realities are narrow, and they all resemble each other.

My mother's sisters, however, had developed a completely different approach towards the gender gap and the prevailing sexual discrimination. The first had chosen the tortuous path of hypocrisy, the second of blindness. The first acted as a reverent and obedient servant towards men even when she hated them; she flattered them, she always agreed with them, and she used to give them the more significant portion of food (how many times at the table was I left with almost nothing on my plate because she gave all the food to the men, saying "men work, they need energy! You're a child, you don't need to eat a lot"); the other sister, the younger one, used to live as if there were no problem as if the gender issue were a thing of the past as if women who have problems with men were a few unfortunate exceptions or handfuls of pain-in-the-ass women who invented issues where there were none. Both sisters, however, were experiencing abusive relationships with their respective partners, and despite getting divorced, they never managed to admit either their discomfort or their resentment towards their partner; the first sister said she was a free spirit who could not be trapped in a marriage, instead of admitting that her husband was an adulterer and a gambler; the other never said anything, we almost didn't even notice when she separated, and she has continued to use words of compassion and tenderness for her ex-partner, even though he has continued to insult her and spread malicious rumors about her.

When Paola Cortellesi's film "There Is Still Tomorrow" was released in 2023, I pushed my mother and her sisters to go and see it. Their reactions to the film were hilarious and perfectly consistent with their lines of thought: my mother liked the movie a lot; she saw great honesty in it. The sister who had embraced the path of hypocrisy said that it was a fascinating historical insight into an Italy that no longer exists, even if she found it a little exaggerated; the younger sister left the cinema repeating the phrase “not all men are like that; only some are like this, only some.”

When I read “Woman at Point Zero,” I immediately thought of my mother: the narrative voice is very similar to hers. El Sadawi’s is a powerful voice because it is free; it is free because it is authentic; and it is genuine because it is not afraid to say what can destroy the meaning of an entire life. Authenticity, in the Heideggerian sense of “remaining true to oneself,” requires incredible courage. The courage that, as my mother's sisters demonstrate, only a few have.

“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 with menial service for life, insults, or blows. Now, I realized that the least deluded of all women was the prostitute. That marriage was the system built on the most cruel suffering for women. […] I hope for nothing, I want for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free”.