In Firdaus’s narration, a person’s eyes reflect her perception of them and the way she judges their character. Although Firdaus barely remembers her mother, Firdaus does recall that her eyes looked like two rings of bright white surrounding two circles of deep black, and the white glows as if light flows through them from some magical place. The flowing light suggests that Firdaus remembers her mother as a life-giving source of comfort. This description is repeated almost verbatim for both Miss Iqbal and Ibrahim’s eyes (before Ibrahim betrays Firdaus), suggesting that Firdaus sees these individuals similarly, as people whom she loves that give life rather than take it. Contrarily, when Bayoumi starts to beat Firdaus, his once-kind eyes reveal themselves to be “jet black,” suggesting that they have no light and that he is not a source of compassion as Firdaus once believed. Similarly, Firdaus’s stepmother’s eyes are dull and unreflective, suggesting that although she is not cruel, she is unfeeling and does not bring life, hope, or love to Firdaus’s world.
Eyes Quotes in Woman at Point Zero
All I can remember are two rings of intense white surrounded by two circles of intense black. I only had to look into them for the white to become whiter and the black even blacker, as though sunlight was pouring into them from some magical source neither on earth, nor in the sky.
All I know is that anything I would have to face in the world had become less frightening than the vision of those two eyes, which sent a cold shiver running through my spine whenever I remembered them.
It was though I was seeing the eyes that now confronted me for the first time. Two jet black surfaces that stared into my eyes, travelled with an infinitely slow movement over my face, and my neck, and then dropped downwards gradually over my breast, and my belly, to settle somewhere just below it, between my thighs.
I realized this was the first time in my life I was eating without being watched by two eyes gazing into my plate to see how much food I took. Ever since I was born those two eyes had always been there, wide open, staring, unflinching, following every morsel of food on my plate.
I was prepared to do anything to put a stop to the insults that my ears had grown used to hearing, to keep the brazen eyes from running all over my body.
Why was it that I had never stabbed a man before? I realized that I had been afraid, and that the fear had been with me all the time, until the fleeting moment when I read fear in [Marzouk’s] eyes.
Eyes Symbol Timeline in Woman at Point Zero
