One of the things that I have noticed in the book is that Ahmad has many affairs with different women, yet he only loves himself. Ahmad looks and treats women as if they were objects. He sees his wife, Amina, as a thing that has no feelings or thoughts. He thinks that Amina’s only purpose or duty is to serve him, obey him, and satisfy any of his needs. Ahmad is a selfish conceited man who only sees women in a lustful way. Mahfouz says, “Despite his great number of amorous adventures, out of all the different varieties of love, al-Sayyid Ahmad had experiences only lust”.(99) For example, when he sees Zubayda he only pays attention to the curves and not to her personality. Ahmad sees Zubayda just as a sex object and that’s the way he sees every other woman in the book. He believes that women are only used for pleasure and that’s why he has never intended to look beyond a body to actually try to fall in love. Ahmad is like an animal who has no senses but is always in heat. He doesn’t think about others but only expects everyone to congratulate him on having such a great sense of humor. Ahmad is conceited and thinks that he is better than any other man. This ego is one of the major reasons why he believes that he can get any woman. As I was reading an article on men stereotypes, I came to the conclusion that Ahamd's ego is what is keeping him away from his family. Ahamd feels that he can't show any type of weakness in front of his family and this then leads him to look for other women so that he won't feel so alone. His ego makes Ahmad always sounds confident. For example, when Zubayda goes to his store he tries to seduce her without any shame. He doesn’t care that he is married or that he is committing a sin, instead he believes he is too great even for God to punish him.
Taylor. "Shattering The Ego and The Manly Man Stereotype". August 12, 2009. March 1, 2010.
When one reads something like Ahmad "was...pleased to feel the love and affection people harbored for him" (83) and looks at his behavior, one can easily conclude that he is a self-centered and heartless man, but if you look closely enough you can find that he does love at least two women in his life: his two daughters.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you when you say that "Ahmad is a selfish conceited man who only sees women in a lustful way." The quotes you use completely proves your point. We learn that he doesn't even love his own when the author tell us that "it was for the sake of this lust alone that he had married the first time and then for the second" (99). Here we can clearly see how lustful Ahmad is. "No woman [is] anything more than a body to him" (99). From this evidence we can say that he didn't love any woman, but that's not the case. He loved his daughters.
Yes, their case is different because they are his daughters, but they still remain women. He says to his friends referring to his daughters, "...I love them as much as I do Yasin, Fahmy, and Kamal, each equally" (263). Here we see that Ahmad is not a heartless man. He loves his children. More importantly from this quote we see he loves his two daughters, which is my point. He loves two women in his life. He does think about them. I actually wrote my response on this topic. Ahmad suffers when he can't marry both of his daughter because he knows one will suffer. Here Ahmad is thinking about others.
I won't deny that Ahmad has a huge ego and that he's self centered most of the time. He feels no love for women, but I must emphasize that he does love his two daughters. The love he feels for his daughters and his pain to see them get hurt shows that he has a heart. We can be sure of this when the author tells us that Ahmad "had a sensitive heart" (229).
Congratulations! You two are starting to get at some of the complexities in this character!
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