This second section of Palace Walk has been very interesting. There have been many important things going on with every single character. One of the characters, Amina, experienced a particularly significant incident. This incident was how she got run over by an automobile after visiting al-Husayn’s shrine while her husband was out. While I was reading about this incident I kept thinking about how Amina’s husband was going to react when he learned about it. I thought that he might would probably beat her and hurt her more than the automobile had. However, his reaction truly surprised me. The passage that shows his reaction and that I will focus on begins on the forth paragraph on page 183 and goes on to the end of the next page.
After the doctor came to see Amina and assured everyone that she had just suffered from a fracture and would be completely healed in three weeks, everyone’s mind shifted towards what they were going to tell Al-Sayyid Ahmad. Yasin, who felt very responsible for the incident since he was the one who had proposed Amina take a walk, urged his mother to not worry. “’I assure you that we’ll think of something to tell him’” (178). Then Khadija proposed that they tell him Amina fell on the stairs. The family agreed this on and everything seemed solved.
However, when her husband arrived home and asked her what had happened to her, she froze. “At that moment all the ideas she had collected in her mind evaporated” (182). Feeling defeated se confessed the truth. This is when Al-Sayyid Ahmad gave us a surprising reaction. He stayed silent a while and then instead chastising her and shouting angrily he asked, “’What did the doctor say?…. How serious is the fracture?’” (183). Surprised with his reaction Amina assured him that there was nothing to worry about. Al-Sayyid Ahmad wanted to ask more questions but resisted his desire and left the room saying, “’Stay in bed till God heals you’” (184).
The question that comes to my mind when I think about Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s reaction is why? Why did Amina’s husband react like this when many other times, for the smallest incident he would grow angry? Why when he learned that his wife had disobeyed him, left the house when he was away when he can’t stand for anyone to look at his wife even when he is with her, did he react so graciously? One possible answer is that when he learned about the incident Amina had he overlooked her mistake and prayed to God that she recover. Even though he does treat her very harshly, Al-Sayyid Ahmad loves Amina and when he learned that she was injured he was genuinely concerned. Another thing that could’ve affected his reaction was that the reason Amina had left the house was because she had visited al-Husayn’s shrine. She wasn’t doing anything immoral, on the contrary she was doing something to express her faith. Although Al-Sayyid Ahmad usually acts as a very strict and harsh man, here we see a different side of him.
I'm interested to see how you think about this passage as you read on in the novel.
ReplyDeleteI know you must feel like there is good in Ahmad and so you want to say that he has another side of him that we got a glimpse of after Amina’s accident, but I disagree. I think that Ahmad was only trying to buy himself some time and thought about the entire situation and decided upon what to do. I know in the beginning he seems to be understanding and acts rationally but that was just part of his plan to slowly think about what to do and how to punish Amina. A few chapters after the incident Ahmad says to Amina, “I don’t want to find you here when I come back this noon” (195). Now, if Ahmad had shown us a soft side to him he would have just forgiven his wife for the mistake that she supposedly made and continue to be an ungrateful husband.
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