Hiding Behind The Wall

Throughout the book, Mahfouz portrays Ahmad as a tyrant that unleashes his anger with his family every chance he gets and a sinner who cheats on his wife, drinks, and lives in hypocrisy. He loves women, but not necessarily the women of his house; he loves people, but we don’t get a sense of his love for his family. Ahmad seems to be an evil father who doesn’t love his children. But when Ms. Shawkat offers Ahmad a marriage proposal between her son and Aisha, we come to see the pain he feel for not being able to marry Khadija, the oldest daughter before marrying Aisha, the youngest. We finally can clearly see that he loves his daughters so much that it hurts him to no be able to make them both happy. We get a sense of his love when the author says:

He was distressed and dejected. He had a sensitive heart, more sensitive than most people have suspected. In fact, it was too sensitive. How could anyone believe that who had only seen him grinning, bellowing, or laughing sarcastically? ...Sorrow was going to scorch his flesh and blood in a way that could spoil his whole life, making it seem ugly to him. How happy it would make him to spare no expense to delight both his daughters…Each of them was vital to him. (229)
Through this quote for the first time in the entire book, the author shows clearly that despite being extremely strict with them, Ahmad does love his daughters. Here we see Ahmad in a way that we hadn’t seen him before; we see him as a loving father, as a human being. The exposure of this side of him, made me change my point of view regarding Ahmad.

This quotes discloses a different Ahmad. From all the other accounts in the book I could never imagine that he “had a sensitive heart…In fact, it was too sensitive” (229). As I read this I started to think about the way he was toward his family in a different way. Maybe because he was too sensitive, he acted so rough with them to protect himself from being hurt by them. The anger, strictness, and sternness with the family is simply a shield to prevent the family from seeing his sensitivity. I can see now and in a way excuse Ahmad for some of his behavior. After all, I feel that many people aren’t so different from him. Many of us at some point in our lives have acted rough or even evil with people to protect ourselves; we’ve built walls to stop others from seen who we really are. Men specially are often taught to behave this way. An article form the Boston Globe says that “men are often raised to hide emotions, except for anger,” which could be another explanation of Ahmad’s behavior. So why should we judge Ahmad as rough as we have in almost every one of our class discussions?

During one of our class discussions, we questioned if Ahmad loved his children. Many of us quickly responded that he didn’t. We used the way he treats Kamal as an example of why we thought he didn’t love his children. But don’t parent sometimes scream at their children when they are upset. Sometimes they say things they don’t mean. I’m not saying this is the exact case of Ahmad but that just because a parent acts rough with his children doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love them. As Aby mentioned when we had this discussion, parents impose discipline on their children because the love them and not because they want to hurt them. I didn’t see Ahmad behavior this way until the author tells us that “sorrow was going to scorch his flesh and blood in a way that could spoil his whole life, making it seem ugly to him. How happy it would make him to spare no expense to delight both his daughters…Each of them was vital to him” (229). Here we see that seeing his children hurting hurt him because he loves them. He didn’t allow Aisha to marry the officer because she loved her older daughter so much and didn’t want to disappoint her and not because he didn’t love Aisha. When Ms. Shawkat proposes the marriage, he accepts because he can’t say no to her and because he doesn’t want to stand on the way of her Aisha’s destiny. He’s happy to marry her because he knows she will be happy, but it pains him to know her other daughter will suffer. Only a father who truly loves his daughters will be torn the way Ahmad appears to be when he can’t make both of his daughters happy.

I think that it’s important to examine this quote and re-analyze our opinion about Ahmad and everything he does to get the true meaning of him as character. So after doing some further examination of the quotes, what do you think about Ahmad? Have your opinions change about Ahmad or do they remain the same?

Sources

Osborne, Helen. “Talking health to men.” 2009. The Boston Globe. February 23, 2010.<http://www.boston.com/jobs/healthcare/oncall/articles/2009/04/08/in_other_words/?page=2>