Leading a Double Life

In my opinion, nothing is more aggravating than a person who tries to portray themselves as something they are not. In Palace Walk, a lot of these men are living double lives. Take Ahmad for example. From the beginning of the book he doesn't allow his family to see what he's really up to at times and does a pretty good job at hiding it from them. He goes out and sleeps with various women who aren't his wife and still claims to be a devout muslim. Finally, Yasin catches him in the act cheating on his wife, but instead of Yasin seeing the error of his father's ways he decided to emulate him. He decides that it's okay to live a life where he sleeps with various women, goes out and spends his money and drinks, all because his father does it. We've seen Yasin since the beginning of the book as someone who has admired his father so much, and it's inevitable that he'd want to be like him in every way possible. But, when Fahmy began lying about who he was and also leading a double life, it's apparent that this must be something that their family does. Ahmad wants Fahmy to stop participating in demonstrations dealing with the English, but Fahmy is so involved with doing this that he ends up disobeying his father , which will eventually lead to his death.
The passage that showed me that they really live this kind of life is found on page 424, when Fahmy shows us just how much this family doesn't mind lying about what they need to in order to get away with certain things. Fahmy thinks, “Lying was not considered contemptible or shameful in this household. Living in their father's shadow, none of them would have been able to enjoy any peace without the protection of a lie...None of the had scruples about it...” Fahmy talks about how many things that their family has done they've lied to Ahmad about it and they don't feel any remorse about it. But, my concern is why don't they? They consider themselves to be devout, faithful muslims, yet from most of the men in the book, we see them living lives that are contrary to what they should be doing as well-practicing muslims. I did research on the way that muslims view lying to see if they were actually living the way they should. I found a website written by a man named Dr. M. Amir Ali who was a man who came to the United States to spread the word of Islam to rid people of their pre-conceived notions and stereotypes of the religion. He wrote many articles on Islamic values and did a specific section for the views of falsehood. He writes, “Allah's messenger did not hate anything as strongly as he hated falsehood. If he received information that a particular man told a lie, he used to throw away that man's respect and honor from his heart...” So if Allah's own messenger did not tolerate lies, why would a good muslim truly want to do something like that.
Works Cited
1. Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy). New York: Anchor, 1990. Print.
2."Falsehood." The Article Collection of M. Amir Ali, Ph.D. Web. 25 Mar. 2010. .