Life and Death

“His arms and legs began a slow limp disjoint motion. ‘How loud the clamor is. But what are they screaming about? Do you remember? How quickly memories are slipping away. What do you want? To chant? What chant? Or just call out? To whom? For what? There’s a voice speaking inside you. Do you hear? Do you see? But where? There’s nothing. Nothing. Darkness and more darkness. A gentle motion pushing with the regularity of the ticking of a clock. The heart is flowing with it. There’s a whisper accompanying it. The gate of the garden. Isn’t that so? It’s moving in a fluid rippling way and slowly dissolving. The towering tree is dancing gently. The sky… the sky? High, expansive…nothing but the calm, smiling sky with peace raining from it”’ (493).

This paragraph is the description of Fahmy’s death. It describes the quick thoughts that flows through his mind as he is dying. there is a lot of questions racing through his head because as Tianna puts it "Death at the end of the novel poses a lot of questions in many people's minds and influences their actions" Death leaves things unaswered and pointless. It’s interesting how Naguib does not outright say Fahmy is shot and killed with a bullet. Death for Fahmy did not end with darkness and nothingness, it ended with peace. The thing he fights for and the reason why he’s in the demonstrations and risk his life for. Peace. Ahmad wonders, “ Peace? Where had it gone and when would it be ready to return? Even in his store there were distressing, whispered conversations about bloody events” (463). The revolution took away peace not only in the streets and in his store but in his very household since his rebellious son was so ready to demonstrate in the bloody revolution. Fahmy’s ‘peace’ will only be felt by him as his life slips away. His death brings the worse part of the war right in his home. All he wants is for everything to go back to normal but was the way everything was the best for his family and for his country. Death is the point of no return for change. Nothing will ever be normal or the way it was without Fahmy. Even though his death will change everything for his family but what about his country he fights for. His life is lost and his country is still not free. Ahmad tells his friend, “Fahmy learned how the boy had been lost and might just have never existed…the poor lad perished, but Sa’d didn’t return and the English didn’t leave” (466). Is all this death necessary for freedom? Is Fahmy’s death for his country really pointless? In the long run the demonstrations and rebellion are necessary. If the country continues to be submissive and servile to the English then nothing will ever change.
Toward the end of the book death and new life are being compared. Aisha and Khadija are pregnant and Aisha gives birth to her baby however it has a high risk of dying, Yasin’s mother dies, and Fahmy is killed in what is suppose to be a peaceful demonstration. Also Mahfouz includes small scares of death with Aisha, Ahmad, Kamal and Fahmy before he actually dies. Chapter 67 ends with gruesome descriptions of death that happened in al-Aziziya and Badrashin and chapter 68 begins with the birth of Aisha’s baby. Its no coincidence that Sa’d Pasha has been freed on the same day Aisha delivers her baby which happens in the next chapter. The revolution relates to Aisha’s birth because in a way it’s like a new birth of the nation and a new birth of freedom. Since Mahfouz does not kill of the baby, the reader is left with hope that it will live which compares to Sa’d Pasha’s return which gives people hope for the freedom of Egypt.

Bruno, Tianna. Death in the end. Digging Even Deeper. http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/03/death-in-end.html