New Marriage

“Don't you know that I forbid my wife to leave the even if only to visit al-Husayn? How could you have given in to the temptation to take your wife to a bawdy show and stayed there with her until after midnight? You fool, you're propelling yourself and your wife into the abyss. What demon has hold of you?”(314).

In Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz, marriage in Islam is a very big theme. For majority of the novel, Mahfouz in a way teaches us that marriage is not really a connection between a man and a wife, but a requirement of society. He shows us this with the relationship between Ahmad and Amina. We never see them be what we, Americans, think of as husband and wife. He treats her as a slave. At the start of the novel, it is shoved in the readers face that this is the status of wives in Islam. On page 4, Ahmad tells Amina, “I'm a man. I'm the one who commands and forbids. I will not accept any criticism of my behavior...” Mahfouz sets the tone of how a wife is treated this early in the novel.
For majority of the novel, one would believe that the marriage is not a good thing and that women would not be happy to be married. This would especially be thought when one sees the freedom and happiness of the women in the novel who are not married, such as Amina's mother and Zanuba. In JNV's blog about divorce, we see the different ways that men feels about marriage and the way women feel about marriage. But after Aisha gets married, we, the readers, are exposed a different feeling towards marriage. In chapter 43, we see that Aisha and her husband seem very happy about marriage. It seems as if as if Aisha has freedom even though she is married. She tells her mother of the story of how she was able to keep her kohl and dress, which she was not able to do before because she “wasn't a Shawkat”(290) then. This whole conversation with Aisha surprised me because I was under the assumption that marriages in Islam was not a happy union, besides of the social standard. In Islam, the marriage is supposed to have patience, kindness, etc.(Huda)
Besides Aisha's marriage, we see that Yasin has a happy marriage at first. He adores his wife and she satisfies him. They seem to have a very peachy relationship until Yasin comes to the point that he is bored with marriage. This explains a lot about the feelings towards marriage in Islam. This may explain Ahmad's feeling towards marriage as well.
Ahmad's and Yasin's views towards marriage seem to be very similar. They both cheat on their wives with musicians, who they believe are more exciting than their own wives. This is because they can't hold out on then and disobey them, whereas these other women can because they are not their wives. They appreciate the spontaneity of these women, but they would beat their wives if they even proposed spontaneity. In the passage, Ahmad advises Yasin on what he is doing wrong with his wife. He also advises him to beat her. Thus, the reason that Yasin's marriage may be so similar to Ahmad's, besides they both have “very sensual” desires, is because Ahmad is advising him. Also, Yasin himself admires Ahmad and the way he lives his life.
I wonder if the way Yasin and Ahmad treat women and view marriage is common around Egypt or are their views specific to them? Do most Egyptian families have a relationship like Amina and Ahmad or Aisha and her husband?




Work Cited
1.Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor Books, 1991.
2.Huda. "Islamic Marriage - Married Life in Islam." About.com Islam. Web. 04 Mar. 2010. .
3.JNV. "Divorce." Digging Even Deeper. Web. 04 Mar. 2010. .