Ahmad: Strong to Weak

In Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz, one of the main characters is Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad. He is the father of good children, a husband to a very obedient wife, and the proprietor of a successful store. When the novel opens up, we, the readers, are given the impression that Ahmad is a cold-hearted womanizer who has a missing toe due to a corn and mistreats his family. The level of disrespect that he gives his family, his wife especially, is immense. He disregards the effects that his actions will have on his family, which are the influences that he is having on his son Yasin and the fear that he is instilling in his other children. But Ahmad becomes a different person when he is with his friends. He becomes a light- hearted, drinker who is considered the life of the part. But even with them, he is powerful and influential. He has the power to attract the finest singers and become lovers with them. He exemplifies the “macho man” appearance. But because of certain happenings throughout the novel, we see the great Ahmad turn into a weak, helpless ordinary person. By the end of the novel, he realizes that he has lost his influential status. He is no longer in control of everything around him, which broke him down.
But it was not always like this. In the first part of the novel, Ahmad knows that he controls all that happens in his house. 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...” Ruqaiyyah W. Maqsood, a Muslim imam, would disagree with this statement made by Ahmad. He said that, “Her [a Muslim woman's] husband is not her master; a Muslim woman has only one Master, and that is God. If her husband does not represent God's will in the home, the marriage contract is broken.

What should one make of the verse in the Koran that allows a man to punish his wife physically? There are important provisos: he may do so only if her ill-will is wrecking the marriage - but then only after he has exhausted all attempts at verbal communication and tried sleeping in a separate bed.” Ahmad, obviously, goes against Maqsood because he hit her and is the most loyal, and docile woman in the novel. But Ahmad wants to scare her so he knows that she won't defy him because of fear. No one in his house would dare challenge his authority at this point. Their fear of him overpowers their love for him. Mahfouz explains Kamal's love for Ahmad as “a hidden jewel, locked up inside him by fear and terror”(50). The fear goes a lot further than Kamal. His own wife is afraid to talk to him about things or express herself because she might be beaten. Amina refrains from telling Ahmad about the things that Kamal has done at school and at home because she fears what he will do to him and sympathizes with Kamal. Ahmad knows what his family feels toward him and he feels satisfied with that. He is content as long as he gets respect and his family does not embarrass him. He does not seem to be effected by the fact that, besides respect, he does not get very many signs of love from his own family.
At his store, he has many loyal customers and employees that keep his business running successfully, which keeps his status up.
All is going according to Ahmad's plans and likings. He is blessed with a successful family and friends that all respect him and his authority. But it was not his family or friends that broke his reign of power. The Australian soldiers were the first to challenge him. A challenge from any of the soldiers was the most threatening and detrimental to Ahmad because he could not do anything to challenge them because he feared them. Ahmad say that “Their tyranny separated him from the Ezbekiya Garden entertainment district, which he abandoned in defeat,...”(11). It was the same situation when he was led by the English soldier in the middle of the night to fill that trench. It appeared that they were at a higher level that he. They were referred to in the novel as a “god” when Yasin encounters them. He cannot even decipher their language to communicate with them. Ahmad is very belittled in this scene. A man that is so well respected and honored in his community is forced to dig dirt to fill a trench that he didn't even burrow at gun point.
Ahmad senses the change in his authority. But he can't sit back and accept the truth of what is happening. He has to show and prove to himself that he still has power. This is also why he chooses to sleep with these unmarried women and party all night also. He has to prove to himself that he still has the same stuff in him that he did when he was a younger man when his pedestal held him so high above others. Maybe, this has something to do with why he gets so upset when he sees Yasin's actions resemble his. He wants to stop Yasin's rant before his son turns out to be the way Ahmad is by the end of the novel.
It is apparent that Ahmad struggles with not having power when he requests that Aisha and Khadija move back in with them until they have their babies. Ahmad, being the man that has controlled and been responsible for keeping his daughters safe, feels uncomfortable with the idea of not being able to protect them. He knows that these men cannot do as adequate job as he can and has done for majority of their lives. Ahmad's impatience when he was waiting to receive information about Aisha while she was in labor is great evidence of this. He thinks because he is her father he should be the first to find out anything that is going on in that room. He could not comprehend how he was not their first to receive the information about his daughter, especially if she is in danger of dying. Dying. Death is the major thing in the novel that throws Ahmad way off track. Death is the one thing that Ahmad knows that he has no power over. He can't bring anyone back once they have died. This is the point where he can't deny his downfall. As Daniela says in her blog He's Human After All, “to a certain extent Ahmad is portrayed as a god.” But when death arises, we, the readers, are exposed to an Ahmad that we had not seen throughout the entire novel. We see a weak, powerless human being. When he is first hit with the news, he can't even fathom the idea of Fahmy being dead. This is the only time in the novel where we see Ahmad hopeless. He does not have a solution to this. He can't get mad because that won't do anything. He sees that there is nothing in his power that will bring his son back. He knows that his power that he has adored has faded to nothing. This is the situation that finalizes it for Ahmad. He knows that he is not really that powerful. As Mvazquez discusses in his blog Sensitive Soul-dier, Fahmy is the one who brings about the true change in Ahmad. No one could say anything to Ahmad to change him. Things had to happen to him. First, soldiers belittle him, then he can't help his own daughter, and finally there is nothing that he can do for his son. There is nothing he can say to console his wife after the lost of her favorite son.
For majority of the novel, Ahmad would never have thought of being this powerless. If anything happened that upset him, Ahmad would probably drink that problem away. But he has been brought to the point where he sees that there is nothing that he can do except grieve. He wanted to always have control of everything so that nothing unexpected happens that he might not be ready for, for example Amina breaking her arm and Fahmy getting shot. But with Amina, he could felt he could solve the problem by instilling more fear in her. But with Fahmy, it is not possible to solve this problem. He can't instill fear in him and obviously fear would no have stopped Fahmy from going because it didn't before. The novel begins with a display of Ahmad's power and ends with that power being yanked away from him.



Work Cited

Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor Books, 1991.

Maqsood, Ruqaiyyah W. "Islam, Culture and Women - Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood." Islam For Today. Web. 06 Apr. 2010. .

Mvazquez. "Sensitive Soul-dier." Web log post. Digging Even Deeper. Web. 05 Apr. 2010. .

Daniela. "He's Human After All." Web log post. Digging Even Deeper. Web. 05 Apr. 2010. .