Amina, Ahmad’s wife, has always been one of the few people to love Ahmad and to respect his wishes unconditionally. Early on the their marriage Ahmad always made his wishes be the ones that had to be served. Amina, confronts Ahmad for going out and partying with his friends into late hours of the night and Ahmad reacts in the most horrific way. Amina had only wanted to venture a polite objection to the lifestyle that Ahmad was living. “I am a man. I’m the one who commands and forbids. I will not accept any criticism of my behavior. All I ask of you is to obey me. Don’t force me to discipline you” (4). This is a great example of how insecure Ahmad is towards his manhood and his ability to take care of his family. He has to go out with his friends and be with women to satisfy his needs of being a man. He uses sexuality to secure himself of his manhood. He is so insecure that he cant even accept that his wife is right, and that the lifestyle that he is living is one no true man lives. According to Dr. Albert Mohler, “Manhood is demonstrated in a man's fulfillment of responsibility and leadership” (Mohler). Ahmad should not have to prove that he is a man because he goes out with his friends and has sexual relations with women. He should take a look at his insecurities and see that he has to be a better father and husband. That itself will prove that he is an honorable man that cares for his family. Doctor Mohler also explains in his article that, “men have to aspire to be the kind of man women would want to marry and children will trust and respect and obey” (Mohler). Ahmad instead of being honored as a father and respected acts like a tyrant and makes his children respect him out of fear instead out of their own will. The whole household transforms just to make Ahmad happy. Like Johnathan Vela said in his blog, “Ahmad disapproves with lying and catches a temper rage when he finds out somebody is lying, but then he turns around and lies.” I couldn’t agree more, when Ahmad does all of this he causes for the household to be disrupted and things to fall apart more than they would in the first place. By him trying to cover his insecurities as a man, he has lost the true essence of fatherhood. He is not giving his children good advice or love, he is making them fear him in order for that to back up his ego.
To come back to Amina, his lovely wife, who has always been submissive to his will and desires. Towards the middle of the novel while Ahmad is away attending other business, she encounters a decision and she goes out of the house to go visit al-Husayn’s shrine. She accidentally gets run over by a car, which caused a fracture that would take three weeks to heal. At first Ahmad realizes that his wife is hurt and being mad at her won’t help her recuperate. After the narrator describes that Ahmad started to really analyze what had happened and realized that if he didn’t take matters into account he would “loose control of his family, and the bonds holding it together would dissolve” (194). This shows how Ahmad is so weak and insecure that he can’t even forgive his wife for the mistake that she made. It seems Ahmad feels he will become weak if he forgives Amina, but instead he will only be seen as a merciful husband who is willing to forgive his poor wife. Instead Mahfouz makes us see the true side of most men in Egypt at the time and makes him say, “I don’t want to find you here when I come back this noon” (195). Such harsh words he is telling the best wife we have seen in this whole book. Amina is an amazing woman who is essentially the glue that the family needs to stay together. Ahmad is acting like the Goo Gone and taking the glue apart. She is the go to person and his caretaker. She is that perfect woman behind her husband and he is loosing her on pride. Ahmad should instead take this small incident to see that his methods of caring for his family aren’t working out right. Instead of trying to be a tyrant he should be a real father and make his children and wife respect him and do his wishes because it’s the best things they can do. Daniela Barajas made a very precise observations when she said, “The anger, strictness, and sternness with the family is simply a shield to prevent the family from seeing his sensitivity.” He is so insecure to let his family know that he is sensitive that he will not stop at anything to make himself seem as manly and mean as possible. I am not saying that Ahmad isn’t a man because he makes himself be respected, he just wants to be respected for the wrong reasons. He should open his heart and see that being respected for being an honest No on the other hand like Dr. Mohler said, “To be a man is to make decisions.” But the thing is that Ahmad doesn’t make stable decisions his indecisiveness is what keeps him from being more insecure and a stronger father figure. Ahmad’s attempt into making it seem like he didn’t need Amina ended up causing more trouble. Almost all of his children thought he was wrong by doing so, and didn’t agree with the decision he had made. Now, if he wasn’t so worried about what people would think of him he would see that his insecurities are caused by the desire to be a tyrant. He should just be a father who acknowledges that he makes mistakes and that mistakes are things needed in life to make people stronger. If he wasn’t such a tyrant he would more approachable.
Speaking of mistakes Yasin, Ahmad’s eldest son, has married and the father of his current wife has no desire of them being together anymore. Iffat wants something better for his daughter and believes that their marriage needs to be over. Ahmad becomes irritated and furious at his son and confronts him for what he had done. Ahmad tells him, “You have disappointed my hopes in you so much that only God and his blessings can ever repay me.” Ahmad has no sense of self-judgment and it seems like he continues to ignore his own actions when he talks to his son, Yasin about the disappointment he has caused. In the quote above Ahmad is making it clear that God is the only one that can forgive him for committing this barbaric action. Now, if Ahmad didn’t truly think this was a bad offense he wouldn’t tell this to Yasin because we all know that Ahmad has intimate relations with other women during his nights out. I still don’t believe that he doesn’t think that he has been a bad influence on Yasin. Ahmad says, “I raised and disciplined you” yes he did but he also left a little trail for Yasin to follow his footsteps and commit the same stupid mistakes like sleeping with other women and being an unfit husband. Ahmad needs to realize that he is responsible for his family’s disgraces. Since Ahmad is insecure and goes out to find women he had led his son to do the same thing for the wrong reasons. Yasin is doing it because he had seen it all his life. And the sooner he accepts that he is wrong the better it will be. He will have a chance to mend his errors and try and save his family from committing more mistakes.
Ahmad has always been a man who hides himself due to a lack of security in his personality. He never really transitioned into letting his family see who he truly was. He was someone who was always a bit insecure of how he was taking care of his family. Honesty was something that was missing from the equation that he was solving. Who knows if he would have been honest and accepting of his errors he could have saved his family from undergoing some real hardships. That is why one has to always be honest, and say when we are caring something that’s more than we can handle.
Works Cited
Barajas, Daniela. "Hiding Behind the Wall." Web log post. Digging Even Deeper.
Blogger, 23 Feb. 2010. Web. 3 Apr. 2010.
Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy). New York: Anchor, 1990. Print.
Mohler, Albert. "For Guys Only: The Marks of Manhood." (2005). Pure Intimacy. Web.
Mar.-Apr. 2010.
Vela, Jonathan. "Father's and Children's Relationships." Web log post. Digging Even
Deeper. Blogger, 23 Mar. 2010. Web. 2 Apr. 2010.
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