Fahmy's Love

"The moment a thought occurred to him, a memory stirred, someone mentioned her name, or anything similar happened, his heart would throb with pain and exude one grief after another. It was like a decayed tooth with an inflamed gum. For a time the toothache may die down until the tooth presses against a morsel of food or touches a solid object. Then the pain erupts. Thus Fahmy's love would beat against his ribs from inside as though craving a breath of air, shouting at the top of his lungs that it was still a prisoner. No amount of consolation or forgetfulness had set it free" (Mahfouz 258).

This passage of the book is about the pain and love Fahmy feels when he sees Maryam walk in through the door at Aisha' s weeding. What really stands out to me is how Mahfouz is able to describe the pain that Fahmy feels in a way that makes us feel it too. He does this in one way by using analogies.

He uses the analogy of his pain to a toothache. If we have ever had a toothache we know that it can be a painful process that, if we don't do anything about it, it will not go away on its own. The pain Fahmy feels is just like this because, even if at times the pain seems to disappear, the least reminder of her brings all the heart-throbbing memories back. Another analogy used is of how his love is like a prisoner. His love is begging to come out and let itself be seen but his father and the culture he lives in does not allow him. If he were to express his love, it would be frowned upon and Fahmy is too afraid to take that chance. Just like his love is yearning to come out, most prisoners can only think about one thing; their freedom.

This has the effect of actually making us imagine and, to certain extent, feel what Fahmy feels. I personally like how Mahfouz presents the characters in a way that makes it so easy for us to relate. It reminds me of A Hope in the Unseen. Ron Suskind also did a great job in making the characters jump of the page. I think this is a great style of writing because it makes us imagine what is happening and it makes the reading much more interesting. The rhetoric stance used in this passage is pathos because reading it makes us feel empathy for Fahmy love and pain. It makes us feel that Fahmy is a real person with emotions just like ours.