I Caught You Red-Handed

"Trembling with rage, al-Sayyid Ahmad began to examine Yasin's face grimly and silently, dragging out the silence. Without taking his pitiless eys off Yasin, he pointed with his han to the door, ordering him inside. Although at that moment disappearing would have been dearer to yasin than even life itself, he was paralyzed by fear and confusion. The father was outraged, and his scowl showed he was about to explode.... He rebuked him loudly,'Go upstairs you criminal...'"- Page 279

In this passage, Mahfouz uses pathos rethoric to illustrate both Ahmad's strong reply to Yasin's madness for trying to rape the house servant and Yasin's reaction to a horribe nightmare.

Mahfouz's most used method in this section is body movement. From "trembling" to "paralyzed", Mahfouz does a wonderful job in using body movement in his writing to set up the tone and mood of the scene. He shows Ahmad's anger simply by the way he stares at Yasin's. Yasin, on the other hand, shows fear through silence. That is something I found very peculiar in this scence- There is a lot of silence going on. In fact, there are only two shorts sentences of dialog. Mahfouz does this because he wants to emphasize the importance of silence in this scene. Not only does it contribute to the gloomy mood, but it shows the huge respect and fear that Yasin has for his father's mere presence.

Looking at the entire chapter, Yasin committed a deadly mistake. Obviously. But that's not the whole point of the passage. Mahfouz wants to convey to the readers how body language solely does the trick in a Muslim patriarchy. What does it signify? Fear. Respect. Authority. Power.

Afterwards, Ahmad can't hold back his tounge and uses very, very strong langauge. Calling your son a "criminal" isn't something a father does often. Mafhouz wants to show how Ahmad takes into account that Yasin defiles the family name. He probably wouldn't care less if Yasin wasn't his son, but since he is has a big problem in his hands. As soon as the word gets out, Ahmad is going to be looked upon. This is a big influence in his tantrum.

I also found it a bit ironic. Ahmad does this all the time, except it isn't rape. A clear sign of hypocrisy.