Not Another Speech

"As beautiful as the moon, by the Messenger of God! You're really your father's daughter. Anyone seeing those eyes would immediately remember this...I see you're all wondering how this woman knows al-Sayyid Ahmad...I knew him before his wife herself did. He was a neighbor and childhood playmate. Our fathers were friends. Do you think a performer doesn't have a father? My father was head of Qur'anic primary school and a blessed man. What do you think about that, you beauty?" (265)



This passage indicates how the performer Jalila is affected to be in the same building as her previous lover: al-Sayyid Agmad. The reader can almost see the performer Jalila just having a hard time trying to compose herself among the other women in the reception but she's drunk! I see the make-up on her smearing because she had been crying before, the bush of hair that's yet to be tamed, the empty bottle thrown at the side of the stage and the sole realization: he's here but what can I do?

A wedding is supposed to be a joyous occasion where the bride bids farewell to her family to join her husband and the life that comes with being with him. Jalila,however is not happy and needs to release all the emotions she's feeling by picking on Amina whie she's drunk. Naguib Mahfouz does a great job by using pathos, emotions of the lovely performer to convey lost hopes of love, marriage. By reading the above excerpt
you get a sense she's envious of Amina because she's not as beautiful, virtous as Amina who is by standard a good wife and woman. So now we can kind of see the comparison that's going on. Amina is beautiful as the Moon, what about Jalila? Amina is patient, what about Jalila? Amina is a wife,Jalila is a performer. Amina is dependent on Ahamd, Jalila is independent. Despite these things the two women do share something: their fathers. Both women had fathers were teachers dedicated to the Koran.


Maybe though, Jalila is recalling memories when she was happy and it just happen Ahmad was in them and she's distraught that he left her for Zaynuba(another performer) Overall, Mahfouz uses pathos to convey one woman's sadness, anger that life didn't go as planned for her.