Questioning

"'But your husband?...An intelligent man going on fifty... can he find no other way to express his anger by throwing out the companion of a lifetime and separating her from her children?... O Lord glory to You. Most people get wiser as they get older, while we grow older and become foolhardy. is it a sin for a virtuous woman to visit our master Al-Husayn? Don't his friends, who are just as jealous and manly as he is, allow their wives to leave the house for various errands?...Your father himself, who was a religious scholar and knew the Book of God by heart, permitted me to go to neighbors' homes and watch the procession of pilgrims setting out for Mecca'" (202).

This passage creates an effect of Logos. By questioning Ahmad's motives through Amina's mother, Mahfouz causes the reader to begin reasoning, and to see that logic might not explain his actions, though it was Ahmad's logic that drove him to exile his wife. This passage is included to show the error in Ahmad's own logic, or maybe the culture of which he is a part of as a whole.

The detail presented in this passage also contributes to expressing the degree of error to which Ahmad has sunk in his religious beliefs. The fact that Amina's father was a "well learned scholar and knew the Book of God by heart" means more than if the author would have simply stated that he was a religious man. This then shows Ahmad's oppression of Amina as something that isn't practiced culturally but by a single family. Adressing a large misconception that people may have about Islamic culture.