Not A God, But A Human

Throughout the first part of Palace Walk, Naguib Mahfouz portrays Ahmad as a powerful, and feared man that thinks highly of himself and whose family views him as a god. Ahmad controls every move his family makes. But through his death and rebellion, Fahmy helps his father to realize that he is nothing but a human. Towards the end of the book, Ahmad loses control of his son Fahmy, who dares to disobey him. Fahmy’s behavior strip Ahmad of his power, driving him closer to admitting his humanity. Later faced with Fahmy’s death, Ahmad feels extreme sadness, which leads him to realize and accept that he is not to a god, allowing himself to break down. With this break down, Ahmad appears to be a new man that accepts his powerlessness and that gives into his human emotions.

Throughout the first part of the book, Ahmad has power, and control over everything that happens to his family because his ego has been aggrandized by the way everyone in the family fears, loves, and respects him as if he were a god. As TheJavi says in his blog, Ahmad Never Changes, that “ [Ahmad] thinks really highly of himself” so he never questions his behavior. He always wants things to be his way. He always has the power over everything and always uses that power to manipulate things, so that he can be at the center of them. For example when the officer wanted to marry Aisha, he said that “no daughter of mine would marry a man until I am satisfied that his primary motive for marrying her is a sincere desire to be related to me…me…me…me” (157). Here one can see how egotistical Ahmad is. Another time when we see that Ahmad thinks so highly of himself is when he tells Fahmy, “The only word that counts here is mine. Mine, mine, mine…” (425). Once again, Ahmad shows that he wants things to be centered around him as if he were god. Through these examples, one can see his power to control the family.

But it is the way the family behaves with Ahmad and the way they feel about him that allow Ahmad to have the power to control everything. The family adores Ahmad in a very extreme way. I feel like everyone in the family blindly follows his lead, even when he is wrong. One really gets a sense of this affection, loyalty and fear for Ahmad when the author describes the feelings Aisha had when her father decided that she wouldn’t get married before Khadija, thus denying Aisha from the opportunity of marrying the officer she had fallen for. The author writes:

Although she was hurt, angry, and resentful, these emotions could not touch her father. They fell back impotently like a wild animal stopped by its trainer, whom it loves and fears. Aisha was not able to attack her father, not even in the depths of her heart. She continued in her love and devotion for him. She felt sincerely dutiful to him, as though he were a god whose decree could only be received with submission, love and loyalty. (160-161)

Here we see that the love and fear she felt towards her father was much too strong to allow Aisha to let any of the negative emotions be against her father. The fear and the love she had wouldn’t even let her think of feeling the hurt, anger, and resentment against her father even in the secrecy of her heart. Not even the other strong emotions she felt could erase the deep love and great fear her father incited in her.

No one dares to speak against Ahmad because the fear incited by his power is intimidating. Even more than the intimidation, the affection they feel for Ahmad makes the family look at him as something close to a god. Here one can instantly see a cycle. The family’s veneration causes Ahmad to be powerful and Ahmad’s power causes the family to venerate him. Seeing not only Aisha, but everyone else comply to his wishes, simply makes Ahmad feel more powerful, even as powerful as a god. Aisha obeys him because she feels “dutiful to him, as though he were a god whose decree could only be received with submission, love and loyalty” (161). This last sentence proves that Aisha, and even the rest of the family see Ahmad as a god. They obey him because to them he is like a god; in their eyes, he has power to control everything.

Since Ahmad’s is empowered by his family’s submissiveness, when one of them, Fahmy, goes against his will, Ahmad starts doubting his power and seeing that he’s weak. Fahmy always venerated his father like the rest of the family; thus, he never dared to disobey his commands. But things change with the war because Fahmy has really strong feelings about the war, even stronger feelings than the fear for his father. When Fahmy has to confess to his father that he has been distributing handbills to promote Egypt’s independence, Ahmad is alarmed and angry, and tells Fahmy to stop. Fahmy, ultimately, refuses to swear on the Qur'an that he will stop, and instead, he continues his behavior, going against his father’s will. He does this even though in the Qur'an it says, "Three persons shall not enter the Garden: the one who is disobedient to his parents,” meaning that his offense is a great one. But despite the divine law, Fahmy disobeys his father. His son’s rebellion causes Ahmad to be stripped of his power. Ahmad says, “He said no to me for the first time in his life…should I reveal my lack of power to [Amina]? Should I seek help from her weakness after my power has failed” (449). By opposing him, Fahmy takes away the power that Ahmad was so sure he possessed, and makes him feel weak, showing that Ahmad’s power was in the hands of those that feared it. Here we see clearly that the submissiveness of the family built Ahmad’s power; thus, without everyone’s submissiveness, he lost the power to control. Here Fahmy has taken Ahmad closer to seeing his humanity.

But it isn’t until Ahmad’s death that Ahmad realizes and accepts that he is not god, and allows himself be human and break down. When Ahmad finds out his son had died, one can see how human, how sensitive Ahmad truly is because he finally lets us see it. He thinks when he gets the bad news, “How can I have a home without him? How can I be a father if he’s gone?” (495). Here Ahmad is saying that he can’t have life without his son; he can’t be a father without him. Before getting to this part, one would have never thought that Ahmad would think this way because one always perceived Ahmad as egotistical man and as one who never needed anyone. But with Fahmy’s death, he’s humbled. As Mauricio discusses in his blog, Sensitive Soul-dier, Fahmy makes Ahmad change his ways. Ahmad finally touches the ground and sees that he can feel pain too. Mahfouz says, “ a time would come when [Ahmad] would be all alone and could devote himself to his sorrow with all his soul…giving free rein to tears so he could totally exhaust them” (497). Ahmad sees that he can suffer too because he’s just human.

A cycle can always be broken; it just takes a small change in one of the elements involved. Fahmy broke the cycle going on with the family and Ahmad. He changed his behavior when he went against his father’s will, stopping the source of his father’s power. By dying, Fahmy places his father in a situation that Ahmad has never been in, making him feel new strong emotions such as sorrow. By making Ahmad feel powerless after disobeying him and sad and hopeless after dying, Fahmy lets Ahmad see that he can be human, and that he doesn’t always have to act like he can control everything because he can’t. Death comes when it wants to come, and Ahmad has no control over that.

Works Cited

1. Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor Books, 1991.
2. Mvazquez. "Sensitive Soul-dier." Weblog post. Digging Even Deeper. Web. 06 April 2010. <http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/04/sensitive-soul-dier.html>
3. TheJavi. “Ahmad Never Changes.” Web log post. Digging Even Deeper. Web. 24 March 2010. < http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/03/ahmad-never-changes.html.>
4. The Holy Quran. Maulana Muhammad Ali, 2002. Web. 6 Apr. 2010. <http://aaiil.org/text/hq/trans/ma_list.shtml>

Transformed Man

Throughout Naquib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk, we are introduced to a number of different characters that represent a different aspect of life in Egypt. But, amongst the many different characters Mahfouz introduced, one stood out – Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad. In part II of Abu Talut’s article, “The Status of Women and Men in Islam,” the responsibility of a man is great when it comes to maintenance and protection of his family (Talut, II). Al-Sayyid Ahmad represents a Muslim man who, at times, is overprotective towards the women in his family, controlling of everyone and everything around him, and experienced in forbidden pleasures like extramarital affairs. But, throughout the novel we learn that he worries mainly about his social appearance rather than what is best for his family. Through this all, Mahfouz shows us a transformation in Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s behavior as the novel progresses and by the end of the book, we see a side of Ahmad that we had yet to see throughout the novel.
At the beginning of the novel, we see Al-Sayyid’s wife, Amina waiting on her husband to arrive after a night out with friends. She weighs on him hand and foot, removing his cloak, loosening his sash, removing his shoes and socks, pouring water for him to wash his face, and just sits around waiting for him to tell her what to do or giving her permission to speak. Mahfouz described Ahmad’s attitude towards this when he wrote, “Her husband spared no effort to safeguard his dignity and authority” (10). This made it apparent that he made it obvious that he was the one who held the authority in the marriage – something that is apparent in Muslim marriages. But, we also see that Ahmad cares more about his appearance outside of the home and puts in as much effort as possible into his outside relationships rather than those that should be most important, being his family’s. According to Talut’s article, this is not the responsibility of a man. Ahmad’s desire to seem perfect and powerful in public isn’t his responsibility, his responsibility is to protect his family and do what is best for them, not him (Talut, II). This strengthens the idea that Ahmad is selfish and careless with the relationship between him and his family.
As the novel progresses, we see Ahmad dismiss the idea of Amina marrying the man she loves clearly because he is afraid of what people may say about the engagement since no man had ever seen his daughters. He was worried about what people would say about this rather than his daughter’s happiness. As Daniela said in her blog, “Worshipper Blinded by Love and Fear” Ahmad’s family treats Ahmad as if he were a God. She gives the example of Aisha’s feelings towards Ahmad after she’s told that she cannot marry. It is clear that Aisha is upset, but Aisha couldn’t bring herself to stand up to her father. In Talut’s article, he writes that a man’s responsibility is also to protect and defend a woman and to make his family feel safe and secure (Talut, II). It may seem that Ahmad is protecting his daughter but in reality, he’s simply protecting his image and by putting fear into his family, he is doing something that he shouldn’t do – especially if he expects to create a safe environment for his family.
Later in the book, at the beginning of Chapter 65, we see the beginning of Ahmad’s transformation. Mahfouz shows us how Ahmad reacts when he sees two British soldiers approaching him and describes his reaction by saying, “With a pounding heart and a dry throat, al-Sayid Ahmad watched the soldier approach” (442). This clearly means that Ahmad was scared. Anyone else would be scared by a man in a uniform, fully armed, and physically strong, but if Ahmad was so “God-like” why wouldn’t he be scared? God’s are usually all powerful and nothing frightens them. Seeing how Ahmad could do nothing to communicate with the foreign soldiers and get himself out of the mess made Ahmad look just as inferior as everyone else. He was no longer giving orders to everyone, he was the one taking orders. Mahfouz also shows us how Ahmad begins to care for his family as he thinks about never seeing them again when he writes, “When he [Ahmad] remembered his family, he felt such painful homesickness that tears almost came to his eyes” (445). By doing this, Mahfouz reveals part of Ahmad’s transformation in which he is no longer the “God” he was once portrayed as. He shows Ahmad finally worrying about the future of his family and how their lives will be after he is gone seeing as how he is the one that is responsible for their well being. But, he is now also shown just like any other citizen who has to give in to someone else’s commands and has to endure the possibility of possibly never seeing his loved ones again.
By the end of the book, we are introduced to a completely different Ahmad than we first were at the beginning. The death of his son, Fahmy brought forth a surprising reaction from Ahmad. At the beginning of the novel, we saw Ahmad as a man who cared solely of himself and how he was viewed. As LaurenF wrote in the blog named, “ Ahmad’s Priorities ,” Ahmad didn’t care about his relationship with his family as much as he cared about his relationship with others and his image in the eyes of the public. He did what he wanted and was content with the happiness of others rather than that of his family. But, when Fahmy is killed during a demonstration, we see Ahmad breaks down. We see him finally thinking about how his family, Amina, will take the news. We see his pain on page 495, when he replies to the young man offering his condolences to him by saying, “…Dead! I’ll never see him again at home or anywhere else on the face of the earth? How can I have a home without him? How can I be a father if he’s gone? What has become of all the hopes attached to him? The only hope left is patience…. Patience? Oh…. Do you feel the searing pain? This really is pain. You were mistaken previously when you claimed to be in pain. No, before today you’ve never known pain. This is pain…” (495-496). This was the first time Ahmad showed such vulnerability. It was the first time that he showed his pain and emotions to a complete stranger. Even more shocking was how, on page 497, he started thinking of how Amina would take the news of Fahmy’s death. Mahfouz writes, “He remembered Amina for the first time and his feet almost failed him. What could he say to her? How would she take the news? She was weak and delicate. She wept at the death of a sparrow” (497) informing the reader of Ahmad’s first realization of how Amina would feel about what had happened. For the first time, Ahmad actually worried about someone other than himself and accepting the responsibility he has as a father and husband.
Naguib Mahfouz’s novel showed the transformation that one person can undergo as a result of specific events. Ahmad’s transition in the book was clear and surprising. It was evident that Ahmad had undergone such a huge change, but it was surprising that he did and in the manner that it happened. Ahmad didn’t seem as superior to the others as he once did and as the novel came to an end, we saw how Ahmad went from caring solely of himself and his image in the eyes of others to worrying about the feelings of others, being able to express his vulnerability to strangers, and finally acknowledging the responsibility he had as a father and husband.

 
Works Cited
Daniela. "Worshipper Blinded by Love and Fear." Web log post. Diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com. The Chinquapin School, 17 Feb. 2010. Web. 22 Mar. 2010. < http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/02/worshipper-blinded-by-love-and-fear_17.html >.
LaurenF. "Ahmad's Priorities." Web log post. Diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com. The Chinquapin School, 10 Feb. 2010. Web. 22 Mar. 2010. < http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/02/passage- >.
Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor Books, 1991
Talut, Abu. "The Status of Women and Men in Islam II." 28 April 1998. 02 April 2010 < http://www.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/AbuTalut/AbuTalut5.htm >.

Sensitive Soul-dier

The ending of Naguib Mahfouz’s novel, Palace Walk, shows one of the main characters opening himself up to the reader. Like an oyster, he opened his strong shell to expose his soft inside. Throughout the entire novel, al-Sayyid Ahmad plays the tough dictatorial father who allows no questioning of his authority, and does whatever he pleases whenever he pleases. But in a dramatic change of events, Ahmad reveals that he isn’t only the strict tyrant that he is perceived to be, he is a delicate, innocent person who, like most other on this world, is torn apart after finding out terrible news about one of his children.

“The young man said with obvious sorrow, 'We are sad to inform you of the death of our brother freedom fighter Fahmy Ahmad… (495)'” Ahmad learns that his son Fahmy just died during a peace rally. He asks the soldiers many questions and among them is a comment which shows Ahmad's ignorance. Ahmad thinks that this was Fahmy's first rally against the war, well it wasn't. Fahmy had gone behind his father's back and attended other rallies before. He must have thought of the saying, “What daddy don't know, wont hurt him.” Well that didn't, but Fahmy's death did. And with Fahmy also died the tyrannical Ahmad that Mahfouz portrayed throughout the novel. Like Daniela mentioned in her blog, Hiding Behind the Wall, “...[H]e was too sensitive, he acted so rough with them to protect himself from being hurt by them.” She is talking about how he acts with his daughters, and this also applies to his sons. But after Fahmy died, he can't be tough on him anymore, and there is no more act.
Like previously mentioned, Ahmad wasn't the nicest guy in the world. He wasn't faithful either to his wife or his religion, he was mean spirited, and he obviously wasn't a good role model, but an even like the death of your child, that can really turn a person around. I'll sidetrack to my personal life briefly. Whenever my mother hears a story about how someone's son died, she says, “Ay no! Yo no podria vivir sabiendo que se me murio un hijo.” With that, she summarizes some of the feelings that Ahmad is having. He could not live knowing that one of his children died. No one can truly feel what Ahmad feels unless they are a parent themselves.
And Ahmad learned a lesson that any other parent in this situation would learn. As I believe Johnathan tries to get at in his blog Father's and Children's Relationships, he learns what the role of being a father is. The death of Fahmy is going to bring him closer to his remaining children.
Fahmy is now dead, but he left an inheritance of lessons for his family, and the first one to get his share, Ahmad, learned quickly, and changed his ways.



Works Cited

Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy). New York: Anchor, 1990.

Not a God, Not so Strong

The final section of Naguib Mahfouz’s, Palace Walk, brought forth a number of surprises, the most obvious being Fahmy’s death and the revelation of Ahmad’s affair with Maryam’s mother. But, one thing stood out to me the most. The way Ahmad didn’t seem as superior to the others as he once did was really surprising to me. As the novel came to an end, we saw how Ahmad, at force, had to obey the British soldiers who held him at gun point and forced him to work. For a man like Ahmad, it seemed like something so degrading.
Throughout the whole book, Ahmad had been described as all powerful and so much better than everyone else. As Daniela said in her blog, “Worshipper Blinded by Love and Fear” she writes about how Ahmad’s family treats Ahmad as if he were a God. She gives the example of Aisha’s feelings towards Ahmad after she’s told that she cannot marry. It is clear that Aisha is upset, but Aisha couldn’t bring herself to stand up to her father. This may have been simply because Aisha didn’t want to disrespect her father, something that is written in the Koran as wrong, but why couldn’t she at least say what she wanted to say? At the beginning of Chapter 65, we see how Ahmad is confronted by two soldiers. When Ahmad sees the soldiers coming, Mahfouz describes Ahmad’s reaction by saying, “With a pounding heart and a dry throat, al-Sayid Ahmad watched the soldier approach” (442). This clearly means that Ahmad was scared. Anyone else would be scared by a man in a uniform, fully armed, and physically strong, but if Ahmad was so “God-like” why wouldn’t he be scared? God’s are usually all powerful and nothing frightens them. Seeing how Ahmad could do nothing to communicate with the foreign soldiers and get himself out of the mess made Ahmad look just as inferior as everyone else. He was no longer giving orders to everyone, he was the one taking orders.
Fahmy’s death brought forth a surprising reaction from Ahmad. At the beginning of the novel, we saw Ahmad as a man who cared solely of himself and how he was viewed. As Lauren wrote in the blog named, “Ahmad’s Priorities,” Ahmad didn’t care about his relationship with his family as much as he cared about his relationship with others and his image in the eyes of the public. He did what he wanted and was content with the happiness of others rather than that of his family. But, when Fahmy is killed during a demonstration, we see Ahmad breaks down. We see him finally thinking about how his family, Amina, will take the news. We see his pain on page 495, when he replies to the young man offering his condolences to him by saying,

“…Dead! I’ll never see him again at home or anywhere else on
the face of the earth? How can I have a home without him? How can I be a father
if he’s gone? What has become of all the hopes attached to him? The only hope
left is patience…. Patience? Oh…. Do you feel the searing pain? This really is
pain. You were mistaken previously when you claimed to be in pain. No, before
today you’ve never known pain. This is pain…” (495-496).

This was the first time I actually saw Ahmad showing such vulnerability. It was the first time that I saw him show his pain and emotions to a complete stranger. What shocked me even more was how on page 497 he started thinking of how Amina would take the news of Fahmy’s death. Mahfouz writes,

“He remembered Amina for the first time and his feet almost failed him. What
could he say to her? How would she take the news? She was weak and delicate. She
wept at the death of a sparrow” (497)

informing the reader of Ahmad’s first realization of how Amina would feel about what had happened. For the first time, I saw Ahmad worrying about someone other than himself.
Ahmad’s transition in the book was clear and surprising. It was evident that Ahmad had undergone such a huge change, but it was surprising that he did and in the manner that it happened. Seeing him take orders from someone and not be able to fight for what he wanted allowed readers to remove the perception that Ahmad was god-like. The way Ahmad went from caring solely of himself and his image to others to worrying about the feelings of others and being able to express his vulnerability to strangers was a huge turnaround from the beginning of the novel. But is his transformation legit? Is it a transformation or simply temporary feelings? Could Fahmy’s death have sparked something in Ahmad or will Ahmad go back to being the way he was before?

Works Cited
Daniela. "Worshipper Blinded by Love and Fear." 27 February 2010. diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com. 22 March 2010 < http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/02/worshipper-blinded-by-love-and-fear_17.html >.
LaurenF. "Ahmad's Priorities." 10 February 2010. diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com. 22 March 2010 < http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/02/passage-im-writing-about-is-on-page-10.html >.
Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor Books, 1991.

He’s Human After All

Throughout the first part of the book, we see how the family views Ahmad as a God, and how the author to a certain extent portrays Ahmad as a God. The author shows us how Ahmad is loved and respected by so many people. Everyone in the family fears Ahmad, and he feels that’s how it should be because as Javi mentioned, “he thinks really highly of himself”; thus, he thinks his family should fear and respect him. In a sense he feels that if they don’t fear him, then they won’t respect him. As Lauren says, “His entire life is based off the fact that the things she does for him are done out of her fear for him.” Ahmad behaved so strict with the family because he fears that if he’s nice with them, then they will no longer fear him, and he will lose control. He wants to continue to be almost worshiped by the family.

But in the last section of the book, we finally see an Ahmad that’s human, and isn’t so perfect and powerful after all. He’s in denial for a long time, but he comes to realize that he is not all-powerful. When he’s forced to help fill the hole with dirt by the English soldiers, Ahmad says talking to himself first and then to God, “Your body’s powerful and strong and can take it, despite being impaired by the evening’s inebriation…O God, preserve us…I’m not meant for this…not meant for this. God vanquish those who doubt Your power…We are weak…I’m not meant for this” (448). Here we see Ahmad first trying to convince himself that he was strong; he wants to make himself believe that he can take all the work because he it a tough man. But he admits after being put through so much work that he is not God; he comes to see that he can’t take it because he is weak, because he too is human.

Here for the first time we see Ahmad come to this realization. He was always so cocky before. He always wanted things to be his way because he had the control. He always had the power over everything. When the officer wanted to marry Aisha, he said that “no daughter of mine would marry a man until I am satisfied that his primary motive for marrying her is a sincere desire to be related to me…me…me…me” (157). He feels so important and powerful. He wants everything to have him at the center, and he knows that at least in this case he has the power to make that decision. Another time when we see that Ahmad feels so highly of himself is when he tells Fahmy, “The only word that counts here is mine. Mine, mine, mine…” (425). But when he is filling the whole, we see a completely different side because for the first time he doesn’t have power over the situation; for the first time, he can’t have the final say. We see that he finally realizes that only God has the power over everything, that he is only human just like everyone else.

It is in this later part in the book that we see him accept it himself, and for the first time, we see him suffering and about to break down. When he finds out that his son died, Ahmad takes out his human side completely. We see how human, how sensitive he truly is. He thinks when he gets the bad news, “How can I have a home without him? How can I be a father if he’s gone?” (495). I mean here we see that basically Ahmad is saying that he can’t have life without his son; he can’t be a father without him. Before getting to this part, we would have never thought that Ahmad would think this way because we always get a different attitude from Ahmad. Here he’s humbled by the situation and he finally touched the ground and sees that he can feel pain too because he isn’t God, as he and other people in the family saw him as.