Yasin has gone crazy!

Photo by Ed Yourdon on Flickr. Woman with high-heeled shoes on.

“He backed away from her, as though fleeing from the tenderness of her words. Nothing could have excited his anger more than that. Filled with anger and despair, he sensed there was no longer anything to be gained from staying on in this hateful atmosphere. Turning around to make his way out, he said, “I wish I could kill you.” She lowered her eyes and said with unconcealed sorrow, “If you do, you’ll relieve me of the sufferings of my life” (120).

This passage interested me because all throughout this scene in the book, I didn’t really understand what made him so angry about his mother marrying different men after some of her marriages had failed. I feel that this is a normal thing. Most women don’t want to be alone all their lives and I don’t understand how she’s wrong for wanting companionship from a man. I feel that Yasin is probably experiencing some jealousy which is normal when boys see the women of their family, especially their mom, with men other than their father. She simply wants to be loved and I don’t feel she should be persecuted for that thinking as an American. But, looking at the source I found this is wrong in there culture. He, as well as, his father, are doing the same thing at this point in the book. They both lust after women, but are persecuting her when other men lust after her and she gives in to them. I think this whole situation shows the double standard in their culture. I don’t like how the father and the other men treat their women like dirt, and when they are ready to find something different and be with someone who wants to be with them, at least temporarily, the men have a problem with it. It’s not fair. It’s okay when the men want to go out and seek “entertainment” and wine knowing that this is against their morals and religion. I feel that this is simply wrong and inconsistent.

This passage also stood out to me because it showed the issues that Yasin deals with deep down. He wants to love women, but he is incapable of trusting them and believing they are more than a body that he can lust after. We can see how he’s like this when he talks about the girl in the window that didn’t come out when he wanted her to. He explodes with anger and calls her a “selfish smart-ass bitch” because he thinks she didn’t want to “let him see her” (73). He has some of the same issues his dad has when it comes to his feelings toward women and what their role in the world should be and is. Yasin sees women as nothing more than sex symbols (73) because he can’t make himself love them, I feel because of the grudge he holds against his mom. He talks about how he’s able to fall in love with wine for it’s own sake when women aren’t there to satisfy him. I don’t mean to sound childish, but I think that that is not fair. The fact that he gets that angry with his mom to say he wishes he could kill her is not cool. He needs to chill and realize that his mom has to have a life too and she is not wrong for trying to find someone to spend the rest of her life with.

He could also be so upset because he simply wants to acquire his mom’s fortune. He might just want to be able to be rich and get the things that his mom has. He mentions it at the end of the same scene when he’s leaving and says he didn’t achieve what he went there after which was to be able to find out if he could acquire her fortune. He wants to be able to control the things his mom plans to do in her future so that she doesn’t lose her fortune and end up broke leaving him with nothing. He once accused the man she’s planning to marry of greed which shows that he simply wants to be able to inherit the fortune that his mom was left. Yasin is a peculiar character and suffers from what I conclude to be abandonment issues that arose from his mom allowing him to leave and constantly remarrying to new men.

Self-Control

“They were still for a time, looking at each other, united by a single thought, knowing instinctively that they understood each other perfectly. It was not hard for them to read each other's thoughts. Then Fahmy expressed what was preoccupying them: “Now we need to think about who ought to raise the topic with him....”(123).

When I read this passage from Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz, I thought this instinctive understanding was there because of the mother/son relationship. The understanding through the silence was because of the fear that the father, Ahmad, had instilled in the son and his wife. It was part of the secret alliance that the family had that did not include their father. They had a common feeling against their father so they automatic fear and resistance.
But as I thought about this quote, “read each other's thoughts”(123) I was reminded of all the other times this phenomenon is referred to in the novel, namely, when Yasin visited his mother and when Fahmy was speaking with his mother, Amina, about his marriage arrangement. After making this discovery, I realized that these types of connections are common throughout this section and among the characters in the book.
The question is raised, “Why is it so important for them to have this relationship where they can communicate without speaking? Why did Mahfouz put it in this novel?”
They need these types of connections because their cultures frowns upon a woman or a man openly communicating their inner emotions obnoxiously. The novel shows that self-control is very well looked upon in their culture. In chapter 21, the narrator tells us, the readers, that, “Only Fahmy was exemplary in his self control”(131) and “Fahmy was known for his self-control”(131). His father and his offspring, besides Fahmy, were prone to exploding. Mahfouz often says that certain characters almost “lost themselves” while becoming angry or excited in their conversation. He is saying that they were about to lose control of themselves. They have to stop themselves because, in their culture, one can't have outburst that show that one cannot control their behavior and conduct. With the conversation between Yasin and his mother, we see that Yasin has to deliberate in his mind what he will say before he actually says it. This shows that he is at least attempting to have self control. The characters have all sorts of wild thoughts, but they can't express them all, especially the women. When Yasin's mother becomes distraught because of the words that Yasin say to her, she cannot scream at him and force him out of her house. She softly expresses her feelings towards Yasin.
This passage, as well as many other excerpts from the novel show that self-control is expected among the members of the culture in this novel.