Worshipper Blinded by Love and Fear

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. No one dares to speak against him 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. We really get 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 come out.

The words the author uses to convey the feelings Aisha against her father are powerful; the author uses hurt, angry and resentful, which are all very strong emotions. Here we start to see the pain her father has made her go through by not allowing her to marry. We understand through those words what’s going on in her heart.

When the author says, “these emotions could not touch her father” (161), one can interpret that she couldn’t allow her father to see how she felt or that she wouldn’t allow herself to feel those emotions against her father. After reading the next two sentence that say that her emotions “fell back impotently like a wild animal stopped by its trainer, whom it loves and fears,” and that “Aisha was not able to attack her father, not even in the depths of her hear,” I came to the conclusion that despite the strong emotions she felt she wouldn’t allow her self to turn those emotions 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. Her conscious wouldn’t let her feel that way about her father. Not even the other strong emotions she felt could erase the deep love and great fear her father incited in her.

Then the author closes the passage by telling us that Aisha obeyed her father “as though he were a god whose decree could only be received with submission, love and loyalty” (161). This last sentence proves my last point that Aisha, and even the rest of the family saw Ahmad as a god. They obey him without question because they love and fear him.

The author uses Kamal to show as another example of someone who sees Ahmad as a god. When having a conversation with his mother, Kamal asked if his father feared god, and then commented that he couldn’t “imagine [his] father being afraid of anything” (67). Here we see how high Kamal holds his father as to think he doesn’t even fear god.

The fear and love caused by Ahmad’s character make his family hold him in a very high esteem almost as high as God’s. As I wrote about this topic I began to wonder several things. For example, does Ahmad mean to cause these feelings and their result? Is it his vanity that leads him to want to be like a god, or does he behave how he does unconsciously or with another intention? Does the family see how close to god they see him? How contradicting is for the family, specially the Amina, to hold Ahmad as high as they do and yet believe God has control over everything?

Poetic Writing

In chapter twenty six of Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk, Mahfouz's almost poetic language begins to pull the reader in. He starts mixing in long sentences with shorter sentences, and even uses dialogue. This is the first chapter in which the reader can actually feel present in the scene.
In this passage, Mahfouz writes about how simple it is to disrespect the man of the house, and the magnitude of being disrespectful to the man of the house.

Aisha had anticipated what would happen even before the matter was presented to her father. All the same, she had nourished a glimmer of hope in her dreams, like one of us tempted by the hope of winning first prize in a major lottery. At first, influenced by the generosity that comes with victory or happiness and by affection for her unlucky sister, she had been willing to object to getting married. Now her generosity had faded away and her affection had dwindled. Nothing remained but resentment, anger, and despair. There was not a thing she could do about it. This was her father's will and she could not criticize it. All she could do was submit and obey. In fact, she had to be happy and content. To be despondent would be an unforgivable offense. To protest would be a sin her conscience and sense of etiquette could not allow. From the intoxication of bounteous happiness that had elated her night and day she awoke to despair. How gloomy the darkness seemed coming immediately after dazzling light. Thus the pain was not limited to the current darkness but was doubled many times over by regret for the light that had vanished. She asked herself why, since light had been able to shine for a while, it could not keep on shining. Why should it die out? Why had it died out? It was a new regret to add to the others – drawn from memories, the present, and dreams of the future – that sorrow was weaving around her heart. Although she was sunk in thought about this and it dominated her feelings, she wondered again, as though for the first time, whether the light had really gone out. The bitter truth seemed to be bombarding her emotions for the very first time. (159)

What really catches the reader's eye is the detail and the similes and metaphors. The reader could understand that it was a severe action to disrespect the man in the house, but in this passage Mahfouz puts the reader there and the way he delivers this message is like a boxing match. He throws some jabs, short sentences, and the he throws right and left hooks along with uppercuts, long sentences, to know the reader out of his chair. The combinations he is throwing could not be put together any better, and the questions he asks are the knock out blows to the reader's kidneys. When he takes the gloves off, he picks up a T-square and a pencil, and like an architect begins drawing up masterpieces to be created in the reader's imagination. With words like dazzling, intoxication, bombarding, and bounteous, Mahfouz builds skyscrapers with the sharpest edges, and cathedrals with the most detailed cupola.
Mahfouz describes the situation exceptionally well, and if the rest of the novel is like the passage above, the reader will really enjoy reading it.

A father's Influence

Lauren F. Clemons


Yasin is the son of Ahmad and his first wife, whom both Ahmad and Yasin aren't very fond of. The strained relationship between Yasin's mother and Ahmad began when they were first married and she proved to be a woman who was a little too free for his liking. He divorced her with the intent of getting back together with her later on, but she only wanted to come back if he would promise not to beat her (107). He grew so angry with her for not crawling back to him that he finalized their divorce and never looked back. Years later, Ahmad still grows angry just by hearing the mentioning of his first wife (106) which to me is strange because they've been separate for eleven years now. What could possibly still be the problem with Ahamd and his first wife.

Ahmad's a very arrogant man, who believes that women should just flock to him, no questions asked. He expected nothing less from his first wife, and made sure of that in their marriage. When he decided to divorce her, he only had the intent of carrying it out for a little while, but things didn't go as planned. He believed that she should come crawling back to him carrying no stipulations are conditions. When she did, he grew embarrassed. He thought he was high, mighty and powerful enough to get her back without having to work on himself. When he didn't get his way, he left her alone without even being able to keep a relationship with her son. To do this, just because she only agreed to come back if he wouldn't hit her strikes me as odd. If he really cared about her, then simply agreeing to keep his hands off her shouldn't have been an issue. But with Ahmad, being married is not for happiness, but it's because he wants to be a man. He wants to only allow his wife certain freedoms, and make sure she understands that he's the man. He couldn't allow her to come back into his house if she even thought she could tell him what to do. So he ran off simply because he coudn't have his way.

The passage that made me realize this about Ahmad is on page 106, when Mahfouz writes about Ahmad's anger he still has inside. The sheer embarrassment he felt could still be seen eleven years later. This passage is also when we begin to see how Ahmad's feelings about his first wife have rubbed off on his son. On page 107, Mahfouz writes, “The woman was at least forty, and Yasin was fully grown and aware of his ability to defend his honor from harm and humiliation,”. His mother's remarriage probably isn't necessarily an extremely controversial issue at this time since he also says a little before that sentence that this marriage is one of her more honorable mistakes. Mahfouz states that Yasin simply believes “this anticipated marriage seemed more outrageous than the previous ones and more calculated to cause pain” (107). He sincerely believes, like his father, that she's doing these things to dishonor them and embarrass them. Ahmad's beliefs have influenced Yasin to a point where he doesn't even seem to care at all about his mother. When he goes to visit her, he can't even morsel up any small act of love to show to her.

Beautiful Woman

Aisha's beauty in relation to the Muslim culture and traditions is like a lion en closed in a cage, starved, and two feet outside the cage resides a raw steak. For Aisha to be blessed with Angelic assets, to then only have the liberties to show her physical gifts, taken away from her, by this religious-based society is only taming the beast. It is not long before Aisha begins on a fierce quest to get her blue eyes and golden hair some attention, "...greet the day by combing her hair and fixing her attire before doing the house-hold chores, as though Aisha could not bear for her beauty to be left untended for even one hour out of her whole life." (137). She does so after the men (father and brothers) have left the premises: "When the men went off to work, she wanted to be ready to to repair to the parlor and open the shutters of the window overlooking Palace Walk just the least bit. Then she would stand searching the street, while she waited anxiously and fearfully." (137). Aisha was awaiting a male body with wandering eyes, specifically though, eyes that are looking at her.
It is a great irony that Aisha was born under conditions such as: being allowed to only wear full body dresses covering every anatomical part of her beauty fullness, and not allowed to see the light of day.

1. Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor, 1990

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.

Palace Walk 1

On page 4 Amina is talking about the house and how she can hear spirits and everything going through the house cursing everything. She also talks about her husband, and how the only time she feels safe is when her husband is around. But she also talks about a time where she didn't feel safe even when her husband would come back from his nightly adventures. She talks about how she used to fear him and didn't understand any of the stuff that he did. " I'm a man. I'm the one who commands and forbids. I will not accept any any criticism of my behavior. All I ask of you is to obey me. Don't force me to discipline you". (pg 4) I wonder why does her husband feel that it is okay to talk to his wife like that? Why does he feel the need to belittle her and make her look as if she is less than the dirt that is under his feet. The part that really got to me is how he says, " Don't force me to discipline you". That is something that a mother would say to her son. Not something that a husband says to his wife. It kind of reminds me of an abusive relationship that might be portrayed on television. Where the husband gets ready to hit his wife, but before he does it he will tell his wife don't make me do this, I don't want to do this but I have too, and sometimes they even say I have to hit you because I love you so much. Since I don't know that much about their culture I have to go on what I think. I think that the reason he finds it okay to talk to his wife like that is because they put the men on a throne, and make them feel like they are king. That everyone else is lower then them, especially their wives, and it is part of the woman's job to just listen to them and do whatever their husband's want them to do.

Egyptian Legend?

“She frequently heard their whispers. Time and again she was awakened by their warm breathe. When she was left alone, her only line of defense was reciting the opening prayer of the Qur’an…She began with the first floor and continued with the upper story, reciting the Qur’an suras to ward off demon.” (3). I was not sure if when I read this line, I was convinced that actual demons were inhabiting the house. Spirits is more of a phenomenon that is believable in my eyes, but demons? that is just plain disturbing. It wasn't like I got chills immediately after reading this passage from the novel. It was unexpected; one instance I am reading about the mother's routine prepping of the home and the other second she is reciting suras from the Qura'n to ward off demonds. Mrs. Susan Davis, our AP English teacher, showed us a two minute video of the Walt Disney movie about Moses, and in it entailed Mose's journey through Egypt. The setting of the novel takes place in Egypt. In the short clip, two EEgyptian men mysteriously show their talents, which consist of mystical potions, spells, and the excessive spread of dark smoke. Their eyes encircled with dark make-up, their body movement swaying evil, and their features, sharp. The stereotype of Egyptians, or better said the Western World's view on Egyptians was certainly shown in the Walt Disney movie. And in this novel, certain aspects of that stereotype are also given; the mother warding off demons with Qura'n Suras can be translated as mystical, the reciting of the suras can be interpreted as spells.
Whether it be the Egyptian culture that keeps reoccurring or a connection of a higher power (Spiritual), mysterious wandering is always an attracting tale to a novel rich in history and culture.

1. Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor, 1990