He's Weak

Reading Palace Walk has resulted in being more pleasant than I thought. Since I finished reading the second part I continued to read after the designated page and I found a passage relating to Ahmad that really stood out to me. The passage on page 194 talks about how Ahmad feels about forgiveness towards his wife, Amina, after a car had hit her. Prior to this passage I felt like we had started to see a new Ahmad because didn’t let his anger get the best of him and said, “Stay in bed till God heals you” (184). Soon I learned that this was just because she was hurt and he didn’t want to impose more suffering on her. In the passage the narrator describes that Ahmad started to really analyze what had happened and realized that if he didn’t take matters into account he would “loose control of his family, and the bonds holding it together would dissolve.” To me the author is trying to make us see how Ahmad is so weak that he cant even forgive his wife for the mistake that she made. It seems Ahmad feels he will become weak but to me he would only be seen as a merciful husband who is willing to forgive his poor wife. Instead Mahfouz makes us see the true side of most men in Egypt at the time and makes him say, “I don’t want to find you here when I come back this noon” (195). Such harsh words he is telling the best wife we have seen in this whole book. Amina is an amazing woman who is essentially the glue that the family needs to stay together. She is the go to person and his caretaker. She is that perfect woman behind her husband and he is loosing her on pride. My question is could he be that ignorant to not see what he has is good enough to fight and forgive for?