Beauty

" It's beauty that's made me so bored I'm sick. It's like a new word that dazzles you the first time. Then you keep repeating it and using it until it's no different for you than words like 'dog,' 'worm,' 'lesson,' and other commonplace expressions. It loses its novelty and appeal. You may even forget its meaning, so that it becomes strange, meaningless word you can't use." (pg. 337)
Newly wed husband clearly has doubts and doesn't believe in love. This passage reminds me of pathos, since it holds lots of description and a nice metaphor, it contributes to the reader's emotions in an odd manner. Mahfouz uses beauty as if it were something boring and uninteresting in the minds of men. This passage shows how something so intoxicating can also bring about boredom and displeasure. It's hard to believe that Yasin would say something like this, since he " inherited" his father's lustful and " midnight amusement" qualities. But it's in my mind, as well as in most, that beauty is just among the first qualities a guy sees in a woman and is enticed by its pleasant and magnificent power to extract the emotions and thoughts of men. Beauty plays a vital role in this novel as we see with Aisha, Khadija, Al-Sayyid Ahamd and Yasin, but also it poisons them. Its wonderful that Mahfouz was capable of playing with his words and causing beauty to play with the emotions of men. In doing so, Mahfouz captivates the reader into thinking that beauty is marvelous and causes a great deal of controversy upon the novel's characters and the readers. Yet, does "beauty" ever get boring and unappealing? According to Yasin and Mahfouz's metaphor he simply states it as if it were a new word. I love that combination. Learning a new word provides a pleasing effect, yet once repeated it also brings about irritation. Think of it as if it were a repeated song over the radio station, getting played multiple times within every tuned-in station. But it's difficult to understand that a married man can find his wife unattractive. It creates a feeling of pity and doubt about how a woman can endure a man that finds her uninteresting. That can be a good reason why Yasin married her. He was so dazed about her "beauty" that that word stuck to his mind and that's the only characteristic that he truly found in her upon marriage. A woman would like to get recognized by other things, but since he was at a stage of lustful and disgusting manners, he only got caught up with what was put in front of his eyes and he fell in love with the appearance of his wife, not for who she was. As a reader, one is blinded by rage and curiosity as to why Yasin is the way he is. Of course he only states it trying no to sound cruel, but it seems that living with a wife and not be able to go out and do mischief when he was single is what leads Yasin to take that course and announce his message to Fahmy.
The passage chooses a metaphorical stance and provides some description, followed by emotions. The metaphor had an impacting effect when announcing that " beauty" was unappealing and that it was a word. But not just any word. A word that only characterizes Zaynab and to which shows that words have a great effect on people. Words convey messages, but here beauty has more emphasis to the things that distract men and to how men see women. They are seen as tools, but beautiful tools, to be fair. Even words like this can provide a certain way of talking, especially in this novel. Using the word beauty provides a good effect on men's wife, but when used to say it to another woman, is very illegal. Basically, this passage shows what Yasin feels and how Fahmy rejects the idea of having a woman be talked of as if she were just a breath of air.

Pride

In the second section of the novel Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz we find out a lot more things about Amina’s family. The one interesting fact that I found out about Amina’s husband is that he is very prideful and nothing happens without him finding out about it.
“He walks along our streets morning and evening. So it’s not out of the question that people, if they learned he was marrying one of the girls, would suspect that he might have seen one of them. I would despise giving my daughter to someone if that meant stirring up doubts about my honor. No daughter of mine will 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. ‘No man has ever seen either of my daughters…’ Congratulations, Mrs. Amina, congratulations” (157)
In the quote above we see how it is that Amina’s husband hides his daughters from the public and all because he thinks that no one should see them. The reason for why he hides his daughters from people is so that they won’t ask for their hand because of the fact that they are beautiful but because they want to be related to him. A police officer went to Ahmad and asked him if he could marry one of his daughters. This is when Ahmad went home and talked to his wife Amina. Ahmad believes that if someone is going to marry his daughters is not due to their looks. They are going to marry his daughters because of the fact that they want to be related to him.
This to me is a show of pride. I mean no one would ever think that the only way that someone will ever marry someone’s daughter just to be related to the father of the girl. That only happens when someone is very rich and has plenty of power. Therefore Ahmad wants to believe that he has all the control even the control of whomever his daughters are going to marry. When the police officer asked him if he could marry his daughter his first thought was that the officer must have seen his daughter and that was the only reason for why he wanted to marry his daughter.
Many people have pride but in other cases people are just insecure about themselves and want to use all the power that they have to make people feel inferior to them.