Palace Walk – Naguib Mahfouz

Set in Cairo during the first world war, this novel examines the internal life of a devout Muslim family.  The tyrannical father, given to beating his children, ignoring his wife, and carousing each night in the bars and brothels of Cairo manages to justify his behavior as a relief from the strictures of faith.  The wife, a slave to her home and husband, recites Koranic suras to reassure herself, fight off the evil forces of the jinni, and manage the vicissitudes of her sheltered life.  This couple has five children, two girls who also never leave their home, and three sons: a young lawyer, a civil servant, and Kamal, the youngest, a child at school.

The novel begins as a series of internal monologues examining the homelife and surrounding experiences of each of the characters as they pass through their days.  The wife, Amina, appears to find solace and comfort in her role as cook and feeder to her husband and children.  What power she has grows from her ability to manage the house and servants.  Her days are devoted to making sure her husband is ready to meet the day or to recover from his debauchery at night.  She speaks only when spoken to, meekly washes her husband’s feet, and prepares food for her children.  Her sons are treated as future masters, referred to as “sir.”  Her daughters are her companions, each looking inward to the house and dreaming out to a life of her own.

The husband, Ahmed, is a prosperous merchant, apparently beloved of his customers and friends while feared and revered by his family.  He reveals his complexity in the duality of his home life and his life outside the home.  At home he is the reserved and silent father and husband.  He is described as tyrannical, castigating his children and showing little care or affection for them or his wife.  He responds to the youngest, Kamal, with anger and beatings on the feet to try to suppress his natural high spirits.  Outside the home, he spends each evening with his friends drinking wine and listening to the songs and stories of female entertainers.  He pursues women with unflagging zeal and frequent success.  He hires a mullah to appear at his store to berate him for his straying from the path of the Prophet.  People appear to view him as a delightful friend and honorable business man, while his children quake in fear of his anger.

 The eldest son, Yasin, serves as secretary to a school, a sort of business manager.  His passions are inflamed by the thoughts of women.  He leaves the house to roam the streets, inflamed by the site of any woman.  Their modest coverings only permit his imagination greater sway.  He sits in coffee shops, awaiting the appearance of a chanteuse from a musical troop, then follows her through the streets of Cairo, marveling at the beauty of her rear end, which she manages to display through the artful rearrangement of her covering.  Eventually he marries at his father’s direction, but continues his lustful ways, bringing disgrace to his house and eventual divorce from his wife.

The second son, Fahmy, is a law student inflamed by his passion for the silent and elusive girl living in the house next door.  He takes Kamal to the roof of their house to observe the girl while going over Kamal’s lessons.  The girl on the roof cooperates in this charade by bringing in the laundry and showing herself to Fahmy.  He is so taken by this silent communication he can barely hear his brother’s recitations.  Fahmy becomes deeply involved in the independence movment of Egypt during the period 1918 – 1919, seeking to hide his commitment from his father for fear of his censure.

There are two sisters, Khadija and Aisha.  Khadjia, the eldest, is a large-nosed and bulky woman in her mid-twenties rapidly giving up hope of ever leaving the home for a marriage of her own.  Aisha, unusual for her blonde hair and light complexion, is the beauty of the family.  Each is focused on the family, her own place in it, and her own prospects for eventual marriage and a family of her own.

As Ahmed pursues the singer Zubayda, Mahfouz describes Ahmed’s lust for women (99).  “It (lust) had been refined by a craft that was at least partially an art, setting his lust in a framework of delight, humor and good cheer.  Nothing was so like his lust as his body, since both were huge and powerful, qualities that bring to mind roughness and savagery. Yet he concealed within them grace, delicacy, and affection, even though he might intentionally cloak those characteristics at times with sternness and severity.”  While reading this passage, and others like it, I looked for even a hint of irony in Mahfouz’s diction, but can find only the mildest of amusement at Ahmed’s behavior, leading me to believe he admires him and finds his prattling of Koranic nonsense to be appropriate to the situation.   

Mahfouz presentation of women’s roles in Muslim society raises more questions than it answers.  Ahmed’s pursuit of the singer Zubayda, Fahmy’s desire to marry the neighbor girl Maryam, Yasin’s disasterous visit with his estranged mother, Aisha’s infatuation with the police officer walking past the slightly opened window, and the Khadija’s anxious preparation to receive the matchmakers each present women as so deeply constricted within the customs and laws of their society that only through the careful use of feminine wiles can they achieve anything approaching their desire.  What confuses is the question of Mahfouz’s posture towards these restrictions.  Does he approve of the position in which women are placed?  Or is his voice ironic, expressing his shock and disdain for the lack of freedom these women experience?  How can they become fully human while locked behind the doors of their houses?  What price must a woman pay for becoming, in any way, a worldly person?

Perhaps the answer lies in Ahmed’s response to the police officer’s request to marry Aisha.  “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.” (157) Ahmed’s concern for honor, in this case the perception of people in his social circle, represents the narrowest view of himself and his family.  The question remains: to what extent is it an accurate mirror of Egyptian society?  How can a reader reconcile this impossible man to any Western standard of behavior.  At a more fundamental level, how can the cultural abyss existing between the Western world and the Arabic world of the early 21^st century ever be bridged if these attitudes persist in the Muslim world?  Perhaps Aisha’s response to the situation voices Mahfouz’s posture. “She would pretend to have no feelings about the engagement, no matter how much that distressed her, and announce her relief about the outcome, to conform with the atmosphere of the household that did not allow human emotions their rightful place and where the affections of the heart were hidden behind veils of self-denial and hypocrisy.” (159)  Here Mahfouz is direct and uncompromising about the reality of the situation.

Mahfouz gives further insight into Ahmed’s moral duality when Umm Maryam comes to intercede for Amina after Ahmed has banished her from the house.  In their discussion, Ahmed, perhaps mistakenly, perceives Umm Maryam to be flirting with him.  Ahmed is surprised and put off by his perception.  Mahfouz says, “…he had successfully balanced the animal within him that was voracious for pleasure with the man in him that looked up to higher principles.  He had succeeded in harmoniously joining these two sides of his personality in a compatible whole.” (223)  Ahmed believes he can successfully separate the conservative religious commitment to God and family from his earthy and earthly desires.  Nevertheless, when Umm Maryam leaves, thinking she has succeeded in her mission, he cannot stop thinking about her.

The book makes a sudden shift after the second wedding.  Suddenly the reader is embroiled in the Egypt’s independence movement.  To an Egyptian reader, this shift might have been welcome and clear.  For me, the novel loses what little momentum it had in the political machinations surrounding Egypt’s subjugation to the British and its search for independence.

As the political struggle for Egyptian independence and the struggle within the family become mirror images, Mahfouz raises questions resonating in today’s world struggle.  The Arab world (one is tempted to say “Muslim world”) resonates with wrath, tyranny, mysticism, and fanaticism all based on interpretations of meaning of the Islamic state.  Each part of the struggle is given legitimacy as a manifestation of Islam.  Every act is justified by reference to the Koran.  Much like the Christian crusades of the middle ages, the spread of Islam and the establishment of fundamentalist Islamic states is always justified by holy writ.  The gulf between the western enlightenment and Arab fundamentalism seems unbridgeable.  The capacity of individuals to justify their behavior based on their understanding of God’s will is unlimited. 

It might be instructive to compare the two families in Palace Walk and Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible.  In each case a powerful and deluded father’s obsessions lead to the destruction of a family.  The wife and children of the patriarch function as satellites while, at the same time, developing their own kind of independence.  Kingsolver’s women ultimately either triumph or are destroyed.  They cannot survive while remaining in the father’s shadow.  Ahmed’s family, perhaps influenced by the cultural outgrowths of Islamic culture and law, appear to have less chance to become free to make their own choices.  To what extent do the dictates of their religions control the ability of the characters to become free?