Palace Walk
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| Author | Naguib Mahfouz |
|---|---|
| Original title (if not in English) | بين القصرين (Bayn al-qasrayn), Between the Two Palaces |
| Translator | William M. Hutchins, Olive E. Kenny |
| Country | Egypt |
| Language | Arabic |
| Series | Cairo Trilogy |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Anchor Press (Eng. trans.) |
| Released | 1956 |
| Released in English | 1990 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 512 pp |
| ISBN | NA & reissue ISBN 0385264666 |
| Preceded by | - |
| Followed by | Palace of Desire |
Palace Walk (Arabic title بين القصرين) is a novel by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, and the first installment of Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. Originally published in 1956 with the title Bayn al-qasrayn (lit. Between the Two Palaces), the book was translated into English in 1990. The setting of the novel is Cairo, Egypt during and just after World War I.
[edit] Plot summary
Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Gawad is the tyrannical head of his household, demanding total, unquestioning obedience from his wife, Amina, his sons, Yasin, Fahmy and Kamal, and his daughters, Khadiga and Aisha. A fearsome and occasionally violent presence at home who insists on strict rules of Muslim piety and sobriety in the house -- for example, his wife is hardly ever allowed to leave the house, to maintain the family's good name -- al-Sayyid Ahmad permits himself officially forbidden pleasures, particularly music, drinking wine and conducting numerous extramarital affairs with women he meets at his grocery store, or with courtesans who entertain parties of men at their houses with music and dancing. Because of his insistence on his household authority, his wife and children are forbidden from questioning why he stays out late at night or comes home intoxicated.
Yasin, the eldest son, is al-Sayyid Ahmad's only child by his first marriage, to a woman whose subsequent marital affairs are the source of acute embarrassment to father and son. Yasin shares his father's good looks, and, unbeknownst to al-Sayyid Ahmad, Yasin also shares his tastes for music, women and alcohol, and spends as much time and money as he can afford on fine clothes, drink and prostitutes. Fahmy, Amina's elder son, is a serious and intelligent law student, who is heavily involved in the nationalist movement against the British occupation; he also pines for his neighbor, Maryam, but cannot bring himself to take any action. Khadiga, the elder daughter, is sharp-tongued, opinionated, and jealous of her sister Aisha, who is considered to be the more beautiful and marriageable. Aisha, meanwhile, is more mellow and conciliatory, and tries to maintain peace. Kamal, the baby of the family, is a bright young boy who frightens his family by befriending the British soldiers who have set up an encampment across the street from the Abd al-Gawad house; he is also very close with his mother and his sisters, and is deeply dismayed when the prospect of marriage for the girls arises.
Major elements of the plot include al-Sayyid Ahmad's philandering, Yasin's cultivation of the same hobbies, Fahmy's refusal to cease his political activities despite his father's order, and the day-to-day stresses of living in the Abd al-Gawad house, in which the wife and children must delicately negotiate certain issues of sexual chastity and comportment that cannot be discussed openly. Through the novel, Yasin and Fahmy gradually become aware of the exact nature of their father's nighttime activities, largely because Yasin begins an affair with a young courtesan who works in the same house as al-Sayyid Ahmad's lover. After glimpsing his father playing the tambourine at a gathering in the house, Yasin understands where his father goes at night, and is pleased to find that they have similar interests. Amina, meanwhile, has long ago guessed her husband's predilections, but represses her resentment and grief so intensely that she behaves almost willfully ignorant of the whole matter.
[edit] Key incidents
When al-Sayyid Ahmad goes on a business trip to Port Said for a few days, Amina's children convince her to take the opportunity to leave the house and go to pray at the Mosque of Sayyidna al-Husayn. On the way back, Amina faints in the road and is glancingly struck by a car, and fractures her collarbone; her children must fetch a doctor to come and set the bone. When al-Sayyid Ahmad discovers that she left the house without his permission, he waits until the bone has healed, and then exiles her from the house for some weeks, forcing her to live at her mother's house.
Perhaps the central episode of the novel is the wedding of Aisha, at which a number of plot lines converge. Negotiations for the engagement commence while Amina is in exile from the house; al-Sayyid Ahmad's desire to inform his wife of the arrangement contributes to his decision to bring her home. The wedding also fulfills the fears of Khadiga in that her younger sister is the first to marry, but the removal of Aisha from the Abd al-Gawad household actually ends the long-running jealousy between them. In addition, the hired entertainment for the party is the singer Galila, who is a recent former lover of al-Sayyid Ahmad. During the party, she openly consumes wine, and when she is drunk, she broadly hints to the crowd of this past relationship, and scandalously confronts al-Sayyid Ahmad to express her unhappiness at his taking up with a younger competing singer -- the one whom Yasin saw at his lover's house shortly before. Yasin takes the opportunity to explain to Fahmy all that he has seen at the singers' house, revealing to his emotionally naïve younger brother the truth of their father's hedonism. Unlike his brother, Fahmy is deeply shaken to lose his idealized picture of his father, and takes no joy in the knowledge. Following the wedding, Yasin, who has gotten drunk on wine at the groom's table, is seized with a fit of lust and attempts to force himself on the household servant, Umm Hanafi. When the servant screams in protest, al-Sayyid Ahmad investigates and discovers Yasin, and furiously drags him away. As a result of Yasin's behavior, al-Sayyid Ahmad decides to marry him off to the daughter of an old friend, in hopes of finding an appropriate sexual outlet for him and keeping him from further trouble.
