Palace Walk: Cairo Trilogy 1 (The Cairo Trilogy, Vol. 1)

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The daughters live in complete isolation: they do not go to school and can not show their faces in public. Perhaps that gives an insight into Ahmed's character too - maybe, he too would have been more honest to his wife, if he wasn't that big a traditionalist. As it is, he doesn't even seem to know her. A friend once gave me a theory of how boys learn the concept of 'male-dominant head' figure from their fathers (as in 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'). I don't completely agree, I think it is also about if boys spend enough time with mothers or other model females in their early childhood - to be able to see life from their POV. One of the problems facing the family is that Khadija is not yet married, and that it's unseemly for the younger daughter to get married first; nevertheless, in a small break with tradition, Aisha is eventually married off first. Yasin is al-Sayyid Ahmad’s eldest son from a previous marriage. He shares some of al-Sayyid Ahmad’s forbidden proclivities, including visiting courtesans, drinking, and music. Fahmy is Amina’s eldest son. He is highly intelligent, more pious than his brother, and wholly unaware of his father’s activities. Kamal, who is the youngest of the family, is close to his mother and sisters. Khadijah is the eldest daughter, who speaks her mind and is often jealous of her younger sister Aisha, who is said to be more marriageable and beautiful. Aisha is often the peacekeeper of the family and is much more amenable than Khadijah. There are small and big family crises, with the firm hand of the pater familias dominating all -- and yet the threat of a changing world is constantly at the door.

Two years ago, I spotted Palace Walk in a bookshelf and thought that this might be an interesting read because the last time I encountered a story that has something to do with Muslim culture was in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and that was it. Still, I always strive to expand my preferences and immerse myself on literature that is more culturally diverse than I'm more used to. In all honesty, I also selected to buy this particular book because of the Nobel Prize Awardee label attached to it. So trusting that alone, I essentially went blind purchasing this novel, not knowing what to expect. I didn't even research about the book afterwards, and only done so once I finally finished it last night during a four-day Holy Week vacation at a beach resort.The story is about a Muslim Arab family living in Cairo. It opens in 1917, during the First World War. It ends in 1919, carrying the story through the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 (Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptia...). It is a book of historical fiction, but it is first and foremost about family. He would not ask for repentance, since he secretly feared his prayer might be granted and he would be turned into an ascetic with no taste for the pleasures of life he loved and without which he thought life would be meaningless. Palace Walk is the greatest novel of Naguib Mahfouz, the Noble Prize winner for literature in 1988; and it and the two other parts that round out the Cairo Trilogy may well be the masterpiece of Arabic literature in the twentieth century.

Their parents' proudest achievement seems to be being able to say: "No man has ever seen either of my daughters since they stopped going to school when they were little girls." As a woman he is trying to seduce recognises: "On the outside you are dignified and pious, but inside you're licentious and debauched." Yasin gets drunk and attempts to force himself on his family’s servant. She screams, catching the attention of al-Sayyid Ahmad. He is furious with Yasin, but decides he must force Yasin to get married, so that he can take his attentions elsewhere. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1988 was awarded to Naguib Mahfouz "who, through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind."Yasin is overwhelmed when an Englishman actually speaks to him -- and thanks him (for some matches). There’s a lot of action that keeps the story moving, almost like a soap opera. There are three weddings. Two daughters move out; a daughter-in-law moves in. The youngest boy is always in trouble with childish adventures. The middle son, a law school student, secretly take part in the demonstrations for Egyptian independence and he hands out leaflets. While his father supports the petition for independence, his son has to keep his activities secret from his father. The British military sets up an encampment in their street (Palace Walk) to clamp down on demonstrations. The Egyptians are particularly upset by the brutality of Australian soldiers. (It’s WW I, so the Australians are helping Britain hold on to its colonies while the regular British army fights in Europe.) In the mornings, the women prepare breakfast at dawn. The men of the family eat together, then leave for school or work. The women of the family then have their breakfast and begin housework, with Amina strictly overseeing her daughters. Al-Sayyid Ahmad comes home for lunch and a nap before returning to his shop in the afternoon. After work, he goes out, doing as he pleases. The rest of the family meets around dusk in their home for coffee hour, which is a cherished time. PALACE WALK does, to a limited extent, tell the story of the political demonstrations of March 1919 that ultimately came to be known as the 1919 Revolution. Those “riots” were an integral, indeed critical part of the story of the Ahmad family but, frankly, I thought they were the weakest part of Mahfouz’s narrative and were the reason that I chose to withhold a fifth star. My own socio-political leanings aside, I was still very much appalled with the fact that the Muslim women in this book are not allowed to go to school or learn issues from the outside world. Their needs must always coincide with the men in their family, and their duties and fulfilment should always be centered around domesticity and homemaking. I think this has always been the case though some Islam-based countries have started to radically change these old-world practices. But taking into account the times this book was written in, I suppose I can understand why this is the way women are portrayed because it's an honest depiction of the lives they led at the time. Regardless, I believe Mahfouz has written these themes with surprising optimism that blended so well with the tactful way he approached the issue. I never felt bad for the women.

Every member of the Jawad family plays an integral role in forming the subtle layers that make up and support the patriarchal narrative. This allegorical quality uses the novel to bring Egyptian traditions to the forefront of the subject matter, whilst alluding to an undertone of the national reality and the rise of national identity, in a tone that circumvents political authoritarian control, posing a challenge to the prevailing political establishment. Palace Walk, and The Cairo Trilogy as a whole is a book for anyone who wishes to learn about the richness of this country’s past and its potential for prosperity and wealth in the future. And indeed it does not. Each of the couple's five children challenges some aspect, large or small, of the parents' lives. The two most important points of friction concern family relations and sexual attitudes. It's very compelling and it's hard to pinpoint where the most tension comes from. The nationalist movement and the threatening presence of English soldiers? The fear of al-Sayyid Ahmad's temper and how this will affect the well-being of his family? Or the absolutely infuriating misogyny? His eldest son, a legal secretary, was born to another woman he divorced. Of course in that culture, the child stays with the father. The son, now in his early 20’s, and his father, are disgusted by the fact that the boy’s mother has had two other husbands since the divorce and is considering a third marriage. The oldest boy gets married but he is just like his father in his drinking and womanizing. But the new wife won’t put up with him. Essentially the oldest son takes too much after his father. When the young man’s wife asks for a divorce, the oldest son thinks: “There was nothing strange about a man casting out a pair of shoes, but shoes were not supposed to throw away their owner.”The amorality of the narrator works for me most of the time but sometimes it is really irritating, particularly initially when he is talking about double standards of al-Sayyid Ahmad. When it comes to running his family, Ahmed is quite a traditionalist even for his own times (the 1910s and 1920s) - 'strict' (the polite word for oppressive) both as husband and father; so much that his (second) wife, Amina isn't allowed to leave the house without his permission even after nearly two decades of marriage. When she give in to the temptation to visit a pilgrimage place in the city (which she hadn't seen in all these years); he punishes her by throwing her out of the house. And this same traditionalist Ahmed becomes a womanizer, a drinker and music player when out among his friends. He doesn't have any problem in taking liberty with the religious values when it comes to his own joy but the rest of his family is not allowed to. Despite this hypocrisy (another word I can't imagine NF ever using for his characters), I still felt for him towards the end. The foreigners -- the unruly Australians, as well as the English colonialists -- are always a presence. In fact, I developed genuine admiration for them with the way they managed to find the smallest joys even if I can't for the life of me imagine living such a heavily restricted existence where I'm not allowed to study in school, form my opinions and speak my mind, make my own choices and find a career other than being a housewife and mother. I try to avoid contextualizing my modern sensibilities as I read Palace Walk though, and doing so has made me enjoyed the novel and the characters a lot more.