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

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Change presses inexorably against tradition, and even the walls of the house can not keep it outside . Together, female seclusion and the double standard lead to the extremes of marital life realized in the Abd al-Jawad family. The husband spent days and evenings out, enjoying the cheerful company of male peers and loose women, while the wife for decades remained at home. This arrangement clearly could not survive modernization.

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. The book closes with what seems the promise of success for the revolution and a peaceful transition to Egyptian independence, but it is not to be, at least for the Jawad family What concrete details of daily life does Mahfouz describe in introducing the family? What daily rituals are described? What is the effect of this intimate, material presentation?These words hold true here; they fit this novel well. Palace Walk is the first in a series of three entitled The Cairo Trilogy. It was published in 1956 but didn’t come out in English until 1990. Al-Sayyid Ahmad has great difficulty in dealing with the world at large, especially with regards to his family.

I was mistaken to believe this is going to be an intimidating and difficult novel to peruse through (much like The Kite Runner which could be gruelling and depressing at times). I really thought this would be challenging in a sense that its exploration or themes would be dark and serious but I was pleased to have been misled by that first impression. Palace Walk is an utter delight, and a novel I can definitely say is very much character-centered in its approach and exposition. Writer Naguib Mafouz found his story's core strength and purpose by ensuring that these characters that readers would get to spend time with are always engaging and vibrant that we never stopped caring about them for a second. I may not always agree with certain characters' habits, temperament and actions but Mafouz has shown brilliant calibre because he managed to infuse just the right details concerning their personal lives that readers can't help but sympathize with them anyway. But it remains unthinkable in the Jawad household: Yasin, who eventually does get married (though that doesn't turn out quite the way he'd hoped), causes a major scandal when he takes his wife for an evening on the town, his father outraged that he would disgrace his family in this way. It was mentioned later on that there are women who are allowed by their husbands to go outside every once in a while, but Amina's husband al Sayyid-Ahmad is just too much of a conservative and controlling patriarch that wants to dominate everyone in his household. The thing that really pisses me off about this man is that he's a hypocrite. He maintains a false façade around his family while living a completely hedonistic life when he's around his co-workers and multiple lovers. Later on I began to pity him because he was always so concerned about keeping up appearances that his children have only known how to fear him and not love him. That's I think is the greatest tragedy for a father but I don't think he will ever realize this, nor is it a concern of his. The Palace Walk is the 1st volume of Cairo Trilogy, a saga which captures the life of a tyrannical patriarch and his family during three important ages in Egypt history. The trilogy starts after the end of WW1, during Egypt's occupation by British forces and its fight for liberation. 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.)

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With the death of Fahmy, the political life of the nation has burst into the private home on Palace Walk. His father had meant for his children “to be a breed apart, outside the framework of history. He alone would set their course for them” (451). What larger point is Mahfouz making about the intersection of history and the family? The Palace Walk" by Naguib Mahfouz is, by far, the best work of fiction that I have read this year and is now one of my top ten favourite novels. This is certainly not a good time or place to be a woman. Take this response from a male character when his wife seeks a divorce:

The family provides the novel with its structure, since the plot is concerned with the lives and interrelationships of its members. However, the story is not set in isolation; indeed, the characters themselves are important mediators between issues of local or wider scope. For example, the theme of 'authority' (particularly its establishment and subversion) is woven into both the maturation of the children of the al-Jawad family and the wider political circumstances which provide the novel with its temporal boundaries. The questions and other material below are intended to enhance your group’s conversation about Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk. The general questions that follow provide topics for further discussion of the trilogy as a whole . Introduction Palace Walk is the first book in Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo trilogy, completed in 1952. The trilogy as a whole, including Palace of Desire and Sugar Street, is a masterful realist novel, one of the most complete descriptions of Cairene life in the first half of the twentieth century. Ahmad Abd al-Jawad is a man whose authority in his home is absolute. While holding his family to the strictest Islamic standards of behavior, he spends his evenings drinking with friends and meeting with lovers. Yasin, his eldest son from an earlier marriage, is a young man driven purely by sensual urges; Fahmy is a promising law student, earnest and obedient; Kamal is an affectionate boy full of energy and imagination. His daughters are Khadija, sharp-tongued and intelligent, fearful that she isn’t beautiful enough to marry, and Aisha, whose extraordinary beauty is joined with self-indulgence and lassitude. His wife, Zaynab, used to greater liberties in her father's household finds that already after a month "her character had been infected with the virus of submission" so prevalent in the Jawad household, but she won't put up with absolutely everything. Mahfouz’s women are very strong, whereas the men tend to be childish, self-indulgent, and relatively weak. Compare the characters of Al-Sayyid Ahmad and his wife Amina, for example. What does this contrast suggest about the family structure Mahfouz portrays? How do cultural and familial assumptions about women and sexuality influence the romantic lives of Yasin and Jamal? How do they think about and express their desires, and what, if anything do they have in common with their father in this regard?Without a framework that would compel the reader through the novel, Palace Walk is more like a well written forced march than a pleasure trip. Mahfouz seems fascinated by the details of his characters' lives, at the expense of all else." - Jake Morrissey, National Review Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd el-Gawadis the head of the el-Gawad household. He believes that his family should obey and honor him, and that he is both infallible and unquestionable as head of the household. His wife, Amina, prides herself on being the perfect obedient Muslim wife and rarely ever leaves the house, which is a rule ofal-Sayyid Ahmad’s. They are joined by their sons Yasin, Fahmy, and Kamal, and their daughters Khadijah and Aisha. It is one thing to know in the abstract that women were secluded and com-pelled to accept their hus-band's behavior, come what may; it is quite another to learn specifically about Ahmad's wife Amina. The revolution and everything it accomplished were no doubt beneficial, so long as they remained far removed from his household.

Palace Walk captivated on all levels for me-- a delicious family saga, political upheaval in early 20th-century Cairo, scandals, unrequited love, affairs and the miserable unfairness of being a woman. In fact, I think the only reason I'm not rating this higher is because I was forced by real life to read it in stops and starts and couldn't fully appreciate it as I wanted to. 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.Mahfouz's people are made plain by his great clarity of language, though his verbal strength is slightly hampered in this translation by a choice of words that often seems merely accurate. 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. The story of a tyrannical father in Cairo at the time of World War I. He belongs to the ultraconservative Muslim Hanbali sect. His wife sits outside his bedroom door each morning waiting to be called in to help him dress. His four children, two girls, three boys, kiss his hand each morning. He keeps his boys in line by beating them on the soles of their feet. His children and his wife cannot ask him a question unless they first ask his permission to speak. They call him ‘sir,’ even his wife. And yet they all think and say they love him.