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Palace Walk: The Cairo Trilogy, Volume 1 Kindle Edition
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAnchor
- Publication dateJune 15, 2016
- File size1607 KB
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
- Paul E. Hutchison, Fishermans Paradise, Bellefonte, Pa.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“Rich in psychological insight and cultural observation. . . . A majestic and capacious accomplishment.” —The Boston Globe
“A tale told with great affection, humor, and sensitivity, in a style that in this translation is always accessible and elegant.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Palace Walk is a feast indeed.” —Chicago Tribune
From the Publisher
From the Inside Flap
About the Author
Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 and began writing when he was seventeen. His nearly forty novels and hundreds of short stories range from re-imaginings of ancient myths to subtle commentaries on contemporary Egyptian politics and culture. Of his many works, most famous is The Cairo Trilogy, consisting of Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
She woke at midnight. She always woke up then without having to rely on an alarm clock.A wish that had taken root in her awoke her with great accuracy. For a few moments she was not sure she was awake. Images from her dreams and perceptions mixed together in her mind. She was troubled by anxiety before opening her eyes, afraid sleep had deceived her. Shaking her head gently, she gazed at the total darkness of the room. There was no clue by which to judge the time. The street noise outside her room would continue until dawn. She could hear the babble of voices from the coffeehouses and bars, whether it was early evening, midnight, or just before daybreak. She had no evidence to rely on except her intuition, like a conscious clock hand, and the silence encompassing the house, which revealed that her husband had not yet rapped at the door and that the tip of his stick had not yet struck against the steps of the staircase.
Habit woke her at this hour. It was an old habit she had developed when young and it had stayed with her as she matured. She had learned it along with the other rules of married life. She woke up at midnight to await her husband's return from his evening's entertainment. Then she would serve him until he went to sleep. She sat up in bed resolutely to overcome the temptation posed by sleep. After invoking the name of God, she slipped out from under the covers and onto the floor. Groping her way to the door, she guided herself by the bedpost and a panel of the window. As she opened the door, faint rays of light filtered in from a lamp set on a bracketed shelf in the sitting room. She went to fetch it, and the glass projected onto the ceiling a trembling circle of pale light hemmed in by darkness. She placed the lamp on the table by the sofa. The light shone throughout the room, revealing the large, square floor, high walls, and ceiling with parallel beams. The quality of the furnishings was evident: the Shiraz carpet, large brass bed, massive armoire, and long sofa draped with a small rug in a patchwork design of different motifs and colors.
The woman headed for the mirror to look at herself. She noted that her brown scarf was wrinkled and pushed back. Strands of chestnut hair had crept down over her forehead. Grasping the knot with her fingers, she untied it. She smoothed the scarf around her hair and retied the two ends slowly and carefully. She wiped the sides of her face with her hands as though trying to erase any last vestiges of sleep. In her forties and of medium build, she looked slender, although her body's soft skin was filled out to its narrow limits in a charmingly harmonious and symmetrical way. Her face was oblong, with a high forehead and delicate features. She had beautiful, small eyes with a sweet dreamy look. Her nose was petite and thin, flaring out a little at the nostrils. Beneath her tender lips, a tapered chin descended. The pure, fair skin of her cheek revealed a beauty spot of intensely pure black. She seemed to be in a hurry as she wrapped her veil about her and headed for the door to the balcony. Opening it, she entered the closed cage formed by the wooden latticework and stood there, turning her face right and left while she peeked out through the tiny, round openings of the latticework panels that protected her from being seen on the street.
The balcony overlooked the ancient building housing a cistern downstairs and a school upstairs which was situated in the middle of Palace Walk, or Bayn al-Qasrayn. Two roads met there: al-Nahhasin, or Coppersmiths Street, going south and Palace Walk, which went north. To her left, the street appeared narrow and twisting. It was enveloped in a gloom that was thicker overhead where the windows of the sleeping houses looked down, and less noticeable at street level, because of the light coming from the handcarts and from the vapor lamps of the coffeehouses and the shops that stayed open until dawn. To her right the street was engulfed in darkness. There were no coffeehouses in that direction, only large stores, which closed early. There was nothing to attract the eye except the minarets of the ancient seminaries of Qala'un and Barquq, which loomed up like ghostly giants enjoying a night out by the light of the gleaming stars. It was a view that had grown on her over a quarter of a century. She never tired of it. Perhaps boredom was an irrelevant concept for a life as monotonous as hers. The view had been a companion for her in her solitude and a friend in her loneliness during a long period when she was deprived of friends and companions before her children were born, when for most of the day and night she had been the sole occupant of this large house with its two stories of spacious rooms with high ceilings, its dusty courtyard and deep well.
She had married before she turned fourteen and had soon found herself the mistress of the big house, following the deaths of her husband's parents. An elderly woman had assisted her in looking after it but deserted her at dusk to sleep in the oven room in the courtyard, leaving her alone in a nocturnal world teeming with spirits and ghosts. She would doze for an hour and lie awake the next, until her redoubtable husband returned from a long night out.
To set her mind at rest she had gotten into the habit of going from room to room, accompanied by her maid, who held the lamp for her, while she cast searching, frightened glances through the rooms, one after the other. She began with the first floor and continued with the upper story, reciting the Qur'an suras she knew in order to ward off demons. She would conclude with her room, lock the door, and get into bed, but her recitations would continue until she fell asleep.
She had been terrified of the night when she first lived in this house. She knew far more about the world of the jinn than that of mankind and remained convinced that she was not alone in the big house. There were demon who could not be lured away from these spacious, old rooms for long. Perhaps they had sought refuge there before she herself had been brought to the house, even before she saw the light of day. She frequently heard their whispers. Time and again she was awakened by their warm breath. When she was left alone, her only defense was reciting the opening prayer of the Qur'an and sura one hundred and twelve from it, about the absolute supremacy of God, or rushing to the latticework screen at the window to peer anxiously through it at the lights of the carts and the coffeehouses, listening carefully for a laugh or cough to help her regain her composure.
Then the children arrived, one after the other. In their early days in the world, though, they were tender sprouts unable to dispel her fears or reassure her. On the contrary, her fears were multiplied by her troubled soul's concern for them and her anxiety that they might be harmed. She would hold them tight, lavish affection on them, and surround them, whether awake or asleep, with a protective shield of Qur'an suras, amulets, charms, and incantations. True peace of mind she would not achieve until her husband returned from his evening's entertainment.
It was not uncommon for her, while she was alone with an infant, rocking him to sleep and cuddling him, to clasp him to her breast suddenly. She would listen intently with dread and alarm and then call out in a loud voice, as though addressing someone in the room, "Leave us alone. This isn't where you belong. We are Muslims and believe in God." Then she would quickly and fervently recite the one hundred and twelfth sura of the Qur'an about the uniqueness of God. Over the course of time as she gained more experience living with spirits, her fears diminished a good deal. She was calm enough to jest with them without being frightened. If she happened to sense one of them prowling about, she would say in an almost intimate tone, "Have you no respect for those who worship God the Merciful? He will protect us from you, so do us the favor of going away." But her mind was never completely at rest until her husband returned. Indeed, the mere fact of his presence in the house, whether awake or asleep, was enough to make her feel secure. Then it did not matter whether the doors were open or locked, the lamp burning brightly or extinguished.
It had occurred to her one, during the first year she lived with him, to venture a polite objection to his repeated nights out. His response had been to seize her by the ears and tell her peremptorily in a loud voice, "I'm a man. I'm the one who commands and forbids. I will not accept criticism of my behavior. All I ask of you is to obey me. Don't force me to discipline you."
She learned from this, and from the other lessons that followed, to adapt to everything, even living with the jinn, in order to escape the glare of his wrathful eye. It was her duty to obey him without reservation or condition. She yielded so wholeheartedly that she even disliked blaming him privately for his nights out. She became convinced that true manliness, tyranny, and staying out till after midnight were common characteristics of a single entity. With the passage of time she grew proud of whatever he meted out, whether it pleased or saddened her. No matter what happened, she remained loving, obedient, and docile wife. She had no regrets at all about reconciling herself to a type of security based on surrender.
Whenever she thought back over her life, only goodness and happiness came to mind. Fears and sorrows seemed meaningless ghosts to her, worth nothing more than a smile of pity. Had she not lived with this husband and his shortcomings for a quarter century and been rewarded by children who were the apples of her eye, a home amply provided with comforts and blessings, and a happy, adult life? Of course she had. Being surrounded by the jinn had been bearable, just as each evening was bearable. None of them had attempted to hurt her or the children. They had only played some harmless pranks to tease her. Praise God, the merit was all God's. He calmed her hear and with His mercy brought order to her life.
She e...
Product details
- ASIN : B01GBAKARK
- Publisher : Anchor; Reprint edition (June 15, 2016)
- Publication date : June 15, 2016
- Language : English
- File size : 1607 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 532 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #132,084 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #179 in Literary Sagas
- #579 in Romance Literary Fiction
- #623 in Fiction Urban Life
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 and began writing when he was seventeen. A student of philosophy and an avid reader, he has been influenced by many Western writers, including Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, Camus, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and, above all, Proust. He has more than thirty novels to his credit, ranging from his earliest historical romances to his most recent experimental novels. In 1988, Mr Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in the Cairo suburb of Agouza with his wife and two daughters.
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Originally published in 1956 in Arabic, Palace Walk is the first part of trilogy written by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz. From the opening pages, the reader is given a glimpse into the life of a Cairo family near the end of the first world war. The father, a conservative Muslim, keeps his women confined to their home, and yet himself carouses at night, drinking and having affairs with various women. He rules his sons with an iron fist, and yet they each, in their own way, rebel against him. When WW I ends, Egypt is embroiled in a push for independence from Britain, and the family is caught up in the struggle.
This book is masterful on many levels. First, the story is excellent. It had me hooked immediately. Second, there is a great opportunity to learn about Egypt on the eve of independence, and the life of a Muslim family faced with political and cultural change. Third, I loved the subtle comparison of the oppression enforced by the family patriarch when placed next to their outrage against British oppression. Simply brilliant.
Mr. Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, a prosperous shopkeeper in Cairo at the time of World War 1, and his family and servants compose the cast of the drama. The family includes his wife, two daughters of marrying age, a son by a previous wife, another son at the brink of manhood, and a third son, a boy of ten years. They all have their problems, and step to center-stage in rotation. Their problems are all of the domestic sort, at least until the last quarter of the book, when the struggle for Egyptian independence from the British Protectorate impinges on their lives. Metaphysical/intellectual problems can't emerge overtly - however implicit they might seem to the reader - because all such meta-problems are moot, being fully and permanently answered in advance by the Muslim faith they all proclaim.
This novel gives me no justification for even asking whether questions of faith are open for the author, that is, whether Mahfouz wants his readers to challenge the belief system of his characters. I confess that I find it extremely uncomfortable NOT to challenge, and not to find the author challenging a structure of belief that claims so much from its adherents and offers such flimsy and inconsistent guidance. I'm left with the irksome inkling that this is a novel in which the biggest questions go unasked.
From a European-novel perspective, Mr. Ahmad is himself the biggest problem his wife and children have to face. Ahmad is presented to us as a mostly admirable figure, a man of vigor and elan, of stubborn principles and integrity, someone loved and admired by his friends, loved and admired and above all feared by his family. Okay... Maybe he is "quite a guy" but he's also, from a European reader's perspective, an alcoholic with the typical alcoholic's disposition toward domestic abuse, a narcissistic personality verging on sociopathy, an utterly spoiled, selfish, self-indulgent place-holder. He shows approximately the ethical and psychological development of Harry Flashman, without a fraction of the self-knowledge!
Immaturity is the most obvious marker of character in this novel. Ahmad has the social maturity of an under-challenged 15-year-old. His wife is a perpetual child by virtue of living in seclusion from society for her entire adulthood. The two older sons are supposed to be "young men" but their mental age seems at least five years behind their physical. The boy Kamal is officially ten years old, but his behavior and his perceptions seem more apt for a five-year-old. Let's be bluntly honest: Cairo society as portrayed by Mahfouz is shockingly infantile, yet one doesn't have the sense that Mahfouz is aware of the painful impression he's delivering to us outsiders.
I am perhaps being unfair to this book, faulting it for what it doesn't do, but by chance I've just recently read another book that 'happens' at the same historical moment and portrays the burdens of the 'passing of the generations'. The Radetsky March, by the Austrian Joseph Roth, is a quarter the length of Palace Walk (the first of a trilogy!) but four times the depth.
I can't even guess how well - how beautifully, cleverly, originally - written this novel might be in Arabic. The English translation is pedestrian at best, trite at worst. I found myself holding the book in mid-air after a chapter or two and thinking 'oof, how many pages is this critter.' But I did finish it, and I do intend to read the next volume of the trilogy one of these days or years. How's that for 'faint praise?'
Just recently, a friend recommended I read the Cairo trilogy. I began with Palace Walk, and haven't yet read the others. This book is SUPERB. Westerners have trouble understanding how Middle Easterners THINK. This book is so wonderful because it takes you inside the mind of each of the characters, in turn, chapter-by-chapter, showing you how each one of them thinks, and allowing you to see their motivations for their behavior. One person commmented in their book review that the majority of the book concentrated on the male characters. There is a reason for this. Egyptian society is mostly about men, not about women. Even as the society modernizes, the THINKING stays the same. Mahfuz has done a masterful character study of each character in the book, as they go therough their daily lives. Without yet having read the two subsequent books, I expect that I will get more in depth into the women's lives in Sugar Street, because this is the house to which the two female daughters have moved upon their marriages to two brothers.
In the past, I have tried to read some other books by this author, and just couldn't get into them. These books are different. They really do merit the Nobel Prize. Reading them now, after being immersed in the Arab culture for 12 years, I see so many more things than I would have noticed had I read the books first. But living in this culture, I can see how accurate they are, and how the men really DO behave and think like the characters in these books! Aside from the all this, the story line is wonderful, too. I had trouble putting the book down after having read the first few pages. I recommend these books to anyone who would really like to understand the Middle Eastern culture.
Top reviews from other countries
. Head of the house, Ahmad, is brilliantly and convincingly drawn - on the one hand he is a strict Muslim, demanding his wife and daughters live in total seclusion, and keeping all the family in a state of terror at his displeasure, yet every night he goes out on the town with his worldly friends to enjoy wine, women and song.
'Was he two separate people combined into one personality? Was his faith in the divine magnanimity so strong that he could not believe these pleasures really had been forbidden?...He found within himself strong instincts, some directed toward God and tamed through worship and others set for pleasure and quenched in play.'
His meek wife, Amina, devotes herself to pleasing him, never questioning his nocturnal excursions, while she looks out on the world through the slits in the shutters. With them lives stepson Yasin - child of a previous, unfavoured wife - who seems to be inheriting his father's immoral ways- and their own four children: sons Fahmy, a law student, becoming increasingly passionate about the anti-British movement, and mischievous schoolboy Kamal plus two daughters awaiting marriage: beautiful Aisha and her older sister, plain, sharp-tongued Khadija.
I couldn't put this down, and intend to read the other two works in near future. Utterly recommended: an Egyptian Tolstoy.
Leaves the female reader glad she doesn't live in an early 1900s Egyptian home, when she reads quotes like:
'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' and
'Women are just another kind of domestic animal and must be treated like one'. !!