This is the first novel in Mahfouz’s epic trilogy, set in Cairo in the aftermath of the First World War. The story centers around an old merchant family, the Jawad, fully embracing of the conservative customs, but being encroached by the trappings of modernity all around them. The paterfamilias is Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, a harsh disciplinarian to his wife and children, but a hard-drinking, carousing jokester to his nightlife friends. “He was forty-five and still enjoyed an ardent and exuberant vigor like that of an adolescent youth. His life was composed of a diversity of mutually contradictory elements, wavering between piety and depravity. Contradictory though they were, they all met with his satisfaction…. Having a clear conscience, he was good-hearted and sincere in everything he did. His breast was not shaken by storms of doubt, and he passed his nights peacefully. His faith was deep…. With the same ardent, overflowing vitality, he opened his breast to the joys and pleasures of life. He delighted in fancy food. He was enchanted by vintage wine. He was crazy about a pretty face. He pursued each of these pleasures with gaiety, joy, and passion.”
Al-Sayyid Ahmad keeps a tight leash on his wife, Amina. Since the day of her marriage, she was rarely ever able to leave the confines of her own home. Somewhat rankled by all the excessive restrictions placed upon her life, she was, nonetheless, obedient, pious, and loving to her husband and family. “Looking at the unknown had overwhelmed her: both what is unknown to most people, the invisible spirit world, and the unknown with respect to her in particular, Cairo, even the adjacent neighborhood, from which voices reached her. What could this world of which she saw nothing but the minarets and roofs be like? A quarter of a century had passed while she was confined to this house, leaving it only on infrequent occasions to visit her mother in al-Khurunfush. Her husband escorted her on each visit in a carriage, because he could not bear for anyone to see his wife, either alone or accompanied by him.”
The serenity of the Jawad home is first put to the test when Al-Sayyid Ahmad goes off on a business trip only to return to Amina recuperating in her bed, after getting run over by a car while sneaking off to the mosque of al-Husayn. “It was unfortunate, unfortunate for his wife, that he reviewed the matter when he was calm and all alone. He convinced himself that if he forgave her and yielded to the appeal of affection, which he longed to do, then his prestige, honor, personal standards, and set of values would all be compromised. He would lose control of his family, and the bonds holding it together would dissolve. He could not lead them unless he did so with firmness and rigor. In short, if he forgave her, he would no longer be Ahmad Abd al-Jawad but some other person he could never agree to become.”
Juxtaposed dichotomies abound in this novel. The elder sons Yasin and Fahmy scrapingly bow to their father to his face, but, alone, both rebel in their own quiet ways. For Yasin, this means sneaking off every night to the coffeeshops, speakeasies, brothels, and dens of female musicians in the entertainment district. One night, he stumbles into the private quarters of a singer whose boss, at that same moment, happens to be performing for his own father. For the first time Yasin sees his domineering taskmaster in a new light, “My father goes to Zubayda’s house to drink, sing, and play the tambourine …. My father allows Jalila to tease him and be affectionate with him …. My father gets drunk and commits adultery. How could all this be true? Then he wouldn’t be the father he knew at home, a man of exemplary piety and resolve. Which was correct? I can almost hear him now reciting, ‘God is most great …. God is most great.’ So how is he at reciting songs? A life of deception and hypocrisy? … But he’s sincere. Sincere when he raises his head in prayer. Sincere when he’s angry. Is my father depraved or is licentiousness a virtue?”
Fahmy, Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s second son, is studious and religious by nature. He is studying law, but also, unbeknownst to his family, becomes involved with the Wafdist movement to expel the British from Egypt. “Everything was proceeding as usual, as though nothing had happened, as though Egypt had not been turned upside down, as though bullets were not searching for chests and heads, as though innocent blood was not enriching the earth and walls. The young man closed his eyes with a sigh…. During the last four days he had lived a life of far greater scope than he had ever known before. His only comparable experience had been in shadowy daydreams. It was a pure, lofty life, ready to sacrifice itself in good conscience for the sake of something glorious, a goal worthier and more exalted than life itself…. When the struggle began, it found him ready. He threw himself into the midst of it. When and how had that happened? He was riding a streetcar to Gaza on his way to the Law School when he found himself in a band of students who were waving their fists and protesting: “Sa’d, who expressed what was in our hearts, has been banished. If Sa’d does not return to continue his efforts, we should be sent into exile with him.””
As the street protests drag on and become more violent, with the British creating new martyrs to the struggle every day, events in the Jawad household come to a head. As always, Al-Sayyid Ahmad tries to wrest control of a situation that has, perhaps, spiraled beyond even his firm grasp. “He had nothing against the freedom fighters, quite the contrary. He always followed news about them with enthusiasm and prayed for their success at the conclusion of normal prayers. News about the strike, acts of sabotage, and the battles had filled him with hope and admiration, but it was a totally different matter for any of these deeds to be performed by a son of his. His children were meant to be a breed apart, outside the framework of history. He alone would set their course for them, not the revolution, the times, or the rest of humanity. The revolution and everything it accomplished were no doubt beneficial, so long as they remained far removed from his household.”
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