Naguib Mahfouz - Palace Walk

The elderly woman said sharply, "There’s not a human being who would know you except the people in the house with you. Isn't there someone you suspect?… That woman Umm Hanafi? Or his son by the other woman?"

Amina quickly intervened to say confidently, "Possibly a neighbor woman saw me and told her husband, without meaning any harm, and the man brought it to al-Sayyid Ahmad’s attention, without understanding the dangerous consequences. Suspect anyone you like, but not a member of my household".

The old lady shook her head skeptically and observed, "Your whole life you've been too trusting. God alone can decipher and overcome the schemes of crafty people. But your husband?… An intelligent man going on fifty… can he find no other way to express his anger than by throwing out the companion of a lifetime and separating her from the children?… O Lord, glory to You. Most people get wiser as they get older, while we grow older and become foolhardy. Is it a sin for a virtuous woman to visit our master al-Husayn? Don't his friends, who are just as jealous and manly as he is, allow their wives to leave the house for various errands?… Your father himself, who was a religious scholar and knew the Book of God by heart, permitted me to go to neighbors' homes and watch the procession of pilgrims setting out for Mecca".

There was a long period of despondent silence until the old woman turned toward her daughter with a perplexed, critical smile. She asked, "What tempted you to disobey him after that long life of blind obedience?… This is what puzzles me the most… No matter how fiery his temper, he’s your husband. The safest thing to do is to be careful to obey him, for your own peace of mind and for the happiness of your children. Isn't that so, daughter?… I'm amazed because I've never found you needed anybody’s advice before…"

A smile appeared at the corners of Amina’s mouth, suggesting a slight relaxation of her anxiety and embarrassment. She mumbled, "The devil made me do it".

"God’s curse on him. Did the cursed one cause your feet to slip after twenty-five years of peace and harmony?… Well, he was the one who got our father Adam and our mother Eve expelled from paradise… It makes me very sad, daughter, but it’s just a summer cloud that will disperse. Everything will return to normal". She continued as though addressing herself: "What harm would it have done him to be more forbearing? But he’s a man, and men will always have enough defects to blot out the sun". Then, pretending to be happy and welcoming, she told her daughter, "Take off your things and make yourself comfortable. Don't be alarmed. What harm will it do you to spend a short holiday with your mother in the room where you were born?"

Amina’s eyes glanced inattentively at the old bed with its tarnished posts and at the shabby carpet, threadbare and frayed at the edges, even though the design of roses had retained its reds and greens. Her breast was too affected by separation from her loved ones to be receptive to a flood of distant memories. Her mother’s invitation did not arouse the kind of nostalgia in her heart that memories of this room, of which she was so fond, ordinarily did. All she could do was sigh and confess, "The only thing bothering me is that I'm anxious about my children, Mother".

"They're in God’s care. You won't be away from them long, if God the Compassionate and Merciful permits".

Amina rose to remove her wrap while Sadiqa, sad and mournful because of what she had heard, retreated from her post by the entrance to the room, where she had remained as they talked. Amina sat down again next to her mother. They discussed the matter inside and out, backward and forward.

The juxtaposition of the two women appeared to illustrate the interplay of the amazing laws of heredity and the inflexible law of time. The two women might have been a single person with her image reflected forward to the future or back into the past. In either case, the difference between the original and its reflection revealed the terrible struggle raging between the laws of heredity, attempting to keep things the same, and the law of time, pushing for change and a finale. The struggle usually results in a string of defeats for heredity, which plays at best a modest role within the framework of time. It was the law of time that had transformed Amina’s elderly mother into a gaunt body with a withered face and blind eyes. There had also been internal changes hidden from the senses. All of the splendor of life that she retained was what is known as "the charm of old age"-that is, a calm manner, a somber new dignity, and a head adorned with white. Although she was descended from generations of people who had lived to a ripe old age and not given up without a fight, her protest against time, once she reached seventy-five, was limited to rising in the morning in exactly the same way she had for the past fifty years and groping her way to the bathroom without any assistance from the maid. There she would perform her ablutions before returning to her room to pray. The rest of the day she passed with her prayer beads, praising God and meditating in total privacy. The servant was usually busy with the housework, but when she was free to sit with her mistress, the old lady enjoyed conversing with her.

The lady’s enthusiasm for work and zest for life had definitely not abandoned her. For example, she supervised every detail of the household budget, the cleaning and arranging. She took the servant to task if she spent too long on a job or was late returning from an errand. Not infrequently she made her swear on a copy of the Qur'an to assure herself of the veracity of the maid’s accounts of scrubbing the bathroom, washing the pots and pans, and dusting the windows. Her meticulousness verged on paranoia. Her insistence on this may have been a continuation of a custom that became embedded in her when she was young or a flaw introduced by old age.

Her perseverance in staying on in her house in almost total isolation after the death of her spouse and her insistence on remaining there even after she lost her sight could also be attributed to this extremism of her character. She had turned a deaf ear to the repeated invitations of al-Sayyid Ahmad to move to his house, where she could be cared for by her daughter and grandchildren. In this way, she exposed herself to the accusation of being senile. Al-Sayyid Ahmad finally stopped inviting her. The truth was that she did not want to leave her house, because she was so attached to it and because she wished to avoid the unintentional neglect she might find in the new one. Her presence there might also impose new burdens on the shoulders of her daughter, who already had many weighty responsibilities. Nor was she eager to squeeze herself into a home headed by a man known to his family for his ferocity and anger. She might inadvertently fall victim to his comments and thus threaten her daughter’s happiness. Finally, the sense of honor and pride she harbored deep inside herself caused her to prefer living in the house she owned, dependent only upon God and the pension left her by her late husband.

There were other reasons for her insistence on remaining in her house that could not be attributed to her sensitivity or common sense, like her fear that if she moved out of the house she would find herself forced to choose between two options. She would either have to allow strangers to live there, even though the house was what she treasured most dearly, after her daughter and grandchildren, or leave it deserted and let the jinn appropriate it as their playground, after it had been the home of a religious scholar who knew the Qur'an by heart-her husband. For her to move into al-Sayyid Ahmad’s house would also create awkward problems that in her opinion had no easy solution. At that time she had brooded about it. Should she accept his hospitality and give nothing in return-and she certainly would not be comfortable with that-or surrender her pension to him in return for staying in his house? Giving him her pension would upset her instinctive need to own things, which, along with old age, became one of the primary elements of her general paranoia.