Palace Walk ( Arabic title بين ال ) رين ) – A novel by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz and the first part of Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy . Originally published in 1956 with the title bayan al-qasrayn , the book was then translated into English by William M. Hutchins and Olive Kenny, and then published by Doubleday (publisher) in 1990 the Arabic title translates the book into “between two palaces”. The setting of Cairo’s novel is around the time periodWorld War I. It begins in 1917, during World War I, and ends in 1919, the year of the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 . The novel is written in the style of social realism and reflects the social and political situation in Egypt between 1917 and 1919.
The novel follows al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad as the head of his family; Amina, his sons Yassin, Fahmi and Kamal, and his daughters Khadija and Aisha. He establishes strict rules of Muslim piety and sobriety in the family. As-Sayyid Ahmad allows himself officially forbidden pleasures, such as music, drinking wine, and having numerous extramarital affairs with women he meets in his grocery store or with courtesans who party men in their homes with music and dancing. Because of his insistence on his domestic authority, his wife and children are forbidden to ask why he stays out late at night or comes home drunk.
Yasin, the eldest son, is al-Sayyid Ahmad’s only child from his first marriage to a woman whose subsequent marital affairs are a source of great embarrassment to father and son. Yasin shares his father’s looks and, without al-Sayyid Ahmad’s knowledge, Yasin also shares his predilections for music, women, and alcohol and spends as much time and money as he can afford on beautiful clothes, drinks, and prostitutes . Fahmi, Amina’s eldest son, is a serious and intelligent law student , active in the nationalist movement against the British occupation ; he also pines for his neighbor Maryam but cannot bring himself to take any action . Khadija, the eldest daughter, is sharp-tongued, opinionated and jealous of her sister Aisha, who is considered more beautiful and able to marry. Meanwhile, Aisha is gentler and more peaceful and tries to keep the peace. Kamal, the baby of the family, is an intelligent boy who frightens his family by supporting the British soldiers camped across the street from Abd al-Jawad’s home; he is also very close to his mother and sisters and is deeply disturbed when the prospect of marriage for the girls arises.
Major plot elements include al-Sayyid Ahmad’s debauchery, Yasin’s cultivation of the same hobbies, Fahmi’s refusal to stop his political activities in defiance of his father’s orders, and the daily stresses of life in Abd al-Jawad’s home, in which wife and children must delicately discuss certain issues of sexual chastity and behavior that cannot be discussed openly. Through the affair, Yasin and Fahmi gradually realize the exact nature of their father’s nocturnal activities, mainly because Yasin has an affair with a young courtesan who works in the same house as al-Sayyid Ahmad’s lover. After seeing his father playing the tambourine at a gathering in the house, Yasin realizes where his father goes at night and is delighted to discover that they have similar interests. Amina, meanwhile, has long ago guessed her husband’s predilections, but suppresses her resentment and grief so much that she behaves almost willfully without knowing it all.
The family provides the novel with its structure, as the plot concerns the lives and relationships of its members. However, the story does not unfold in isolation; indeed, the characters themselves are important mediators between local or wider issues. For example, the theme of “authority” (especially its establishment and undermining) is woven into both the maturation of the children of the al-Jawad family and the broader political circumstances that define the temporal boundaries of the novel.
The first chapters of the novel focus on the al-Jawad family’s daily routine. Amina, the mother of the family, welcomes the return of her husband, al-Sayyid Ahmad, after a night of socializing. She rises again at dawn to begin preparing the meal, assisted by her daughters Khadija and Aisha. Her sons join their father for breakfast. At this meal, as at any other communion with the patriarch, strict etiquette is observed. In the chapters that follow, we explore the characters of the family members, especially their relationships with each other. The marriage of children is key, as is the challenge to the supreme authority of the family patriarch.