Spaces of the Oppressed

A Spatial Reading of Najīb Maĥfūz’ Palace Walkبٻڼ اڶقصرين

Author: Hazem Ziada

[Accepted for publication in Middle Eastern Literatures (incl Edebiyyatt), University of Oxford; being prepared for resubmission after editing to readers’ comments]

Abstract

This paper spatializes Najīb Maĥfūz’ Palace Walk (1956 , بٻڼ اڶقصرين) which captures Egyptian society in its transition to

modernity under British occupation. It probes the novel’s spatial-culture: the narrative space in which characters

circulate, and the ways it describes enclosure-definitions, arrangements within and between spaces, and the

phenomenal properties of colour, shape, texture…etc.

Palace Walk‘s spatial-culture belies the normative, objective utility of physical space as the site for inscription and

negotiation of socio-political relations. It presents ephemeral enclosures lacking in vividness, phenomenal qualities and

configurational properties. Space in Palace Walk is captive to its characters’ perceptions, reflections and memories.

Maĥfūz offers us insight into the space of the oppressed: a dislocation between people’s imaginations and contentions

on one hand, and their physical environment on the other. Out of bodily gestures, memories and dreams, the

oppressed craft an alternative liminal space to bear their incessant yet stalled dynamics of exchange.

Introduction

Najīb Maĥfūz’ Cairo trilogy (Palace Walk بٻڼ اڶقصرين, Palace of Desireقصر الشوق , and Sugar Street السكرية) is a family saga

that spans the modern history of Egypt from 1917 to the early 1950s. For Egyptians living through that era, two world

wars and the world economic depression were deeply tainted by Egypt’s own struggle against British colonialism and a

quest for identity as Egyptian society exorcised yet more phases of painful negotiations with modernity. Since the 1750s,

Egypt had gone through consecutive rehearsals, not just for industrial and economic development, but also for

different forms of modernities and variants of social transformations– with all their ideals and contradictions. Yet in each

case, the development was piecemeal and uneven, with one social sliver mobilized as others stalled, some

development prematurely aborted or another extinguished by the intervention of foreign interests. The 1919 uprising

against continued British occupation – into which Palace Walk climaxes - marks the historic threshold when Egyptians

collectively, rather than individually, attempted to transform their social structure and adapt their own modernity.

Using the familiar form of the family saga, Maĥfūz personifies such struggles and their undercurrents in the consecutive

generations of one family. Multiplying in numbers and spreading over the Egyptian landscape, the family is defined

around one patriarchal figure: that of al-Sayyid Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād, a merchant whose ancestors had only

recently moved from the countryside to the capital city by 1917, when the narrative commences. With lingering

agrarian values and rural affiliations, the father (a literary character that has left a lasting impression on Egyptian

literature and everyday ‘male’ sensibilities) is a ‘moral fibre’ that deals with the interrelated issues of desire, the Divine

and human fate through a set of glaring contradictions which plague all other characters and events throughout the

trilogy. But if the father was the central patriarchal figure that bound the family together in an identifiable lineage, it

was the character of the mother, Amīna, which underscored a core thematic of this work: namely, oppression.

Drawing on those two resources, their five children grow up, marry, die and reproduce threading such contradictions

and aspirations into the larger socio-political framework of their times, in a revealing exposé of Egyptian society at the

thresholds of modernity.

The saga unfolds mostly within the Old City of Cairo, but also in its different ‘suburbs’ and quarters which sprang up

from the mid nineteenth century onwards. Maĥfūz’ skilful quill assigns a critical role in this drama to the city, its

architecture and its spaces – a role that extends beyond being a mere locale or set for events. Questions regarding

the nature of that role are what initially provoked this investigation.

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This paper spatializes Palace Walk – the first instalment of Maĥfūz’ trilogy - and aspects of the Cairene- Egyptian culture

of its time. From a spatial perspective, it seeks to understand the personalized events and their attendant larger social

underpinnings that Maĥfūz so masterfully weaves. Cairo of the year 1919 is a city that revolted. It was in the events of

the 1919 uprising in Cairene streets and buildings (as well as elsewhere in the nation), that a collective negotiation on

modernity was conducted through the medium of urban and architectural space. From Maĥfūz’ narrative, this paper

gleans qualities of the spatial culture of the times– a spatial culture that constitutes the backdrop to such a momentous

political event. In so doing, the paper contends that volatile moments of insurrection are instances of contesting a

broad and heterogeneous range of issues - whose very nature the revolutionaries themselves may not even be

conscious of, immersed as they are in revolutionary fervour – rather than consisting of a single dimension of struggle

against occupation.

Maĥfūz’ first instalment of his trilogy, Palace Walk, presents us with a paradoxical narrative space. It seems to belie the

normative utility of physical space, which is to map, inscribe and negotiate social relations. Instead, the novel

describes spatial extensions without ascribing their interrelations; in other words, devoid of global spatial arrangements

or configurations, through which a society manages its hierarchies, interactions, and even its imagination. Additionally,

the narrative presents enclosures as if ephemeral in quality, and lacking in vivid phenomenal properties (such as

texture and colour). In fact, space in Palace Walk issues from the novel’s characters - their perceptions, sensations and

above all their memories - rather than being objectively moulded around them, and in turn shaping their behaviour.

Moreover, this ephemerality sometimes verges on solipsism: it is ‘washed’ away after episodes and in the wake of

characters’ consciousness, lacking as it does the anchoring and endurance provided by configurational relations.

As ephemeral as it is in quality, this narrative space manifests itself through habitual loci, themselves classified by

gender. While women contemplate the larger social order – in which their active involvement is denied - from

elevated thresholds, men partake in such social order through moving itineraries. Common to both, this spatial

emanation occurs more intensely in solitude. Alone in her/his habitual spot, a character maps enclosure from

accumulated memories - but, again, with little or no sense of how this enclosure relates to other enclosures. The grain

of Palace Walk’s narrative space is highly fragmented. Indeed, it is a scatter of places rather than a configuration of

conjoined spaces.1 Maĥfūz’ characters emphasize the bounding of places (to constitute and affirm identity) over the

negotiation across spaces (to develop social relations).

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Maĥfūz has described for us the space of the oppressed. Defined spatially, oppression amounts to a dislocation

between people’s imaginations and contentions on one hand, and their physical environment as the medium of

inscription and negotiation on the other. Deprived of their right and agency to inscribe the existential category of

space after their own will, and to use it to reflect their ideals and aspirations, how do the oppressed negotiate change

and identity, and in what form do they construct space around themselves? Out of bodily gestures, memories and

dreams, the oppressed craft a liminal space to bear their incessant but unrealized projections, and their unstoppable

yet stalled dynamics of exchange. Hypothetical and fictional as it is, for them it stands for reality, until the moment

when (or if) it is released in context of a rebellious event.

Narrative Space and Narrative Technique

Before elaborating on above-stated assertions, two fundamental concepts need be clarified. Narrative fiction can

hardly avoid the spatial extension where human actions and events unfold. Any storytelling ‘confronts’ space as a

setting (a medium), as a character and/or even as subject matter. What sets one work apart from another with regard

to space, are two distinct but interrelated issues: the quality of space involved – what space is morphed and shaped in

the narrative (narrative space); and the techniques an author employs to articulate such spatial qualities – how such a

space is described (the techniques of narration).

Narrative space centres on the medium in which involved are the characters’ circulation, accessibility, vision and other

sensory perceptions, memories and social negotiations. Maĥfūz’ narrative compositions from the 1950s (from which his

trilogy dates) build on Balzac, as elaborated by the critic Najīb Surūr.2 Maĥfūz takes from Balzac the sequence of

constructing a tale by commencing with an elaborate introduction of main characters, capturing them in moments of

representative significance and in their character-defining spatial settings.3 From there, he proceeds to weave threads

of drama as characters meet and interact. Character qualities elucidate and explain the events that follow them.

However, Maĥfūz departs from Balzac in that spaces associated with such characters are deliberately far less vivid,

and that spatial descriptions issue from the characters rather than being independent of them.

Among techniques of narration, the way Maĥfūz handles the relationships of author to reader to characters is

particularly significant. This inevitably influences the narrative space itself, but also how the reader relates to that

medium – whether one stands within or apart from it.4 For Maĥfūz, this relationship is continuously formed and re-

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formed, stated and questioned. Narrating to us about his characters as if unaware of our ‘eavesdropping’ and in what

feels like a crowded narrative space, he often shifts to addressing a character directly in the second person ‘You’ – to

our seeming exclusion. Less often but no less significant are instances when characters indulge in introspective,

unquoted soliloquies from which – it seems – both Maĥfūz and ourselves are dismissed – or rendered mere

eavesdroppers. In this way, Maĥfūz weaves in and out of readers’ consciousnesses as he meanders through those of

his own characters, thereby conflating their roles.

Of similar influence on spatial relations is the author’s set of linguistic tools. Maĥfūz’ bandwidth of narrating language

seems strikingly narrow and unvaried. His prose does not excite sharp passions in its readers; its inflections, intonations –

its music – do not employ the potential for extremities that Arabic possesses as a language. Contrasts in sound are

minimized and controlled. Sentence lengths do not vary sharply; long, arduous and demanding sentences are

generally avoided, while short abrupt rhythmic ones are also minimal. Collapsible syntax - the capacity to condense

whole sentence structures into a few words, or even a single word - is rare or non-existent.5 His prose is by no means

highbrow or demanding, although still within the confines of classical Arabic. In fact, there is little difference between

Maĥfūz’ own language as narrator (when, ostensibly, he is ‘talking’ to us) and his characters’ dialogue - although the

latter seems to approach Egyptian colloquial.

The convergence of these techniques furnishes an overlap between spatial relations woven from and between the

novel characters on the one hand, and those in which Maĥfūz’ narrative technique implicates his readers’, on the

other hand. Therein lies the almost total transparency of Maĥfūz’ creative sieve where space is concerned: the one set

of relations recalls another. The success of the technique lies in the smooth and subtle manner in which he conducted

transitions from narration to conversation to listening and back, sometimes in a single passage. Maĥfūz’ prose,

generally but also specifically in Palace Walk, possesses a consistent fine grain – an auditory and syntactical

smoothness that breeds intimacy and varies little as it spans across different events and different characters.6 The

narration feels like storytelling: informal and casual – as if conducted in the confines of one simple enclosure where

author, characters and reader are intimately gathered together.

A good example of such techniques is the exchange between al-Sayyed Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād and shaykh

Mutawalli abdul-Sammad, in the early chapters of Palace Walk.7 Provoked by the shaykh’s blatant accusations of

licentiousness, a’bd al-Jawwād embarks on an internal meditation sorting feelings of guilt and prayer-like self-

reflections. The text seamlessly meanders from Maĥfūz narration of what a’bd al-Jawwād thought, to a’bd al-

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Jawwād’s soliloquy on his own contradictions, to finally what seems like Maĥfūz addressing (male) readers about those

same contradictions.

In what follows, I will argue above assertions and elaborate on the implications of narrative techniques on the spatial

culture of oppression that Maĥfūz offers us.

Space: Physicality and Phenomenology

What is immediately remarkable about Palace Walk’s narrative space is the dearth of descriptions of the physical

propertied of space. Only rarely in this first instalment of the trilogy does Maĥfūz illustrate the physical qualities of a

space: a sense of its different scales, shapes, metrics, textures, and colours. Many events take place in the a’bd al-

Jawwād family home, yet it is rather difficult for readers to reconstruct a vivid sense of that house. The same could be

argued for the al-Sayyid Ahmed’s shop, the street, and Zubayda’s den - not to mention Fahmy’s law college, Yasīn’s or

Kamāl’s schools. Physical space – physical descriptions in general - lack tangibility and vividness. True enough, there

are fleeting glimpses here and there, but no one space ever coheres into a firm impression.

On the same note, spaces as well as their physical components tend to be merely mentioned in the narrative, but their

phenomenal qualities are rarely – if ever – broached. With very few exceptions, we seldom experience the house (this

most important of the novel’s spaces) - its light and sound qualities, its textures or the mood or atmosphere that

emanates from its physical qualities.8 There is repeated mention of the mashrabiyyah as a viewing device (both Amīna

and Ā’isha peek out with varying degrees of audacity), but never descriptions of its light and shadow effects. For

Amīna’s entrapped world within the house, the minarets of Qalawoun and Barqūq mosques are significant markers of

her exterior (also mythical) world, but Maĥfūz never describes the peculiarity of their shapes (the roundness of their

tops, the formal transitions along their vertical trunks, the play of light and shadow on their undulations) – perhaps an

important factor of her seeing such minarets as “giant jinnies”.

In general, objects seem to be present as ‘notions’, rather than as physical presence or as experiential phenomena;

places, objects and names seem to stand for each other quite liberally. There is possibly an implicit assumption in

Maĥfūz’ prose that readers can immediately and intimately relate to such objects, places and spaces. For example,

he may assume we know what a mashrabiyya is and – of our own initiative – switch on in our heads its different visibility

and light-shadow effects, or what the minarets of Qalawoun and Barqūq look like and where they are. Was he writing

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for a specific reader – one quite familiar with the nooks and crannies of the Old City? Or is Maĥfūz diverting attention

away from such physicality and associated phenomenology?9

Space: Configuration versus Lists

While Maĥfūz’ narrative space unfolds as notions disconnected from physicality and phenomenology (or keys to

objects and spaces rather than by the objects and spaces themselves), there is, perhaps more significantly, a parallel

lack of clarity of arrangement – how things stand in relation to each other. In other words, there is little or no sense of

configuration. What comes across about the arrangement of spaces and objects within spaces is more like a list than a

configuration.

However many times the narrative situates us in the a’bd al-Jawwād family house, and although we know that the

house encloses a courtyard with an oven (or hearth), a staircase, several levels with bedrooms and a bathroom and

an accessible, used roof – it is very difficult to configure in our minds the relationships between all such spaces. Where is

the courtyard relative to the staircase? Sound penetrates from the courtyard to the rooms (as evidenced when Fahmy

is woken up by the quotidian clamour of baking the morning after the first revolt), but we never overlook the courtyard

from any of the rooms. How does the family’s living room relate to Ahmed and Amīna’s main bedroom, or – indeed –

to any other room? It is only in the sequel, Palace of Desire, that such spatial interrelations begin to emerge. Towards

the end of the second instalment, we discover that Kamāl’s room overlooks the courtyard - during the very scene

where his consciousness is radically altered in the aftermath of a failed love affair. Similarly, the family’s daily coffee

majlis takes place in a common room (sala) – which Maĥfūz finds enough to describe as located on the first floor and

“surrounded by rooms for the boys’ sleep, the reception and a fourth for study.” Again, we are given a list of rooms

with little hint of how they stand in relation to each other. The rooms’ configuration becomes somewhat clearer only in

the sequel. There, Maĥfūz exposes the arrangement: two rooms flank the sala on each side, although by then room

functions have changed as various family members had left the house to start their own families.10 In fact, whether in

Palace Walk or Palace of Desire, Maĥfūz is more anxious to describe how the bodies of the different family members sit

in relation to each other and in what postures, than he is concerned with physical space arrangement around them.

Amīna sits in a centred spot, at ease due to the father’s absence from that daily family ritual, her sons and daughters

either lie down or squat leisurely. Significantly, starting from this list of room arrangements to body postures, Maĥfūz

ends up expending considerable prose describing Yasīn’s body in some detail - a curious opposition of spaces to

bodies to be pursued later in the argument.

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The house is mapped to us in Palace Walk as a list of spaces; characters appear in each room but seldom in the

connections between rooms. In fact, we cannot really tell whether the rooms are joined by shared doors or overlook

common corridors. Furniture, or, more generally, elements within enclosures are also revealed in list-form. In the

opening scene (which I will keep returning to): as Amīna walks across the room, Maĥfūz describes the room

components as the light from her oil lantern washes across them – but again as a list. There is ““…the Shirazi carpet,

large brass bed, massive armoire, and long sofa draped with a small rug in a patchwork design of different [read:

unspecified] motifs and colours.”11 How do they stand in relation to each other in this very important space is unclear.

We emerge from the narrative with a quite fragmentary sense of the spatial milieu that the characters circulate in, as

well as with an incoherent construction of the overall space of the novel. This impression is strengthened by the fact

that only rarely do we ‘feel’ across spaces, or sense from one space to another. We are always enclosed, together

with the characters, in the confines of an implied space or a situation – even when actions are placed in the openness

of a street. At no time does Maĥfūz offer us a bird’s eye-view of the town, even during the time of revolt. There is no

equivalent here to Victor Hugo’s owl in Les Miserables, which flies over an 1832 Parisian night providing a global picture

of the insurgency and where the contesting groups stand. Nor are there accounts from elevated windows – except

Amīna’s very quick nightly peek over the city’s old spine, and even that feels like a reassuring look over a familiar

landscape (a memory recalling device) rather than an exploratory sweep of what is actually there. Accounts of street

protest are almost always reported from a low, stationary and single point of view, rather than multiple and dispersed –

or, in general, without the hint of a global picture. One protest we ‘hear’ (rather than see) with the youngest son,

Kamāl, as he hides behind a protective roll-down metal shop-door. We cull together a scenario from the succession of

sounds past that door: waves of bursting chants, “sporadic screams” and “…rushing …footsteps” are followed by

gunshots and “roars, screams and moans” – then “a frightening silence”.12 Another, the organized peaceful

demonstration of April 12, 1919, and despite an opportunity to describe the global unified formation of such a huge

parade along one linear street (and the great effort that went into organizing it), Maĥfūz reports through Fahmy’s

almost stationary eyes and centralized consciousness. Fahmy, Maĥfūz describes, “craned his neck to look at the

procession. He could no longer see the front of it.” We get a stronger sense of enclosure as Fahmy “looked on either

side to see how crowded the sidewalks, windows, balconies, and roofs were with all the spectators who had begun to

repeat the chants.” 13

A global picture is denied us, even when it seems pertinent to narrative events; overall perceived intelligibility of action

as well as of space is consistently edited out. In fact, the most remarkable exception to that comes as a shock to the

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characters as well as to us. As the early revolt gathers momentum, it marches through the tight fabric and narrow

streets of the Old City. The revolt sounds as if it is coming from everywhere and from far away. Maĥfūz describes a

rambling sound using the Arabic adjective hadīr – which is often used to describe the sound of high sea waves or the

performance of a powerful engine. Persistent, all-surround, difficult to assign source or direction to – it seemed to come

equally from within street volume as well as from the very physical fabric of buildings.14

The above arguments raise an important question. If Maĥfūz’ spatial descriptions evade physicality, phenomenology

as well as configuration, then is it at all useful to probe Palace Walk for the specifics of a spatial culture? But first a

related question: why does a celebrated writer create such a seemingly insolvent narrative space? Is it possible that it

never lingered adequately within the transformative filters of Maĥfūz’ creative skills? By the mid-1950s, Maĥfūz had

been writing for some seventeen years, and had read Balzac, Dostoevsky and Kafka.15 It is difficult to infer that his

apparent marginalization of spatial dimensions in narrative springs from unawareness or negligence. Having adopted

such giants as his literary idols, but also having initiated his own writing career with historical novels set in ancient

Egypt16 where he had to recreate for his readers totally unfamiliar environments, Maĥfūz clearly internalized the use of

space as an active agent in the unfolding of a narrative. Indeed, Palace Walk sequels witness substantial

transformations in the nature of narrative space especially towards a more articulate sense of configuration, and the

invocation of a more vivid phenomenology.

More likely then, Maĥfūz is using space in a subtle and unfamiliar way in Palace Walk. What is the nature of that space

– and its different aspects? How do Maĥfūz’ narrative techniques converge to create it? Finally – why, and what

meanings do his narrative space and narrative techniques construct?

Space and Characters: Perception, Memory and Identity

The first key to this mystery is that Maĥfūz does not deal with space directly - not as an entity or character in its own

right, but through his characters. A counter-example would illustrate. Maĥfūz’ technique in Palace Walk is quite unlike

that of the Russian novelist Victor Serge’s treatment of space in Conquered City: its architecture, its streets, even stone

curbs, sidewalks, and building plinths. Both Maĥfūz’ Palace Walk and Serge’s Conquered City deal with cities in a state

of revolt. However, Serge identifies space as a character that feels and exudes impression - even emotion. Stone, in

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Serge’s expressive accounts, is under the brunt of oppression as much as humans walking by. Serge’s narration

addresses space and its elements directly – not through the agency of characters’ eyes and minds. Spaces are

described – as characters themselves - even in the absence of human characters; space is not captive to the solipsism

of fleeting consciousness.

In Palace Walk, readers do not have access to the novel spaces unmediated by its characters. We only learn about

enclosures as different characters enter or leave them, look upon or through them, and we only earn minimal

properties as catches the attention of involved characters. We see through their eyes whatever glimpses they offer us,

we note what touches their bodies as they register it, and we hear when they hear. If one reviews spatial descriptions

throughout the novel, one finds that such accounts are consistently preceded by a character’s entry or appearance

in the narrative space, or even progressively more frequently, in the wake of a character’s internal dialogue – whether

conducted through the first or second persons (as when Maĥfūz ‘turns’ to address the character as “You”). Almost

never do we witness a room or a space before the character breaks in on it. We see Amīna’s room in the opening

scene, but not before her gradual coming to consciousness is painstakingly articulated in one full passage, and then

only when her oil lantern – quivering in her grip - retrieves circular patches from darkness. We see the city – her city,

exterior to her entrapment - only when she peeks outside her mashrabiyya. Later in the day, the courtyard and

adjacent hearth are described (with some exceptional elucidation of directionality) only as Amīna wakes up her maid

and starts baking. Interiors and exteriors are treated in the same way. We witness the Old City’s streets through Yasīn’s

overly aroused body receptors; our perception of the street is utterly captive to his.

Moreover, we discover quite often that what we witness of the narrative environment is more what the characters

reflect back on, or remember about them, than what they actually experience. A space disappears from the narrative

extension when a character’s attention and memory cease to engage it, even in mid-sentence or in the course of

intermittent ruminations - as happens to Amīna in the book’s opening scene. Here, city minarets are washed away by

the torrent of memories situated within the house interiors. In fact, both spaces – house interior and city exterior, seen

through Amīna’s filter of prolonged familiarity – are nothing but her recollections of them. After twenty five years of

entrapped immersion in the house, and of gazing through her mashrabiyya, Amīna only ‘hears’ the jinnies that inhabit

the dark corners of the memory home she arrived in as a child of fourteen, as well as the giant jinnies that transmogrify

the minarets of the Qalawoun and Barqūq mosques. In other words, Amīna projects the mnemonic fears of her

childhood on her space and visualizes her environment through the filter of such memories. The scene, in fact, is one

set of memories washing away the others.

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In other words, the spatial descriptions of Palace Walk’s narrative space - being attendant to characters’ actions and

perceptions, being dependent upon characters’ appearances and disappearances, being captive to character’s

memories and recollections – are neither settings to actions nor devices of negotiation. In fact, they issue from the

characters; Maĥfūz is recounting what his characters retain about their environment. Spatial descriptions partake in

very subtle constructions of identity that the characters weave around themselves or project into perceived

surroundings, as they appear or disappear.

Within this mangle of space, memory and identity that the characters endure, Maĥfūz implicates his readers. Since we

never receive collective descriptions of spaces from the various incidents and situations, we find ourselves unable to

construct the spaces around the characters for ourselves. Denied this cumulative constructive potential, we end up

with fragments of spatial entities, too weak and flimsy to sustain mnemonic retention. We lose memory – spatial

memory. Pondered as representations or drawings for a moment, it is as if Maĥfūz is drawing sketches on a palimpsest

of sorts; or put differently, the manner in which he ‘sketches’ transforms our receptive spatial imagination into a

palimpsest. Traces are iteratively erased from a palimpsest; nevertheless, it manages to retain fragmentary residues

from the effaced – enough to keep us engaged, but not in control. In his understated way, Maĥfūz implicates us,

defines us, and involves us in a plight very similar to his characters’. Simultaneously, by channelling spatial intelligence

through these characters, the otherwise sharp disjunction between the fictional extension of narrative events and the

readers’ non-fictional space(s), is set to interweave in various, complex ways. By default, readers have a tendency to

project themselves into situations encountered by characters they sympathize with – perhaps even as the characters

themselves. If one receives all intuitions of space from a character, one would assume qualities of such a character.17

Additionally, through subtle manipulation of (first, second and third person) address, Maĥfūz enforces this plight by

‘locating’ readers as characters, and/or characters together with readers. Maĥfūz’ slight-of-hand catches us

unawares; it acts on our unwary subconscious far more than on our guarded attentiveness. The shifts in person address

are smooth, occur without shifts in passage and without quotation marks, and are not accompanied by a change in

language from classical Arabic to colloquial. From telling us about a character, described as she or he, he ‘turns’ to

address the character as ‘You’, only to shift back again. Not infrequently, this very same ‘You’ address turns out to be

that character addressing him/herself in some introspective soliloquy.

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Space and Characters

Since spatial descriptions issue from characters towards identity construction, it behoves us to examine a few key

characters and the ways through which they generate space. Amīna, the mother, is the first such key character,

despite the impression that the father plays a more prominent role in the plot. Assigning such significance to Amīna’s

character is justified, first of all, by Maĥfūz’ narrative method, compared in this paper’s introduction to Balzac’s. Both

commence their tales with elaborate accounts of main character(s) in exemplary settings. Amīna is the character in

whose presence Maĥfūz elects to open all three books of the trilogy: in Palace Walk, she is on her own; in Palace of

Desire, she is a vital background presence to her husband’s consciousness; in Sugar Street, a collection of female

hands opens the book, hers being the foremost.

More significantly, Amīna represents a condition of oppression of an extreme kind – as representative of the oppression

suffered by all characters. Framing the materialist undercurrent of the narrative as the stifled transition of the a’bd al-

Jawwād family from agrarian-feudal affiliations to bourgeois class solidarity, the critic Najīb Surūr diagnoses the central

thematic of the trilogy as the plight of women’s oppression and entrapment. In such an analysis, Amīna is the extreme

case of the oppressed female, literally a prisoner in her own house, and reduced to an object or a thing. Hence, all

women in the novel are grades of Amīna’s plight: on their way to becoming her, such as her daughter Khadīja, and

the housemaid umm-Hanafi; her opposites:, such as Haniyya, Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād’s first wife; or mouthpieces

voicing her suppressed discontent, like the more outspoken performers (awalim) Jalila, Zubayda or Zannouba. Besides

the oppressed female’s plight, the novel also negotiates more generic conditions of oppression under which many

characters suffer – including the figure of Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād himself. How else could one explain the complexity

of the father’s character, if the objective is so clear cut as gender oppression? Surūr himself finds deeper analogies

with Egypt’s oppression under British rule. He suspects that Maĥfūz employs Amīna’s character to drive home the

overall sense of repression that a whole society lives under. Indeed, Surūr notes how Maĥfūz’ hints regarding Amīna’s

plight are frequently juxtaposed to reports or discussions of the society’s subjugation at large.

Furthermore, Palace Walk evokes a close attachment between Amīna and the large enclosure that seems to spring

around her: the house. Entrapped in the house for some twenty-five years, it is tempting to see the one as prosthesis for

the other. Our first impression of the house - the most vivid one, the one that contaminates our perception from

thereon and the one that lingers even as we contemplate spatial descriptions of the house by other characters –

comes through Amīna’s perceptions and memories. Consequently, the opening scene of Palace Walk is of particular

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significance and centrality, as an entry point to other episodes and events in the work, as well as a scaffold on which

to build up a more nuanced characterization of Maĥfūz’ narrative space.

Amīna / the House

In the book’s very first lines, we are introduced, not to Amīna per se, but to Amīna’s consciousness. Establishing a

theme of awakening that he returns to with other characters (especially Fahmy and Kamāl), Maĥfūz immediately tunes

us into the complex expanse of this woman’s awareness as she wakes up in her habitual early time unaided by alarm-

clock or sunlight. In those first few lines and passages, he reveals to us the secrets of what is to unfold. Significantly,

Maĥfūz walks us through that in the complete darkness of her room; consciousness comes before space, divorced

from it. Amīna’s consciousness is independent of – or detached from - external impetus; it was still too dark to be

alerted by sunlight, or by variations in sound levels from the street below, which remain unchanged until dawn. Amīna’s

consciousness is not – or has ceased to be – shaped by her external environment. Rather, Maĥfūz hints, it is the other

way around: she projects that environment.

Another component of Amīna’s consciousness is fear. In fact, it seems from Maĥfūz’ account that underlying her

developed conditioning to wake up on her own is the fear that her husband – arriving late from his nightly

entertainment – would find her asleep and inattentive to serving him. So etched is that fear on her consciousness that it

spikes her to sit up “unhesitatingly”, unseduced by the warmth of her bed on this winter night.

Detachment from external reality and fear of her husband are entrenched in association. From this qualification of

Amīna’s consciousness, Maĥfūz moves on to describe another couplet: her spatial milieu as well as her body. He

continues to do so through Amīna’s own perceptive devices, in what is the most vivid depiction of projective and

solipsistic spatial descriptions in the book – and equally emblematic of following descriptions. Still in the dark, Amīna’s

hand reaches out, giving us the first intuition of spatial arrangement, as she proceeds to feel her way guided by the

bedpost, then the window shutter until she reaches the door; three objects, or parts thereof, arranged in a sequence

between the room’s main functional area, the bed, and the room’s exterior. Yet utter darkness is easily dominated by

Amīna’s internal world; the determining moment comes when light – with its unavoidable exposure of ‘otherness’ –

comes into play. To describe the moment when the faint light from the exterior invades the room as she swung the

door open, Maĥfūz uses the Arabic verb insāba, which condenses swiftness, a creeping movement but also a release

13

from constraint - all in one. The root verb: sāba means to ‘let-go’, to release; the prefix in- denotes a will internal to that

light. For a fleeting moment, light – the world external to Amīna’s consciousness - maintains its agency; but not for long.

Before this light can expose any spatial properties to us or to Amīna, she seizes the lantern and goes back to the room.

In that brief instant when she makes the light her own, when she holds the lantern in her hand to orient her walk, when

she becomes the centre of observation for which that light operates – in that moment, Maĥfūz provides one rare

instance of phenomenal vividness. The light ‘reflects’ [Arabic: ya’kis] on the ceiling from the mouth of its glass a circle

of faint, pale light bounded by an attendant rim of multiple shadows. In this fleeting moment, Maĥfūz performs one of

his frequent switches to using verbs in the present tense – but only to describe what the light did on the ceiling. That

short clause is preceded by a past tense (“she carried [the lantern]”); and is concluded by another past tense, “she

placed it on a table’”). And the verb Maĥfūz used to describe the light’s effect is “reflects on [the ceiling]”. But given

that the lantern is supposed to be the source of illumination, it is remarkable to describe the light phenomenon here in

terms of reflection, rather than projection or casting. The difference is again the involvement of the character in the

phenomenon: projection or casting can happen independent of the character’s observation, reflection is intimately

tied to her perception.18

The instant that Amīna and the light are dissociated (when she places the lantern on a table), the joint intensity of

perception and narration dissipates. Room furniture is next described as a list of items, without allusion to configuration

or phenomenal qualities: “…the Shirazi carpet, large brass bed, massive armoire, and long sofa draped with a small rug

in a patchwork design of different motifs and colours.”19 Maĥfūz had, in fact moved on, still to follow Amīna’s

perceptions as she gazes at herself in the mirror. Significantly, the mirror was excluded from the previous list of room

furniture – a device that has the potential to expose something about configuration or phenomenal properties. It is

described only in relation to Amīna’s body, when she confronts it. Some sense of phenomenal quality returns. We

glimpse colour: her chestnut hair is banded by a brown head-kerchief. We note shape and proportion: the kerchief

appears crumbled and pushed back; Amīna’s medium height body, slim but full “within its limits” (whatever that

means), well proportioned. Still on proportion: her face tends towards being “oblong”, a high forehead, fine features,

small eyes, a small fine nose that widens ever so slightly at the nostrils, a pointed chin and a clear wheat-coloured

complexion adorned by a birthmark on the cheek. 20

Thus, the opening scene already reveals some important spatial strategies. While phenomenal properties occasionally

acquire special vividness, configuration of objects and spatial elements remains subdued at best. It is difficult to map

14

Amīna’s room from the available description. At the same time, Maĥfūz makes available to his readers phenomenally-

vivid descriptions only as Amīna engages objects in her spaces. Such phenomenal attention dissipates as the

character engages other spatial elements or her own memories. Noteworthy is how such vividness primarily issues forth

from characters’ bodies.

Physical Bodies: Sites of Inscription and Tools of Negotiation

Considering the general dearth of physical description, it is particularly surprising how frequently and repeatedly

Maĥfūz returns to descriptions of bodies. It is less unexpected, though, if we consider how fundamentally characters’

perceptions partake in the construction of meaning in this work. Characters’ bodies are implicated in this process in

two distinct, but closely related ways: a) as sites for inscribing social and aesthetic values; and b) as fleeting

communicators of intents and desires (through gestures, expressions, moods, …etc) against social inhibitions to overt

expression and in the absence of potential for direct inscription onto physical space. In other words, bodies replace

physical space as the immediate (read also intermediate) repositories of societal values and negotiations of

transformations. It is in bodily form and mass, gestures and postures, carriage and gait, as well as locations and

juxtapositions that we should seek spatial expressions of identity.21

In this respect, Surūr observes that the social transition which a’bd al-Jawwād’s family undergoes (from agrarian,

feudal to bourgeois, middle class) is registered on the bodies and physical features of the two sisters: Khadīja and

Ā’isha.22 The elder sister’s (Khadīja) body is plump, round and full; incessantly fed from her childhood by umm-Hanafi

(the resident housemaid) - and with obvious consent of her mother as well as a larger social milieu of women - on

hearty foods and delicacies. Behind this deliberate nutritional regimen is a belief that the aesthetic of a woman’s body

resides in its opulence; the female body’s appeal to men lies in the bounty it suggests as an object or a ‘thing’. Just like

a fruit or land’s produce, a woman’s value in the barter of marriage issues from her roundness; the more physical

‘matter’ there is, the more there is for the male to dig his teeth into, and the more there is to indicate a rich social

background and a comfortable upbringing. Ā’isha, on the contrary, comes with a slim body that did not respond well

to the same nutritional discipline her elder sister went through. In fact, Maĥfūz indicates that Ā’isha tended to evade

that discipline. At the same time, Maĥfūz assigns to Ā’isha’s eyes a dreamy look that seems absent in Khadīja’s – a

romanticism strongly allied to Fahmy’s idealist mindset, and even his affection. Moreover, while Khadīja had dark hair,

dark eyes and her father’s big nose on a disproportionately smaller face, Ā’isha’s genetics endowed her with a fairer

mix of the father’s blue eyes, the mother’s fine nose together with blonde hair. To the youngest brother, Kamāl, the

15

European woman staring back at him from the cigarettes advertisement (which he contemplates in a shop-window on

his daily walk back from school), with lush lips, blonde hair and a fair complexion is closely related to Ā’isha’s image.23

Indeed, each of the two sisters belongs to a different world; the family has one foot in each. Khadīja’s plumpness and

darker features remain the offspring of agrarian feudalism, while Ā’isha symbolizes the new society in her slim figure

and blondeness (a European association), and heralds its ideas in her romantic eyes and individualistic behaviours.

The sites of construction and resistance were – primarily - those two bodies, with the mother, Amīna, set up as a source

for both. Khadījah draws on Amīna’s slight plumpness; Ā’isha takes her fine nose and features. Other female bodies

suggest similar sites of negotiation. Umm-Hanafi is described as masses of flesh morphing in piled formulas of roundness.

Zubayda follows the same aesthetic: her carriage creaks and moans under her weight as she disembarks on her first

visit to Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād’s shop. Similarly, the neighbour umm-Maryam (Bahīja) displays her roundness and

fullness in front of the virile Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād. The majority of women – especially the older ones – conform to

the ‘old’ aesthetic; the younger ones, the emerging minority, to the newer slimmer proportions: Ā’isha, Zaynab (Yasīn’s

wife in Palace Walk) and Ā’yda (Kamāl’s beloved in the sequel).24 Some women seem stranded in-between, as if their

bodies are still in the process of contention; Maryam, the next door neighbour and the romantic idealist Fahmy’s love

interest, is one such body.

Hence, bodies - especially women’s bodies - are sites of inscription of social values and negotiation of social

transformations. The agency – or rather coercion - of inscription and negotiation here is ultimately traceable to the

social collective at large, with its patriarchal control, but - in a sense - women themselves partake in the processes of

bodily inscriptions, as long as the agency of inscribing onto space is withdrawn from them. Note how Maĥfūz’

description of Amīna’s body in the opening scene is immediately followed by her stepping into her mashrabiyya to

gaze at the city: a space wherein she is deprived of all agency -where her feeling of powerlessness is maximized.

Actually Maĥfūz imparts to us her feelings of helplessness as inspired by the city panorama, when she gazes onto it from

the house roof.25 It is interesting to note here that Khadīja’s (whose body was transformed for over twenty years to fit

the dominant aesthetic of supple roundness) ultimate goal in her husband’s family house became to take over a

whole floor for her nuclear family; a space where she alone may have ultimate control.26

Besides being sites of inscription and negotiation, women’s bodies are also gauges of values. Men’s reactions to such

bodies locate men in the hierarchy of social ethics. If one carefully compares male reactions to such assortments of

flesh as women’s bodies have come to represent, one finds an array of positions that Maĥfūz personifies in the different

16

male characters.27 At one end is Fahmy, the romantic idealist who seems utterly oblivious to the physical language of

bodies ongoing all around him. In general, Fahmy as a character seems to receive his ideas, sensibilities and values

from a source unarticulated by Maĥfūz; or articulated in negative contrast to what the other characters go through.

His love for the next-door girl, Maryam – this love that he could never relinquish, even to the final moments of his short

life – is given as almost some form of spiritual belief.

Next to Fahmy stands Kamāl. While too young in Palace Walk to formulate a position on women’s bodies, he goes on

in Palace of Desire to pick up where Fahmy left. The idealist love-as-belief develops into explicit worship; Kamāl

addresses Ā’yda (his love-interest) in his thoughts and in his diary in terms of adoration. Throughout this prolonged

veneration, Kamāl does not even notice other women’s bodies, features or even characters – they simply escape his

attention. And what he sees in Ā’yda is an idealized version of her, partially instigated by his shyness to examine her

physique more closely. Moreover, his adoration springs from a yearning for a Westernized aesthetics (Ā’yda grew up in

Paris) – the yearning of a middle class in the process of social mobility. In a telling soliloquy near the end, and after his

beloved Ā’yda is wed off to someone else, Kamāl resolves to blame his father for this state of blind worship he had

relapsed into with his beloved. Growing up in a state of almost total adoration of the father, Kamāl had been deeply

trained in such uncritical love. Significantly, this moment when Kamāl’s moral consciousness makes this leap also sees a

rare revelation of spatial configuration; Maĥfūz discloses to us – through Kamāl – that his room overlooks the house

courtyard. In other words, deep awareness of the nuance of social relations is associated with knowledge of spatial

connectivity.

At the other extreme to Fahmy and Kamāl is their half-brother, Yasīn, for whom a woman’s body has gone beyond

objectification and ‘thingness’ to become a set of fragmented, exchangeable and dispensable parts. Yasīn does not

see the female body as a whole anymore: merely a thigh there, a breast here, and an eye in the distance. Constantly

on the lookout, he seems to be using a small cropped viewing frame – and an insatiable appetite. The father, Ahmed

a’bd al-Jawwād, is located somewhere in between all this; no less licentious than Yasīn, but by no means an idealist.

Bodies in Palace Walk are not only physical entities when involved in inscriptions and transformations – with all its

associated properties of shape, mass and proportion. In fact, social negotiations are more pronounced by Maĥfūz

when going beyond the physical qualities of bodies, to their attendant gestures, gaits, pantomimes and gesticulations.

It is as if the longer-term inscription onto bodies (their shape, proportion, aesthetics …..etc) is echoed in the more

fleeting negotiations through bodily inflections. What connects both modes of expanded inscription and ephemeral

17

exchange is that they seem equally instigated by a general incapacity to inscribe social transformations onto physical

space. The kinaesthetic discourse seems to constitute the exceptional moments when the main characters – otherwise

stifled by patriarchal repressions (the father’s overwhelming influence) or political oppression by the British occupation -

indulge in exchange and self-expression. That expression and negotiation are entrapped onto the body surface may

also help understand where Maĥfūz’ narrative space, as ephemeral traces and recollections of characters, comes

from.28

More commonly, such instances of fleeting uninscribed kinaesthetic negotiation occurs in episodes of erotic exchange

and, occasionally, in episodes of contesting (patriarchal) authority. Incidents relating the Father’s courtship of his

several mistresses were exceptionally vivid; they involved a stronger sense of metric distance, of frontal facing positions

versus sideways observation, of detailed reading of bodily signs (signs of acceptance, hesitations or sarcastic scowls).

In one incident, when Zubayda visits al-Sayyid Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād’s shop, Maĥfūz recounts the dialogue of

manoeuvres the two characters exchange, supplemented by a meticulous account of facial expressions and bodily

gestures, as well as a carefully constructed network of angles of vision relative to each other and to others in the store.

Al-Sayyid Ahmed’s cone of vision revolves around Zubayda, from a seated position across the desk, to a standing

position in-front of her to get a fuller vista of her body, and again to another stand-up blocking views of her from other

parts of the store. Such manoeuvring is met with countermoves by other shop clients and the shop assistant,

deliberately placing the merchandise between themselves and Zubayda’s massive physique in order to sneak glances

at her. 29 When al-Sayyid Ahmed visits her house that night, the two characters (and readers as a consequence) are,

again, acutely aware of relative positions: on facing seats, adjacent on a sofa …etc.30 Maĥfūz develops this

ephemeral inscription – an oxymoron by definition – further in the sequel: Palace of Desire. In the rather long episode in

Kamāl’s rich friend’s garden kiosk, there is a clearer sense of arrangement within the space only as a result of Kamāl’s

acutely heightened awareness of where his beloved Ā’yda comes from (behind him), as well as a sense of centrality

(as she would move next to her brother when she makes an appearance).31 Maĥfūz perhaps takes such kinesthetic

negotiation to an extreme in the erotic but utterly silent exchange between Yasīn and Bahīja, Maryam’s mother, when

he visits to ask for her daughter’s hand in marriage. The scene is utterly dependent on visibility and configuration; the

choreography of facing each other for eye contact, versus him facing her buttocks for seduction, or she seeing him

sideways to expose his looks, gets across a stronger sense of spatial arrangement than most episodes in Palace Walk.32

Furthermore, characters employ such kinaesthetic in constructing and confirming identity; they take their cues from

them more than from physical surroundings. More explicitly than other characters, Maĥfūz declares that the way the

18

father Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād perceives his own self-image is through looking for it in reflections in other people’s

behaviours, gestures and expressions. When challenged by the old shaykh abdul-Sammad on the issue of his nocturnal

life of secret pleasures, Maĥfūz launches the father into one of many recurrent modes of long internal dialogues.33 In

this particular soliloquy, the capacity for introspective self-searching is declared as not one of the Father’s strong suits;

he admits to himself that he relies more pragmatically on deciphering his own authority in the signs of others’ reactions

to him. The surfaces of bodies around him act as mirrors where he reads his own social standing, his power and even

virility. That is why he polices every gesture and word in his house where he wants to maintain complete unquestioned

authority. It is remarkable how all body descriptions of family members in his presence betray not the slightest sign of

contest – as covert as it may be. Even Zaynab, Yasīn’s wife, brought up in a different house devoid of al-Sayyid’s

severe restrictions, is soon infected with such withdrawal of agency. Internally raging with objection at her father-in-

law’s scolding when one night she and Yasīn went to the theatre, she externalizes nothing but utter submission. “After

living for [only} a month in his home, her character had been infected with the virus of submission to his will, which

terrified everyone in the house”, Maĥfūz comments.34

In fact, it feels that the Father Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād has successfully created a reality of control and submission

within the confines of his house.35 So much so, that the faint sign of contesting such authority leaves him perturbed,

such as the young Kamāl singing aloud. The father’s ire is heightened when the idealist patriot Fahmy faces him with

what seems as outright disobedience; torn between his unfaltering commitment to resume the struggle against British

occupation and his loyalty to his father, Fahmy refuses to submit, in words and gestures, an unambiguous promise to

terminate his political activism.36

Yet it is poor Amīna whose body, gestures, expressions, and even moods have been completely deprived of agency –

or almost. It is well-neigh heartbreaking to read Maĥfūz’ description of her ‘active’ suppression of her own indignation,

when in Ā’isha’s wedding, she is confronted with the looks and whispers of surrounding women gossiping away on the

relationship between her husband and Jalila, the performing singer. Maĥfūz describes how a fleeting wave of deep

anger almost overwhelmed her (with only the faintest reflections on her facial expression – but nothing else, not even

hand-wringing) before she restores her self-calm. Maĥfūz relates to us the long process of how Amīna has come to

accept, unquestioningly, her husband’s nocturnal escapades and the sharp differences between his behaviours in

and out of the house, as integral ingredients of manhood itself.37

19

Unlike any other character, Amīna seldom displays discontent (and when she does she gets upset with herself); she

never negotiates in an encounter – not only with her husband, but even with her own children. It is only gradually in the

trilogy sequels, after Fahmy’s tragic death, that Amīna’s expression starts to deposit signs and wrinkles of discontent on

her face. Within Palace Walk, Amīna’s body, which Maĥfūz so lovingly describes in the opening scene, is reduced to

an expressionless ‘object’ – a thing, or a listless undulating surface.

Frames, Thresholds / Itineraries And Identity

This brings us back once more to Amīna’s opening scene. After Maĥfūz’ pen moves over her body, Amīna steps into

the mashrabiyya, into her habitual elevated threshold from which she takes her customary nightly look at the city. A

mashrabiyya, an interface between inside and outside, is a densely and minutely perforated wooden screen that

allows one-way visibility, and only from close proximity to the screen surface. During the day, an insider pressing her/his

face close to the mashrabiyya would be able to see the outside clearly without being seen –using one or two

mashrabiyya perforations as keyholes. Interior dimness plays against outside glare to prevent the insider from being

exposed. Nighttime reverses the effect; but only to the extent where distant visibility of the inside from outside is

confined to recognizing silhouettes, much harder to make out during the day. The daytime effect of a mashrabiyya

threshold is panoptical in nature; yet - paradoxically, as all Maĥfūz’ spatial descriptions seem to work in paradox – it is

characters of extreme helplessness that find their habitual loci of identity construction in such spaces.

As established above, Maĥfūz’ characters negotiate social values and transformations in a manner disjoint from

physical space - especially as spatial configuration. Bodies and bodily gestures, memories and perceptions play more

active roles. Yet such roles are still tied to certain loci or situations; they happen more directly, more emphatically, and

more fluently from within such loci or situations. It is from such places, or through them as frames, that characters

contemplate the larger questions of social order, and in the process construct their identities. Women’s loci are

thresholds - especially elevated thresholds, like the one Amīna walked into, with consequent reflective memories and

fragmented patterns of thought. Men, on the other hand, contemplate similar orders in the course of movement

itineraries and attendant linear accounts.

As she steps into the mashrabiyya, Amīna enters her main habitual space of contemplation of larger orders and of

identity construction. Inside, and triggered by familiar sights and sounds, her memories and superstitions come forth.

Although Maĥfūz mentions the street below, the minarets in the distance, the light and dark, he is describing less what

she sees and more her familiarity with it - a familiarity constructed over twenty-five years of assuming that same position

20

in that elevated threshold almost every night. Although Maĥfūz tells us that Amīna actually peers “right and left …

through the tiny, round openings of the latticework panels … ”,38 what he really emphasizes in his account is her

memories and familiarity with what she confronts. What she ‘saw’ was what she has been seeing for twenty-five years;

more accurately, what she has been constructing for twenty-five years. She sees the minarets of Qalawoun and

Barqūq, but not their shapes and proportions; she projects onto them the analogies of awesome giants with mythical

powers (Arabic maradah)- connotations triggered by reminiscences of how she used to perceive her house – the very

soul and envelope of her identity – being haunted by jinnies and demons as a young newly-wed. As the very frontiers

of her existence, she projects onto the city view and the house her memories, her emotions and her superstitions. She

only ‘sees’ what she projects.

Amīna gives us a repeat performance from the roof of the house. Like all characters, Amīna projects from specific

spatial settings, and when dislocated she loses the capacity to project. When she shifts point-of-view to a moving

itinerary in the streets during her forbidden adventure outside home, she is disoriented; her sense of scale is challenged,

and minarets she used to revere feel quotidian and small.39 As a result of this ‘unauthorized’ and unforgiven escapade

into the city, her husband orders her out of ‘his’ home. At her mother’s house, and in a state of abject disorientation,

she sits dislocated from a threshold yet listening as if at one in anticipation of leaving.

Another woman’s life-defining moment is also a function of an elevated threshold. Ā’isha, the youngest daughter, falls

in love with a police officer she sees walking to work every morning by her living-room mashrabiyya. In order to

communicate to the officer her interest, Ā’isha opens the mashrabiyya’s side panel40 to allow their eyes to meet – the

only way for him to confirm her presence and interest.

Repeatedly, women are located in elevated thresholds, which they utilize as frames for viewing an exterior world in

which they cannot actively partake. But if women are attached to enclosures and thresholds, men, on the other

hand, are related to itineraries. Aside from generic gender-based identities, some individual personal identities are also

constructed this way. Most forcefully between Maĥfūz’ array of male personae in Palace Walk, the father Ahmed a’bd

al-Jawwād performs this identity projection almost ritualistically. His everyday morning walk to his shop along the Old

City’s main spine, flanked by his three sons like a tribal head, and respectfully saluted by local shop-owners, constructs

his social standing, as well as his own self-awareness. In the sequel Palace of Desire, when the young oud-player,

Zannouba,

21

seriously challenges his virility, Maĥfūz interestingly chooses the ritual of this morning walk to discuss the man’s painful

tumults. Severe tensions pulled between the venerable greetings he received and his own inner diminishing self-

respect. Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwād resolves his inner struggle regarding Zannouba’s demands on him in yet another

itinerary. During his homebound nightly walk from her boathouse to the tram stop, a journey executed in a darkness

and solitude that afford unchallenged introspection, he determines to refuse her pressures and disassociate himself

from her.

Other male characters partake of different forms of itineraries. Yasīn’s life-defining pursuit of women’s bodies is

described in the course of urban itineraries akin to hunts in a jungle. When his manhood is rudely challenged by the

sudden appearance of his mother’s ex-lover, he interrupts the itinerary, and ducks into a bar. Even the young Kamāl’s

walk home from school evokes the flow of memories and associations. Additionally, the journey’s ‘landmarks’ - candy

shops, the blonde smoker’s image outside the cigarette shop and the fearful stretch where his father’s shop lies -

define a young lad on the verge of becoming a man, with all the anxieties and fears that presents. Their identities

constructed around and through movement itineraries, men face similar disorientations when their itineraries are

constricted or reversed. As British soldiers set up checkpoints and enforce curfews in the Old City some time into the

revolt, men are forced to stay home. Father and three sons relocate to the elevated threshold of the house roof,

resulting in severe boredom and inactivity.

Conclusion: Space of the Oppressed

Significantly, all above-mentioned itineraries –typical to each character – are conducted in solitude. Not unlike women

in their respective elevated thresholds, each male character constructs his identity (reminiscing past events,

contemplating challenges, receiving - or giving -acknowledgements of social standing to others along an itinerary) in

solitary moments, thinking through a clear distinction between self and others, inside and outside. Even the morning

walk of father and sons to the shop is not a group walk. The sons do not utter a word out of fear and respect for him –

they are really several solitary individuals walking alongside each other. That most characters (male and female) find

their habitual moments of identity construction in loci of solitude is very telling. It emphasizes how this space of internal-

external projection is primarily not about negotiation. Rather, the characters switch to another mode when negotiating

with bodies and gestures.

22

It is only Fahmy, the second son, who goes through an itinerary of exchange. On the revolt’s first morning, he joins a

conversation in the public streetcar, which gradually escalates into a rally and into a street protest. This social

negotiation is a moment of revelation to him, where he feels that his existence acquires meaning – when he feels

fulfilled. True enough, he recounts all this from the solitude of his bed upon waking up the next day, but this points out

Fahmy’s dilemma. In the house – with his family, he succumbs into modalities similar to theirs. Beyond the confines of

the family house, he shifts into another ‘space’.

I would like to close by comparing two moments of ‘awakening’ in Palace Walk that Maĥfūz dwells on quite

extensively: Amīna’s awakening in the very first scene of the book, and Fahmy’s awakening the morning after the first

day of the 1919 revolt. This is, in fact, where their similarities end. Amīna’s consciousness is detached from external

realities as I have argued above; on the contrary, Fahmy is woken up by the clamour in the courtyard. Fear is etched

on her consciousness; his ‘new’ identity comes with daring and challenge. While Amīna seeks the elevated threshold of

her mashrabiyya – her habitual space of identity-construction, Fahmy yearns to get over the family’s morning rituals to

arrive at his space of negotiation: the streetcar, the Law-school courtyard and the street.

Main References

1. Al-Qudah, Muhammad A. (2000). Al-Tashkīl al-riwa’i ‘inda Najib Maĥfūz (Narrative Formulation in Najīb Maĥfūz’

Work) (Bayrut, Lebanon: al-Mu’assasah al-A’rabīyah lil-Dirāsāt wa-al-Nashr).

2. Maĥfūz, Najīb (1983[1956]) Palace Walk (Cairo, Maktabat Misr).

3. Maĥfūz, Najīb (1987[1957]) Palace of Desire, (Cairo, Maktabat Misr).

4. Maĥfūz, Najīb (2001[1956]) Palace Walk, English translation by William Maynard Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny,

(The American University in Cairo Press).

5. Milson, Menahem (1998). Najīb Maĥfūz: The Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo, (New York: St. Martin's Press).

6. Rāghib, Nabīl (1975). Qadiyat al-shakl al-fannī ‘inda Najīb Maĥfūz (The Problem of Artistic Form in Najīb Maĥfūz’

Work), (Cairo, al-Hay’ah al-Misriyah al-Ā’mmah lil-Kitāb)

7. Surūr, Najīb (1989 [1958]) Journey into Najīb Maĥfūz’ Trilogy (Bayrut, Lebanon; Dār al-Fikr al-Jadīd).

23

Endnotes

1 The notion of place comes from an act of anchoring; space from extension and connection to other extensions.

2 Surūr (1989) Journey; p.27.

3 That this method is one that Maĥfūz employed extensively and consistently throughout his literary career is to be explored in existing

critical literature or further research. However, he did use the method in the Cairo Trilogy (written 1956-57); earlier in New Cairo (written

1946) and in Midaq Alley (written 1947); even in stories where new main characters are created from one chapter to another such as

in Children of the Alley (1959), and al-Harafeesh (written 1977). A later off-shoot of this method is perhaps Maĥfūz’ near-obsession with

names, which Milson attempts to document in The Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo (1998). Although some particulars of Milson’s account

of Maĥfūz’ “enigma of names” seem contrived, he rightly detects an allegorical pattern in Maĥfūz’ employment of names to

describe essential qualities of characters. What this discloses is a tendency (perhaps only occasionally extreme) in Maĥfūz to spatially

decontextualize characters completely.

4 For interesting reflections on the relations between the author’s ‘space’ and that of his character creations, see for example, the

debate between Mark Seltzer and Dorrit Cohn on the pages of New Literary History, 26, (1995).

5 Being the outcrop of a pastoral desert culture, Arabic syntax developed to allow condensing meaning in short, sharp formulations.

This allowed the retention and dissemination of ideas and meaning across the desert landscape where human memory was the

principal vehicle of information exchange. Classical Arabic poetry as well as the Quran are replete with instances where a whole

phrase (or sentence) may be collapsed into one word with multiple prefixes and suffixes denoting subjects and/or objects. Poets,

especially those interested in capturing battle action, competed in producing formulations that evoke rhythm as they compress

duration. One such instance is Imru’ al-Qays’ famous description, where in the short span of one-half of a verse (in five vowel-less

words, three to four letters each, to be exact) he fully enunciated his horse’s different rapid movements in battle. Maĥfūz, I posit, is not

playing this game at all.

6 This immediately raises the question of the author’s awareness and intentionality. Above-stated arguments on technique –as well as

later elaborations – evoke a very deliberate Maĥfūz, in complete mastery of narrative skills. To some extent, this masterful

deliberateness contrasts with the general sense a reader gets throughout Palace Walk: its tone, its transitions, the sudden judgmental

interceptions that Maĥfūz occasionally drops into the narrative, as well as some inconsistency in character treatment. (One example is

when describing Ā’isha’s suitor, the police officer, walking underneath her window, Maĥfūz suddenly leaves the narrative of 1917 to

volunteer a note from the 1950s saying that “…and nobody back then would look up [onto windows]” [my translation]. The note

surprised many critics less by its content than by how it is made in such a historicist mode. Another type of interjection is Maĥfūz’

occasional intolerance of Yasīn. Although to a large extent Maĥfūz portrayed Yasīn’s rather extreme (almost animal) promiscuity in an

objective light, explaining its roots and influences – despite that Maĥfūz sometimes seems to exhaust patience and break into more

judgmental, incriminating commentary.)

Maĥfūz’ narrative feels loosely controlled. While this may result from a very refined subtlety – a case of extreme covertness –another

explanation, suggested by Najīb Surūr’s analysis, is possible. Besides an alertness to literary techniques, intentionality and

deliberateness derive from a deep awareness of issues of content. Maĥfūz’ main problem lies less in his skill and more in his own

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personal ideological position towards the complex social problems he raises. According to Surūr – who interviewed Maĥfūz in the

1950s in the wake of finishing the trilogy - Maĥfūz , while deeply sensitive to the sufferings and problems of his people, is not fully

cognizant of the social mechanisms that bring them about. Hence the vacillations that Maĥfūz’ narrative sometimes reeks of, the

uncertainties that occasionally surface, are prompted - above all - by hesitations in his own socio-political outlook. Inevitably, content

reflects on technique; especially Maĥfūz’ techniques which depend heavily on ‘seeing through’ characters’ eyes and perceptions, as

well as on involving – even implicating - the reader in the narrative space. Yet at the same time, the rich lucidity of his techniques and

their open-endedness allow ample room for manoeuvring flexibility. It is as if Maĥfūz’ flexible techniques allow him to conceal and

diffuse his uncertainties, but only to render the narrative somewhat less controlled and more open to conflicting, diluting

interpretations.

7 Maĥfūz (2001), Palace Walk (Eng. transl.); pp.37-44. 8 One significant exception to this scarcity of phenomenal qualities occurs in the opening scene, describing what, after the critic Najīb

Surūr, I will consider the main ‘character’ in this drama: the couplet of Amīna / the House. Here, Maĥfūz takes unusual pains to

describe the faint quality of light; the circular projection from the misbah (gas light) on the ceiling, which “quivered” as she carried

the misbah (lantern) along, surrounded by a host of shadows. But as I will argue later, this elaboration comes in a very exceptional

scene; which also proves the point that rather than being unable or disinterested in articulating phenomenal and spatial qualities,

Maĥfūz’ narrative space in this novel actually deliberately edits them out.

9 Interestingly, al-Qudah (2000, Al-Tashkīl al-riwa’i) makes a similar observation about Mahfuz’ descriptions of ‘place’ in Children of the

Alley (1959). ‘Places’ are mentioned with little or no elaboration on physical and phenomenal properties. Although al-Qudah notes

this only fleetingly, one may relate this technique to that novel’s tendency to evoke a mythical atmosphere from within realistic

settings. Maĥfūz’ references to familiar places and objects: the alley, al-Jabalawy’s house, Jalal’s minaret – as well as many others,

are continuously wrapped in Quranic allusions. As yet another deployment of the technique, it enforces the argument in this paper

that Maĥfūz’ intentionally withholds certain spatial descriptions in Palace Walk – albeit somewhat differently, since unlike Children of

the Alley, Palace Walk also comes with fragmented configurations, as discussed further below.

10 Maĥfūz (2001), Palace Walk; p.51. See also (1987) Palace of Desire; p.30.

11 Maĥfūz (2001), Palace Walk (Eng. transl.); p.1

12 Maĥfūz (2001), Palace Walk (Eng. transl.); pp.366-8.

13 Maĥfūz (2001), Palace Walk (Eng. transl.); pp.490-2.

14 Maĥfūz (2001), Palace Walk; p.346.

15 Surūr (1989) Journey, pp.27-9. Surūr discusses in some detail Balzac’s influence on Maĥfūz in a comparison of the former’s narrative

method in Le Pere Goriot. The connection to Dostoevsky and Kafka is established in an interview That Surūr conducts with Maĥfūz in

the 1950s, where Maĥfūz makes his own statement on influences.

16 See Maĥfūz, N. Mockery of The Fates (written 1939), Rhadopis of Nubia (written 1943) and Thebes At War (written 1944); all are

translated and published by American University in Cairo Press (c.2003).

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17 A close analogy in film is Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. With the camera attached to his hero’s seated position for most of the

cinematic duration (Hitchcock actually films from the height of a seated person), we share his suspicions about what may be

happening across the courtyard, as well as his insecurities regarding his love interest within his immediate room space.

18 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; p.5 [My translation: rather than rely completely on Hutchins & Kenny’s 2001translation in this important

section, I have elected to amend it with some of my own observations, because theirs does not fully account for the subtle play in

Maĥfūz’ original Arabic].

19 Maĥfūz (2001), Palace Walk (Eng. transl.); p.1

20 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; p.6 [My translation].

21 Al-Qudah (2001) notes a similar plight for Maĥfūz’ characters in al-Harafīsh (1977). Those associated with fixed spaces and places

display unchanging character qualities; those active across multiple spaces, or engaging what he calls “transient place”, escape

stagnation towards dramatic changes in character qualities. (Al-Tashkīl al-riwa’I, 183-4).

22 Raghib (1975) also underscores historic transitions, with their attendant tensions between the old and the new, as an important

current in the trilogy, as well as a core thematic of Maĥfūz’ work until the early 1970s (Qadiyat al-shakl al-fannī, p.137-9). Interestingly,

Raghib documents such frictions as registered on the different characters’ bodies; only Raghib assertively accounts for such bodily

expressions of historical transformations through genetic transmission rather than as socially constructed negotiations.

23 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; p.48.

24 It is not clear where Haniyya, Yasīn’s mother and al-Sayyid Ahmed a’bd al-Jawwad’s first wife falls in this classification of flesh.

Although Maĥfūz assigns her immense beauty, we ‘see’ her in a state of sickness and withering after long years of dejection and

consumption; besides, her body is inadequately described. One would expect her to belong to Ā’isha’s category; being the

rebellious woman she was and the antithesis of Amīna – refusing to ‘submit’ and conform.

25 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; p.36.

26 Maĥfūz (1987) Palace of Desire.

27 Nothing in Palace Walk betrays women’s reactions to male bodies with as much detail. True, Maĥfūz reports how Ahmed a’bd al-

Jawwad and Yasīn possess big virile bodies and handsome manly faces, therefore appealing to women; while – in Palace of Desire –

Kamāl is ridiculed for his big nose and forehead by his beloved Ā’yda. Yet all such descriptions are of natural – or rather purely

genetic – bodies; unlike women’s bodies, male physique is not seen as constructed or negotiated. Significantly, Fahmy’s body almost

escapes description at all; the only impression we get of him - as he and his brothers follow their father in their daily itinerary to work

and school - is a thin, rather stooping figure with short quick steps for a gait.

28 It is not uncommon for bodies to become the sites of self-expression and negotiation, especially for the oppressed or – more

generally – those deprived of full agency over their environment. Many present-day activists consider their bodies the first test of

proclaiming their stance of resistance. Opposition to corporate aesthetics (the ‘proper’ haircut, signee clothing, …etc) arrays itself

along a wide range of varieties from simply wearing T-shirts with political proclamations and baggy pants with the belt-line way down

– all the way to tattoos, long hair and unshaven armpits flagrantly displayed. Maĥfūz’ characters seem even more incapacitated:

alternative dress codes and tangible body changes are socially unacceptable; it is in gestures and expressions that one finds their

defiant proclamations and transgressive exchanges.

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29 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; pp.81-4.

30 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; pp.86-91.

31 Maĥfūz (1987) Palace of Desire; pp.155-61.

32 Maĥfūz (1987) Palace of Desire; pp. 124-33.

33 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; pp.43-4.

34 Maĥfūz (2001), Palace Walk (Eng. transl.); p.313.

35 It would be interesting to examine the house, as well as the father’s and mother’s characters as instances of creating the reality of

control that Gilles Deleuze discusses in the course of his elaboration on Foucault’s disciplinary techniques. (See Deleuze, G. (1988)

Foucault, translated by Sean Hand; University of Minnesota Press.)

36 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; pp.400-2.

37 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; p.260.

38 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; p.2.

39 Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; p.161.

40 Maĥfūz details how Ā’isha peeks through the mashrabiyya openings to see her policeman, and opens side panels to reveal her

face and eyes to him, moving from one end to the other. The mashrabiyya becomes a manipulable contraption. A small act of

agency – but still. Maĥfūz (1983), Palace Walk; pp.26-7.

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