Palace Walk

“She was thoroughly amazed that this sin made him more amiable.”

Amina comes to tolerate her husband’s drunken escapades because she is afraid of him. When he goes out with his friends to drink alcohol and pursue affairs, he returns in an intoxicated state that makes him “more amiable.” The shreds of happiness that exist in their marriage are therefore predicated on the fact that al-Sayyid Ahmad is allowed to do whatever he wants. Accustomed to his many injustices, Amina has come to accept this arrangement as a means of making her life as simple as possible, and she even finds herself enjoying the gentler person he allows himself to be when he returns from his nights of debauchery.

“She wanted to disguise her embarrassment with irony as usual, even if it was at her own expense.”

Amina’s reassurance about marriage cuts through the stern, sarcastic demeanor that Khadija presents to the world. As much as she insists that she does not care about marriage, the suggestion that the dream could be a foreshadowing of an actual proposal is a comfort to the girl, whose restrictive life has given her very low self-esteem. Amina is soon proven wrong, however, as Khadija must wait longer to be married, but Amina is willing to share white lies with her daughter to make her feel better.