violating the Qur’an
18
Hussainy’s advice, but Umm Hamida is out the door too quickly. Hamida resumes combing her hair as she gazes at the business premises across the street.
Hamida has not abandoned her fiancé as blithely as it seems. She had thought herself happily bound to Abbas for life. She has kept her promise to visit the mosque and pray for Abbas (although she normally goes there only to curse her enemies). Abbas has raised her status in the alley. She realizes, however, that she has been “napping in the mouth of a volcano”. Restlessness about the future has never left her, and Abbas has not firmed up her unformed ideas about what she wants in a husband. She fears she has been overly optimistic about how he will improve her life. She sees that her indifference will prevent them living together happily. She wishes she had learned a profession like her friends so she could marry when—and only if—she wants. Thus she can discard her fiancé for Alwan because she has banished him from her heart long before.
Umm Hamida returns shortly and announces Hussainy is opposed to changing the engagement. Abbas is young, of the same class, and eager for marriage, while Alwan is none of these things. Abbas will be the better husband, unless he comes home penniless, in which case Hamida may marry whomever she wants. Hamida cares nothing about what the old saint says about her marriage; if he were so good, God would not have taken all his sons. Umm Hamida is stunned and pained by such disrespect. The girl declares herself free until a marriage agreement is signed. She does not give a damn about violating the Qur’an. Hamida sees the hidden approval in her mother’s eyes and jokes about age. Umm Hamida muses about how when a man like Alwan marries a girl, her family is inundate as Egypt is when the Nile floods. She does not intend to be left behind. The next morning, Umm Hamida goes to Alwan’s office to read the Qur’an, but is told he is not in. He is hovering between life and death following a heart attack.
Chapters 15-18 Analysis This section centers on Umm Hamida. She has concluded a marriage agreement between Mrs. Afify and a younger civil servant. Afify’s concerns about her age and physical condition point subtly to a major plot twist that lies ahead. Umm Hamida next finds herself in Alwan’s office, hearing the astonishing news that he wants to marry her daughter. Hamida in an instant forgets her fiancé and sees herself getting everything she wants in life, but fate steps in. Coming chapters show Alwan surviving but being much changed mentally. Cut loose from an anticipated life with Abbas, Hamida is prone to change. She has shown contempt for traditional morality and the strictures of the Qur’an. She cares as little about a holy man’s advice as does lecherous Kirsha.
