[LMB] "Palace Walk" (not entirely OT)

[Jim Parish]

The Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz died a few days back. This has 
prompted me to (finally) begin reading his Cairo Trilogy, beginning with 
_Palace Walk_. I haven't gotten very far yet, but I've noticed something 
interesting.

The beginning of the story is seen through the eyes of an Arab woman. 
It is just after midnight; her husband will be home soon from a night out 
with his friends, and she has gotten up to prepare for his return. Her 
thoughts drift through the years of her marriage, and we see how 
thoroughly subservient she is to her husband. We also see that she is 
happy in that subservience, and if that happiness is to some extent 
willed, well, it is not less real for all that.

Her husband returns, and she tends to him, providing a cup of tea, a 
change of clothes, and a washbasin. She sits near him as he relaxes 
and, slightly inebriated, tells her of his day; she revels in this rare time 
of communion. Finally - and we're a chapter and a half into the novel - 
he addresses her by name.

This is the interesting thing: up to this point, the reader has not seen 
her name. She has been only "the woman". Her husband's name we 
have already seen, passing through her thoughts, but not her own - that 
we do not learn until her husband speaks it aloud.

It may be that this is an artifact of translation (but I doubt it); it may be 
conformity to Middle Eastern, or Arabic, or Egyptian novelistic 
convention; or it may be something Mahfouz has done deliberately. If 
it's the last of these (and I'm inclined to think it is), it strikes me as an 
interesting way of emphasizing Amina's subordination. I'll have to keep 
an eye out for other, similar effects.

So, why am I bringing it up on the Bujold list? Because I doubt that I 
would have noticed it if not for a discussion here, quite a while ago, of 
LMB's use of a similar maneuver in _Mirror Dance_ - the fact that Miles' 
twin does not acquire a name, in his own mind, until the moment Miles 
is cut down by that needle grenade.

Thanks, folks.

Jim Parish