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Besides the advantage of knowing settings and language, I felt a distinct advantage over many Westerners who do not live in the Middle East, in understanding the specific situations that occur in Mahfouz’s novels. For instance, a scene in Palace Walk illustrates a family at breakfast: Amina, the matriarch, serves breakfast to her husband and sons without joining them. She simply observes the men’s body movements and listens to their discussion without making any contribution. After the men leave for their daily jobs and school, Amina can finally relax and have her own breakfast. This scene may not occur commonly in modern Arabic society, and yet it highlights the fact that women were treated in a subservient manner in contrast to the modern Western world. Another instance occurs when Khadija gets pressured to marry. In Western culture, girls meet boys and eventually make decisions about love and marriage, whereas in an Islamic society, families introduce boys to their daughters. (The act of dating would only harm the girl’s reputation.) Although the couple may make the final decision about marriage, the parents strongly influence that decision. Westerners reading these scenes might frown on and criticize such behavior; the culture differs so much from those in other parts of the world. While reading Mahfouz’s novels, these scenes did not surprise me so much, and I don’t believe I felt critical when I ran across them. The patriarch, Ahmad Al-Jawad, drew my greatest anger because of his powerful, yet negative double life. However, we all know that double standards exist in all societies. Women and men have extramarital affairs or have secret lives: one as mother or father and the other as femme fatale or playboy. We simply feel greater surprise to learn of the double standard in a culture that promotes such high morals and a religion that does not tolerate extramarital affairs.