Aun Safiyya and the Monastery : An in Depth look

For this post, I would like to explore the presence of the coptic monastery. Though the story is predominantly about the need for Safiyya to get her revenge for the death of the bey, it is also about the monastery that keeps Harbi safe from her intentions. The monastery is from the start an important character in the book. It houses the christian monks including the Miqaddis Bishai who keeps close company with Harbi once he is released from prison. The narrator, his father and a band of outlaws also congregate there for a time to visit Harbi from inside the monastery walls. The outlaws whose leader Faris, befriended Harbi in prison and won his devotion. He protects Harbi during trips outside the monastery which become frequent once it is determined that the outlaws should not be allowed inside the sanctuary. Harbi is very ill once freed from prison and as his condition continues to worsten, Safiyya becomes afraid that her son will never get vengence. Once Harbi dies, Safiyya soon follows slipping into coma after coma, weak from malnutrition. She neglects her child even throwing him in anger. Her final words to her father were about Harbi who in a daze recalls the moment when the bey asks for her hand except for Harbi seems to be the one proposing. Likely, this is a sign that her anger was not necessarily about the beys demise but her anger that Harbi sacrificed her to his "father." She was to spend her life serving the bey as a wife and knew the importance of her marriage to him. She was devoted to her family to whome she reached as an orphan, and likely felt obligated to fufill her purpose and raise their honor. It was likely she that convinced the bey of Harbi's supposed intentions to harm their son, a son she very seldom seemed to care about. Safiyya's vendetta against Harbi is greater then her call to custom, or her devotion to God. She demands her guard to storm the monastery and kill Harbi and they refuse, as it is a sin.