Summary
Chapter 11
Every day the graveyard welcomes more guests, but Said’s sympathy is with the mourners. He remembers his own father, Amm Mahran, who died in middle age after living a good life. He worked hard and his only leisure time was spent going to the Sheikh’s place. He loved taking his son there, and Said remembers how he admired the kindly Sheikh, who told Amm that Said was a good person and if he took account of himself would live a meaningful life.
When Amm died, Said could barely comprehend the loss. His mother was also flummoxed, but Rauf Ilwan, then a student at the law school, looked out for them and had Said attain his father’s job as custodian for the building. Not long after, Said’s mother died; she was hemorrhaging and the fancy hospital would not see her, so she suffered for a month and then died.
The first time Said stole was from a country boy resident in the hostel, who’d wrongly accused him and beat him. Rauf stopped the beating and told him he understood why he stole and considered the theft perfectly justified. Said wonders where Rauf’s principles are now.
Alone in the darkness of Nur’s place, Said says aloud that Rauf should have given him the newspaper job. He decides he must get out of the house so he goes for a walk in the dark. He is unnerved, though, and makes his way to Tarzan’s coffeehouse. Tarzan and a smuggler are the only ones there, and they try to tell Said to be careful and get out of town. The smuggler also tells him the people admire him, and though Said is proud, he wonders how good this is if the police loathe him.
Said leaves the coffeehouse after Tarzan becomes visibly nervous that they are being watched. He knows he must not underestimate his enemies. He comes back to Nur’s and once inside sees that she is not doing well. She says a few young men beat her when she asked them to pay the bill. Nothing Said says comforts her, and she moans that a fortune-teller told her she had a rosy future and would have security and peace of mind, but obviously that was not true.
Chapter 12
The uniform is finished, and Nur compliments Said on how splendid he looks. But the next day she hears about what he did, and becomes very upset. He tells her they will eventually run away together when the storm blows over. When she expresses skepticism, he grabs her and tells her is famous now, and she must listen to him that they will be together.
The next evening Said goes back to Tarzan’s but the proprietor sadly tells him the cafe is no longer safe for him. Said grudgingly returns to Nur’s, bitterly thinking about how while all the other papers have stopped talking about him, Rauf’s paper is still obsessed with him. He knows his own life will not have meaning if he cannot teach his enemies a lesson.
Said remembers that Rauf Ilwan used to be a revolutionary, with a strange power. He discussed everything with Said even though Said was not educated; he always treated Said as his equal. He spoke of truth and justice and was even the one who told Said the names of the rich who deserved to be robbed. In theft he found his glory and honor and was generous to many. Now Rauf is the number-one traitor, and he must kill him—this will be “my last outburst of rage at the evil of the world” (114).
When Nur comes home, Said is actually happy to see her. He realizes she is the person closest to him for the rest of his life, however long it might be. She informs him people are talking about him, but it is cold comfort because they do not know how she and Said have to live. She wonders if he even loves her, and he implores her to not talk like that. They get drunk and Nur tells him stories of her childhood.
Chapter 13
Said and Tarzan surreptitiously meet late one evening. Tarzan passes on information that Bayaza, one of Ilish’s associates, is at his place right now making a deal. Said thanks him and hides for Bayaza.
When Bayaza appears, Said jumps him and brandishes the revolver. Bayaza is shocked to see who it is, and tells Said they are friends. Said laughs and says no, and demands money and information from him about Ilish’s whereabouts. Bayaza does not know much but, frightened, tells Said Ilish took his family away again after Shaban Husayn was killed and no one knows where they are.
Said eventually realizes he is telling the truth, and relents. Bayaza complains that Said is being unfair to him and has no right to take his money. He is partnered with Ilish, yes, but not Said’s enemy. Said understands, and gives him the money back. He asks if he can have a little cash and Bayaza agrees.
Now Said knows that Ilish is too far from him and is yet another traitor getting away scot-free. This makes Rauf Ilwan his last hope for his life not to be in vain.
Chapter 14
Said dresses in the military uniform and travels to a place where he can rent a small boat. He rows toward Rauf’s house under the moonlight. He tells himself Ilish’s escape is not a defeat if he can get Rauf.
At the bank he stows the boat and walks toward the house. There are no guards and the only light is a single one at the entrance. Knowing no one is home, Said hides. Finally a car pulls up and Rauf gets out. Said yells his name and turns his gun on him. Before he can shoot another person shoots at him and disturbs his aim. He fires and ducks, then fires again.
Said takes off running as fast as he can and jumps into the boat. He is filled with physical strength but his mind is a whirlpool. He makes it to shore and joins a crowd of people. He hears shouting and whistling, and hails a water taxi, trying to remain calm.
Back at Nur’s, he sees blood on his leg; a bullet grazed him. He wonders if he actually got Rauf, and who shot at him. He is certain he got Rauf, as he never misses, and he can write a letter to the papers explaining why he did what he did.
Nur comes home and kisses him, then screeches that he has blood on him. She worries that there is no limit to his madness and cries that this nightmare must end. He urges her to take a shower and while she is in it he starts to drink heavily.
After she is done, Nur comes out to him and whimpers that she is depressed. He comforts her that she is good to him and he is very grateful. He says they will escape soon. She complains that he is too obsessed with killing his enemies and will bring about his own destruction—he doesn’t look after himself and he must not love her even though the only happiness she’s ever known is in his arms. He holds her and promises her they will escape and be together forever.
Analysis
Said’s situation grows more and more dire in this section. He ends up killing another innocent man in his quest to murder Rauf Ilwan, he learns Ilish and Nabawiyya are more or less definitively out of reach, and he starts to have feelings for Nur just as she is losing faith in him. These things are all due to his own blunders and flaws, but it’s undeniable that they are adding up in a way that makes his fate more and more dire.
To focus on Nur more specifically, as she is a large presence in this section, we can turn to Michelle Hartman’s astute article on Mahfouz’s treatment of women in the novel. She looks at both Nabawiyya and Nur, but we will focus more on the latter. First, Hartman acknowledges that on the surface the two women can be read as female stereotypes—the whore and the faithless wife—but she sees those stereotypes collapsing under scrutiny. Instead, Mahfouz plays with and combines such stereotypes to create “individual and autonomous characters who exist and act not only under the control and power of men.”
Nur has a decent amount of dialogue in the novel, unlike Nabawiyya, who remains fully confined to Said’s memories and ruminations. Though she is a prostitute, her “actions throughout the novel show her to be a loving and kind, almost saintly, woman.” Her name means “light” in Arabic, and Hartman comments how she is often associated with sunrise and light as a positive force. She is often funny, pensive, and thoughtful; she demonstrates her wit with the punny conversation on “dogs.”
Additionally, Nur’s profession is not disparaged. Said “has no interest in condemning Nur for her profession, as their relationship is based on class solidarity and alienation from mainstream society.” No one in the novel seems to care that Nur is a prostitute, and no one judges her. Her life certainly isn’t easy—the young men beating her up is a heartbreaking scene—but it is a job like many others. Hartman suggests that “the entire milieu of the novel makes it possible for Nur to be a prostitute, and it is considered simply another way for an underprivileged person to make a living.”
The major question about Nur is what she does at the end (in the next section). She vanishes, and it is unclear if she turned Said in, if she was hurt or killed by an angry client, or if she left Said because she was too frustrated and depressed with his choices. Hartman writes that “None of these questions is answered in the text. These points in the novel remain ambiguous while assuring that all of the above solutions are plausible. Because so many stereotypes could possibly describe her if her character were examined only partially, no one stereotype can ever fit her.” For the first possibility, it could be that Nur decides the money from the reward is more worthwhile to her than staying with Said; for someone who always wanted to be secure and have a happy life, this might be an easy future, and Said wasn’t exactly promising her anything similar. She very well may have been harmed or killed, perhaps foreshadowed by her being beaten up by the young men earlier in the novel. And finally, she may have just decided Said was too much for her. She grew increasingly more flustered and upset when she was with him, and his second accidental murder might have been the last straw. The ambiguity of Nur’s fate is in line with the complexity of her character.
