Summary
Chapter 15
In the papers Said learns that he did not murder Rauf Ilwan, but instead shot and killed a doorkeeper. There is a huge reward for his whereabouts. Said is astonished at what happened, but annoyed at the people who owe their pleasure to his deeds. He knows he always wanted to cause a stir, but it was Rauf’s words back in the day about robbing people that really spurred him on.
Alone at night, Said drinks and looks out over the graves to offer his own defense. He states that he is unlike the others who've stood on this stand before; it was his teacher who was the real scoundrel. He lays down on the couch and thinks about the man he killed. He decides the man was killed because he was Rauf’s servant, so it was justified. Besides, in a dream Rauf’s spirit visited him and reminded him that millions of people are killed by mistake and without due cause. Said decides he would get a not-guilty verdict and people would believe his profession was lawful. The verdict could never be crueler than Sana’s reaction to him, he thinks. The verdict is actually that he is a great man in every sense of the word, that he is “good principles, consolation, the tears that recall the weeper to humanity” (133).
Said drifts off to sleep and when he wakes he sees Nur standing over him. She looks full of despair, and tells him he is worse than he imagined and he ought to just kill her too. She will not calm down when he asks her to, and asks him who Rauf Ilwan is. She says he is still in love with his wife, and that her whole life is about to be over. He promises her things will be fine, and kisses her with genuine tenderness.
Chapter 16
Dawn is close but Nur is gone and has not returned. He begins to be suspicious of her—perhaps she wanted the reward money, and everyone is a traitor to him—but he rebukes himself, saying it is obvious Nur wants a relationship with him.
He is frustrated that she has not come back to relieve him from the loneliness and darkness, however. She does not return in the morning, and he worries about her. There is nothing to eat, and he spends the day watching funerals.
Evening falls and Nur is not back. He is ravaged by anger, hunger, and fear. He sneaks off to Tarzan’s place and asks for food. The nervous Tarzan complies, but tells him it is dangerous for him to be out. Said realizes how much he misses camaraderie and being with others in public, for it was then that “his stature appeared to grow giantlike: he had a talent for friendship, leadership, even heroism” (139).
Leaving the cafe, he wanders down by the Martyr’s Tomb. He is stopped by two policemen, but when they notice his uniform and hear his imperious tone asking who they are, they halt and let him be. But when one of them looks quizzically at him, he beats them both to unconsciousness and flees.
Back at Nur’s, everything is silent and lonely as he left it. He wonders if she was arrested or attacked, or in some other kind of trouble. He has a feeling he will never see her again, and it saddens him deeply. He now knows he loves her and values her companionship, and would even give his life to bring her safely back. It bothers him that no one would even care if she was gone from this world. Maybe it will be the same for Sana someday.
He sleeps and at daylight awakens to hear the landlady knocking on the door. Her voice says to someone else that Madame Nur has never been late with rent before. Said remains silent and the landlady leaves, but he knows his time at the flat is up.
Chapter 17
Said slips out around midnight. He cannot go to Tarzan's, so he returns to the Sheikh’s abode. As soon as he arrives in the courtyard he has the stunning realization that he left his military uniform in Nur’s place. This may tie her to him, which distresses him.
Said sits down before the Sheikh and tells him he is hungry. The Sheikh points to bread and figs, which Said consumes. Said grumbles that the three scoundrels have gotten away from him, and the Sheikh sighs that it is a good thing there are only three in the world. Said shakes his head and says he is going to sleep here with his face toward the wall. He asks if the Sheikh will give him up and the Sheikh says no, and that Said can save himself. Said still wants to kill the others and listens to nothing the Sheikh says.
As the Sheikh chants and he lies on the mat, he berates himself for leaving the uniform. Dogs will be able to smell it and find him. The Sheikh talks to him again, but Said does not understand his words. He announces that he is confident he is in the right, and turns back to thinking about the uniform.
Chapter 18
Exhausted, Said sleeps until midday. When he awakes he spends his time thinking of his plan. He leaves around midnight and heads back to where Nur lives. He is astonished to see a light on in her flat. She must be so worried about him, and he cannot wait to hold her and pour out his love for her.
He climbs the stairs, filled with a sense of his own power. He knocks on the door and a man in his underwear, whom Said has never seen before, answers. Said is flummoxed, and worried that the man recognizes him, punches the man and knocks him out. A woman’s voice calls out.
Said rushes away, and makes his way back to the Sheikh's house. It is hard to sleep but he does until a nightmare wakes him up. The Sheikh has left food and water for him, and he is grateful. He hears voices in the next room and espies a group of men who came to pray. To his surprise it is sunset, not dawn, and he has slept the entire day.
Said spends the rest of the day ensconced in his own mind, thinking that he can no longer be patient or hesitate. He must contact Tarzan. As the Sheikh and the men chant, Said lets his mind wander into his memories, memories of hopes and joy and his father and Sana. He wishes for peace, and is grateful for the revolver he still possesses. He thinks it is time the thief gives chase to the dogs.
Outside he suddenly hears angry voices discussing the quarter being blocked off, and it being Said Mahran’s fault. Said’s body is tense, and he knows there must be detectives everywhere. He has to be careful. He creeps out of the Sheikh’s house and makes his way to the road and then to the cemetery. He does not feel hope, but does feel tremendous energy.
He comes to the familiar scene of Nur’s place and the cemetery. He sees a woman in Nur’s window, and the shape vaguely looks like her but he thinks his eyes might be deceiving him. For a moment he wants to shout to her, and that is when he hears the dogs.
Frightened, he begins darting through the tombs and finds one that he presses himself up against. He holds the revolver. The dogs have come and this is his life’s last utterance. He knows he has nowhere to go; everything has failed. A voice calls for him to give himself up. The sound of heavy feet and the glare of lights are everywhere. Voices continue to call for him to stop resisting.
Said finally calls out that they should not come any closer or he will shoot. The man says he must make his choice between “death and coming to justice” (157). Said scoffs at “justice.” He sees Sana in his mind’s eye, but she turns away. He then senses movement, and starts shooting. He fires over and over again in a frenzy of rage.
Suddenly the noise stops. It is dark and quiet again. He wonders if the men retreated into the night. The darkness grows thicker and he can see nothing. He is slipping away and no longer feels purpose. He thinks he should try for one last act of resistance, to “capture one last recalcitrant memory” (158), but instead he has to succumb and surrender. He does not care at all now.
Analysis
As if Said’s disastrous fate wasn’t clear before, these last few chapters solidify it. He kills another innocent man, entertains more dramatic delusions of grandeur, loses Nur and by extension his main hiding place, and becomes the subject of a massive manhunt. And all of this ends with him crouched in front of a headstone, totally alone and having failed completely in his revenge fantasies.
What do we make of this ending? Is there any sympathy for Said? Was he a victim of bad luck, fate, the world in which he lived, or his own poor decisions? Critics offer a few answers to these complicated questions. Fouad Ajami begins his article with the quote from the novel: “Most Egyptians neither fear nor dislike thieves…But they do have a distinctive dislike for dogs” (115). For Mahfouz, the dogs “stood for the forces of the autocracy of Nasser,” one of the architects of the 1952 coup/revolution who eventually came to power (see “Other” in this study guide). Mahfouz reveals his “disenchantment with the military class and with the opportunism of the functionaries of the regime who had broken the society and turned it into a dominion of their own.” Mahfouz did not particularly care for the revolution, Ajami explains, finding the “hooliganism of the revolution, the rise of men like Rauf Ilwan, the virulence of the new men against all the progress that came before their ascent to power” deeply offensive.
Rasheed El-Enany also focuses on the political context of the novel, showcasing how revolutionary ideals are easily corrupted when people gain power and privileges. One of the reasons Said becomes a hero of the people is because he seems to be pushing back against men like Ilish and Rauf; he is “hounded down by the entire apparatus of the State—the ‘dogs’ of the title,” and the people can see that. Yet Said isn’t exactly interested in being a revolutionary at the moment; instead he carries out his personal vendettas. The moral of the story might be that “true revolutionary action cannot originate in personal vendetta, nor is it a task for individuals on their own: organized action is essential.”
El-Enany then addresses the question of why exactly Said fails so miserably—why not one but two bullets do not find their targets but instead kill innocent men. There is something at work affecting Said, contributing to his defeat. There is “something else that is wrong, something that lies at the very nature of things in the world—a contributory force that is undefinable and incomprehensible, but whose workings in our lives are undeniable.” Certainly some of what happens to Said in his life, especially his turn to thievery, can be explained by society: his family was solidly working-class, he was not able to attain a formal education, and his job prospects were paltry. His failed revenge may be explained by his personality traits of obsessiveness, hastiness, self-aggrandizement, and irrationality. Yet that still does not account for why everything is such a disaster for him. El-Enany concludes that “mechanical explanations by definition only explain the mechanics of a process or an occurrence—they do not explain the cause. Nor is there a cause that is explicable. The phenomenon, however, is not short of a name: fate (also known as coincidence or the interplay of space and time)—a key concept in Mahfouz’s world-picture and a prime agent in the life of his characters.”
