Quest One of the most important themes that the story provides is the theme of quest, as we see from the beginning of the story, the narrator has no direct clear destination that has a meaning, or the thing that he is searching for really exists. But instead he is in a searching loop that will never end and that was causing him more sickness that the only thing that could cure it is meeting Sheikh Zaabalawi and then the searching journey will end. Because the sickness that the narrator suffers from is a psychological and even spiritual sickness not a physical one, we saw that the narrator was searching alone, with no company to ease his pressure and that might refer to the
Islamic religion because the believer of
Allah does not have a priest to confess to. His connection with God is direct, it has no intermediary to make the thing easier. We also don't know anything about the narrator's personality or any details about him and that is symbolic as well. Mahfouz might be representing all people through this character.
Existential philosophy The story raised the issue of human existence and its significance, and the search for a goal of life, compared with the novel "
Waiting for Godot" by the Irish writer
Samuel Beckett, Zaabalawi refers to the same idea, It is a wait and constant search for an idea that may be spiritual or existential and in the end it does not appear this idea causing disappointment to the searcher, pain and despair, and this issue of research is not new in human history, but it is one of the most important issues that human tried to solve its mystery.
Social criticism Our narrator's search throughout
Cairo, besides moving from West to East, as evidenced in the dress of those whom he meets, is also a movement towards timelessness, evanescence, the eternal now. He begins by meeting a religious lawyer and scholar, Sheikh Qamar. This is interesting because it points in two different directions. First, this is a man well-versed in the
Sharia, as all Sufis must be. But this man is also a manifestation of the ossification of a lived religious experience. His dress and his office furnishings give him away as a man tainted by non-Islamic influences. Of course, he is unsure is Zaabalawi is even alive. He has long since lost touch with him. The next person our narrator encounters is the seller of books on
theology and
mysticism. While he is moving closer to the lived religious experience, the decay of the surroundings, and the fact that this mere prologue to a man is engaged in commerce surrounding what should be a non-commercial activity, tells us that we are still far removed from the mystical experience. The other shopkeepers in the area only reinforce this reading, as they have either not heard of Zaabalawi or they openly make fun of him. Here are two institutions which are hardly momentary. That is, the Sharia,
Hadith, and other interpretations of the
Qur'an and the Prophet's life have been around since the inception of Islam. The local magistrate of the district is the narrator's next stop, and he is presented with a well drawn-out plan for canvassing the entire area. A map is gridded with coordinates and he must approach this search as scientifically as possible. Again, the attempt here is to codify and regularize what is essentially ineffable. However, we know that we are getting closer to the truth, because this man, at least, knows that Zaabalawi is still alive. He recognizes that Zaabalawi has no permanent residence, for he cannot be captured and pinned down. The prayer of supplication which the Sheikh offers is the first time any one of our narrator's erstwhile helpers has mentioned God. This is fortuitous, for immediately following this ejaculation (please pardon my Christianizing of such spontaneous prayer, but Sufism has no term for this; it is not a Sufi practice or discipline), he offers our narrator this advice: "Look carefully in the cafes, the places where the dervishes perform their rites, the mosques and the prayer rooms and the Green Gate, for he may well be concealed among the beggars and be indistinguishable from them." In mentioning the dervishes, the Sheikh has introduced one of the great strands of Sufism, and alluded to Hadhra, one of the five major Sufi practices. But again, the Sheikh is a political leader, a field hardly concerned with the momentary, but rather interested in creating institutions which will last. A calligrapher is the next stop for the narrator, and here we move closer to the capture of the present moment. This artist illustrates passages from the Qur'an, or embellishes the name of god. The narrator interrupts him at his easel, only to find that Zaabalawi has not been to see him in a long time. However, we also see that Zaabalawi has been the inspiration for the artist's most beautiful creations. Here, in the realm of art, beyond politics or commerce or law, we are coming closer to Zaabalawi's true residence. Of course, we run into a great contradiction, concerning the timelessness of art, but I'd like to address that below. It's not until the narrator meets Sheikh Gad, the composer, that we get great detail about the absent mystic. And here, with the musician, in the evanescence of music, we learn the most about him. We could take Schopenhauer's approach, where music is the most pure expression of the Universal Will, and it analogously reflects, within its harmony, melodies, rhythm and meter, the structure of the physical world. This will serve to illustrate the great power of music, but it does not address why Mahfouz places it here, near the core of our narrator's experience. Ernst Roth, the great music publisher, offers an explanation as to why this is so: The musical score, or whatever the graphic representation of music may be called, does not constitute the work in the same simple sense as a canvas or a printed page constitutes a visual or literary work. This is the fundamental difference between music and the other arts: its glory and, if you will, its tragedy. Recreation is not a mechanical process, just as a good cookery book is not a guarantee of good cooking. "The real beauty of music cannot be put down on paper," wrote Liszt, and this is not only true of beauty. Neither can the real meaning be laid down once and for all, as in the other arts; it must be guessed at or sensed. There is a void, a space, left in every work of music, which must be filled by the re-creator. (Preface) This recognition of the presentness of music, of the existence of music only in the now, is Mahfouz's first use of the mystical state. Music, then, is both in time and out of it. You cannot find it in the past or the future, only in the present. When you think on it, you are not thinking on music, but only on your experience of it, your memory of it. We have moved from law to commerce to politics to calligraphy to music, and at every step we have come closer to the evanescent, and the ineffable. If we don't get it, Sheikh Gad rams the point home by stating that Zaabalawi himself "is the epitome of things musical."
Sufism William Chittick, arguably the most prominent scholar of Islamic mysticism in the West, explains the place of mysticism in Islam thus: In short,
Muslim scholars who focused their energies on understanding the normative guidelines for the body came to be known as jurists, and those who held that the most important task was to train the mind in achieving correct understanding came to be divided into three main schools of thought – theology, philosophy, and Sufism. . . . Most Muslims who devoted their major efforts to developing the spiritual dimensions of the human person came to be known as Sufis. They taught that people must attune their intentions, their love, and their sincerity to the divine will. A Sufi is someone who is striving to or has mastered his or her ego and attained a higher state of consciousness and union with the Godhead. The goal of the Sufi Path is for the drop of water (the individual self) to merge with the Ocean of Being from whence it came. This spiritual path (
tariqah) encourages one to perform this or make this transition consciously while still in the body. The central Sufi theory is Wahadat Al Wajud, the Unity of Being, or oneness of existence. This summarizes the Sufi quest of not just seeking a union with the Divine Being, but the realization of the truth that the mystic is one with the Divine. To teach this, the Sufi poets used the imagery of the lover and beloved in the love poetry or romances. According to
Hujwiri, the first Sufi in India, he who is purified by love is pure, and he who is absorbed in the Beloved and has abandoned all else is a Sufi.
Other themes the story includes Attack on fossilized religious institutions; only certain figures such as artists (musicians, the calligrapher) and the drunk seem to be in contact with the truth symbolized by Zaabalawi. An allegory hinting at the possible human significance of religion and its supposedly transcendental symbols; an attempt to redefine God in human, social, and earthly terms. In Mahfouz's vision those who only seek personal gain and profit are distanced from the truth and genuine fulfillment; the happiness of the individual can only come through social engagement and contact with others, the merging of the self into a harmonious human collectivity. In awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Mahfouz, the Swedish Academy of Letters noted that "through works rich in nuance -- now clearsight only realistic, now evocatively ambiguous -- [Mahfouz] has formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind." == Literature review ==