Zaabalawi

“Zaabalawi” explores the concept of money, which often intrudes when the narrator is trying to gather information to aid in his search. In many spiritual traditions, money and gold represent an unhealthy attachment to earthly possessions. Mahfouz echoes this idea, using wealth as a marker of greed and spiritual disconnection; the district magistrate has gold-plated teeth, and Sheikh Qamar is so preoccupied with earning money that he can scarcely be bothered to entertain the narrator’s questions about Zaabalawi. By contrast, Zaabalawi seems to have no job or wealth. His former home is now a local dump, and the district magistrate cautions the narrator that Zaabalawi is likely to be “concealed among the beggars and […] indistinguishable from them” (5). Mahfouz thus uses money and poverty to speak subtly about the dual nature of his fallen Cairo—one divided along both economic and spiritual lines.

At the Negma Bar (“Star Bar” in Arabic), the narrator faces his last trial when a confidant of Zaabalawi, Hagg Wanas, refuses to speak unless the narrator becomes as drunk as he is. This presents a challenge to the narrator, as Islam forbids imbibing alcohol as a distraction from God. However, Wanas’s belief that he and the narrator will only understand one another once drunk has a counterpart in Sufi tradition.