22 pages • 44 minutes read
Naguib MahfouzZaabalawi
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Zaabalawi
First appearing in song lyrics, Zaabalawi proves to be an enigmatic figure. He never appears directly in the story, and while multiple characters describe him, their descriptions ultimately reflect their own preoccupations; they see in Zaabalawi whatever they want or expect to see. When the narrator asks his father who Zaabalawi is, he tells the boy that he is a healer. Artists describe Zaabalawi as a source of inspiration. The book vendor recalls Zaabalawi fondly in association with his youth. Most telling is the fact that the average man on the street has largely forgotten Zaabalawi, or else labeled him a trickster or charlatan.
Ultimately, Zaabalawi is no man at all but rather a symbol of spiritual awakening—specifically, the bliss of steady and focused awareness that Sufi mysticism seeks. Sufism is an ascetic Islamic practice that aims to dissolve the self and join with the godhead in a unifying existential experience. Zaabalawi is therefore a state of mind rather than a man; just as a particular experience of listening to music (a motif associated with divinity) cannot be captured in a score, Zaabalawi cannot be found in the streets of any material city, but only within an individual soul.
Narrator
In the narrator, Mahfouz creates an everyman to speak to the existential anxieties of the common Muslim. Fairy tales and folklore often employ the everyman archetype to erode the division between a story and its audience, allowing the reader to better identify with the narrator. At the start of “Zaabalawi,” we know little about the unnamed narrator except that he has been afflicted with a terrible sickness, and we can therefore project ourselves onto him more easily.
As he searches for Zaabalawi, the narrator’s illness takes shape, and his outlook on the world changes from one of isolation, division, and severe social anxiety to one of union. In the chamber of commerce, he is hesitant even to impose his presence on Sheikh Qamar, growing so dizzy with shame that he is scarcely aware of his surroundings. However, he gradually sheds this overpowering self-awareness; by the story’s end, the narrator can extend admiration to Sheikh Gad and receive affection from Zaabalawi.
When he falls into his rapturous dream, the narrator loses his sense of self entirely. However, his actions afterwards raise questions about the success of his search and the reliability of his narration. Although the narrator believes he has missed his encounter with Zaabalawi, his dream of the garden—a common image of spiritual awakening in Islamic texts—is likely the cure he has been searching for. Not realizing this, the narrator falls out of inspiration and back into his illusory ego and suffering; although he waits for Zaabalawi’s return, Zaabalawi is an allegorical presence that he can only reach by turning inward. Mahfouz therefore offers a cynical view of the everyman as so deeply intent on externalities that he will never abandon his suffering.
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By Naguib Mahfouz
