Naguib Mahfouz: The Thief and the Dogs

He wondered how Ali al-Junaydi was.

From inside the room he could hear a man concluding his prayers. Said smiled, slipped in carrying his books, and saw the Sheikh sitting cross-legged on the prayer carpet, absorbed in quiet recitation. The old room had hardly changed. The rush mats had been replaced by new ones, thanks to his disciples, but the Sheikh's sleeping mattress still lay close to the western wall, pierced by a window through which the rays of the declining sun were pouring down at Said's feet.

The other walls of the room were half-covered with rows of books on shelves. The odor of incense lingered as if it were the same he remembered, never dissipated, from years ago. Putting down his load of books, he approached the Sheikh.

"Peace be upon you, my lord and master."

Having completed his recitation the Sheikh raised his head, disclosing a face that was emaciated but radiant with overflowing vitality; framed by a white beard like a halo, and surmounted by a white skull cap that nestled in thick locks of hair showing silvery at his temples. The Sheikh scrutinized him with eyes that had been viewing this world for eighty years and indeed had glimpsed the next, eyes that had not lost their appeal, acuteness, or charm. Said found himself bending over his hand to kiss it, suppressing tears of nostalgia for his father, his boyish hopes, the innocent purity of the distant past.

"Peace and God's compassion be upon you," said the Sheikh in a voice like Time.

What had his father's voice been like?

He could see his father's face and his lips moving, and tried to make his eyes do the service of ears, but the voice had gone. And the disciples, the men chanting the mystical dhikr, "O master, the Prophet is at your gate!" — where were they now?

He sat down cross-legged on the rush mat before the Sheikh. "I am sitting without asking your permission," he said. "I remember that you prefer that." He sensed that the Sheikh was smiling, though on those lips concealed amidst the whiteness, no smile was visible. Did the Sheikh remember him? "Forgive my coming to your house like this. But there's nowhere else in the world for me to go."

The Sheikh's head drooped to his breast.

"You seek the walls, not the heart." He whispered.

Said was baffled; not knowing what to say, he sighed, then quietly remarked, "I got out of jail today."

"Jail?" said the Sheikh, his eyes closed.

"Yes. You haven't seen me for more than ten years, and during that time strange things have happened to me. You've probably heard about them from some of your disciples who know me."

"Because I hear much I can hardly hear anything."

"In any case I didn't want to meet you under false pretenses, so I'm telling you I came out of jail, only today."

The Sheikh slowly shook his head, then, opening his eyes, said, "You have not come out of jail." The voice was sorrowful.

Said smiled. This was the language of old times again, where word had a double meaning.

"Master, every jail is tolerable, except the Government jail."

The Sheikh glanced at him with clear and lucid eyes, then muttered, "He says every jail is tolerable except the Government jail."

Said smiled again, though he'd almost given up hope of being able to communicate, and asked, "Do you remember me?"

"Your concern is the present hour."

Fairly certain that he was remembered, Said asked for reassurance: "And do you remember my father, Mr. Mahran, God have mercy upon his soul?"

"May God have mercy upon all of us."

"What wonderful days those were!"

"Say that, if you can, about the present."

"But…"

"God have mercy upon us all."

"I was saying, I have just come out of jail today."

The Sheikh nodded his head showing sudden vigor.

"And as he was impaled on the stake he smiled and said: "It was God's will that I should meet Him thus."

My father could understand you. But me you turned away from, treating me as if you were turning me out of your house. And even so I've come back here, of my own accord, to this atmosphere of incense and disquiet, because a man so desolate, with no roof over his head, cannot do otherwise.

"Master, I have come to you now when my own daughter has rejected me."

The Sheikh sighed. "God reveals his secrets to His tiniest creatures!"

"I thought that, if God had granted you long life, I should find your door open."

"And the door of Heaven? How have you found that?"

"But there is nowhere on earth for me to go. And my own daughter has rejected me."

"How like you she is!"

"In what way, Master?"

"You seek a roof, not an answer."

Said rested his head with its short, wiry hair on his dark, thin hand, and said: "My father used to seek you when he was in trouble, so I found myself…"

"You seek a roof and nothing else."

Convinced that the Sheikh knew who he was, Said felt uneasy but did not know why. "It's not only a roof," he said, "I want more than that. I would like to ask God to be pleased with me."

The Sheikh replied as if intoning. "The celestial Lady said: Aren't you ashamed to ask for His good pleasure while you are not well-pleased with Him?"

The open space outside resounded with the braying of a donkey, which ended in a throaty rattle like a sob. Somewhere a harsh voice was singing, "Where have luck and good fortune gone?" He remembered once when he'd been caught singing by his father "I Give You Three Guesses": his father had punched him gently and said, "Is this an appropriate song on our way to the blessed Sheikh?" He remembered how, in the midst of the chanting, his father had reeled in ecstasy, his eyes swimming, his voice hoarse, sweat pouring down his face, while he himself sat at the foot of the palm tree, watching the disciples by the light of a lantern, nibbling a fruit, rapt in curious bliss. All that was before he'd felt the first scalding drop of the draught of love.

The Sheikh's eyes were closed now, as if he were asleep, and Said had become so adjusted to the setting and atmosphere that he could no longer smell the incense. It occurred to him that habit is the root of laziness, boredom, and death, that habit had been responsible for his sufferings, the treachery, the ingratitude, and the waste of his life's hard toil. "Are the dhikr meetings still held here?" he asked, attempting to rouse the Sheikh.

But the Sheikh gave no answer. Even more uneasy now, Said asked a further question: "Aren't you going to welcome me here?"

The Sheikh opened his eyes and said, "Weak are the seeker and the sought."

"But you are the master of the house."

"The Owner of the house welcomes you," the Sheikh said, suddenly jovial, "as He welcomes every creature and every thing." Encouraged, Said smiled, but the Sheikh added, as if it were an afterthought, "As for me, I am master of nothing."

The sunlight on the rush mat had retreated now to the wall.

"In any case," said Said, "this house is my real home, as it always was a home for my father and for every supplicant. You, my Master, deserve all our gratitude."

"Lord, you know how incapable I am of doing You justice in thanking you, so please thank yourself on my account!" Thus spake one of the grateful."

"I am in need of a kind word," Said pleaded.

"Do not tell lies." The Sheikh spoke gently, then bowed his head, his beard fanning out over his chest, and seemed lost in thought.

Said waited, then shifted backwards to rest against one of the bookshelves, where for several minutes he sat contemplating the fine-looking old man, until finally impatience made him ask, "Is there anything I could do for you?"

The Sheikh did not bother to respond and a period of silence followed, during which Said watched a line of ants nimbly crawling along a fold in the mat. Suddenly the Sheikh said, "Take a copy of the Koran and read."