[In the following essay, Hartman analyzes the role of female characters in Mahfouz's The Thief and the Dogs.]

This article rereads women both in and into Naguib Mahfouz's short 1961 novel, al-Liss wa‘l kilab. By reading women in this novel, I mean a close reading of the two women portrayed in the novel in order to explore how they are textually constructed as characters. By reading women into the text, I mean to examine the textual function of specific female characters to comment upon their significance to this novel as well as to Mahfouz's entire oeuvre.

Why is it important to read the female characters in and into this novel? There is a small but growing number of articles concerned with women in Naguib Mahfouz's novels, corresponding to a greater interest in exploring gender in Arabic literature written by both men and women. Readings of the female characters in al-Liss wa‘l kilab provides deeper insight not only into this novel, but also into the role of stereotypes of women in Arabic literature in general. It is important to read beyond the common assumption that Arab culture is sexist and/or misogynist, and therefore Arabic literature must be as well. When the female characters are read carefully in/to novels, often the reader discovers that they are less flat and stereotypical than they may initially seem.

Naguib Mahfouz is perhaps the best-known novelist in the Arabic language. Since he won the Nobel Prize in 1988, his fame has grown not only in the Arab world but also internationally. Mahfouz is the pioneer of the novel in the Arabic language, and his career has spanned almost the entire range of novelistic development in the Arab world. It may be forgotten that a canonical novelist such as Mahfouz is one of the greatest innovators of the genre. Thus, even though Mahfouz's primary interest may not be the role of women or anything to do with gender specifically, his experiments in novel writing provide challenges to the standard perception of Arabic novels.

Because it marks a radical break in his literary vision and mode of expression, al-Liss wa‘l kilab is a particularly interesting novel for the explorations of these challenges (Mahmoud 58). Mahfouz is best known for his “realistic” novels—conventional, long narratives tracing the lives of entire families with lengthy and detailed descriptive passages. Al-Liss wa‘l kilab breaks from this earlier style by using concise and sparing language, as well as formal innovations such as shifting narrative voices, long passages of interior monologues and flashbacks. These techniques confuse time sequences and linear narrative progression. A work that makes such a radical break in formal techniques re-writes novelistic discourse. This re-writing is part of a larger project of experimentation in al-Liss wa‘l kilab, and is the first of a series of modernist novels by Mahfouz. Re-reading female characters in/to this novel in creative ways in consistent with the context of experimentation and subversion of norms that Mahfouz himself creates in al-Liss wa‘l kilab.

The recent proliferation of publications relating to gender in Arabic literature has included studies on Mahfouz's novels, including his characterization of women. Most of the writing on the role and position of women in Arabic literature, however, concentrates on the image of women in literary texts—what “types” of women an author employs and what they represent symbolically.¹ A study that attempts to read Mahfouz's fiction differently is Miriam Cooke's article, “Men Constructed in the Image of Prostitution.” Cooke remarks that there is a tendency—especially for Western readers—to see literature from the Arab world (as well as from Africa and Asia) as necessarily allegorical. The importance of allegory in Mahfouz's novels, including al-Liss wa‘l kilab, is well-documented.² What Cooke is suggesting, however, is that this should be seen as only one perspective from which we can approach literary studies, and that creative writing from the Arab world has more to offer the reader than political allegory alone.

Cooke's strategy for reading women in Mahfouz's novels does not simply search for categories and allegories but rather suggests how several female prostitutes in his novels can be read as empowered and positive characters. She argues that in Mahfouz's earlier “realistic” novels, prostitutes are heroines shackled by social convention, who use their profession as a creative way to gain control over their lives. She thus posits the prostitute as a woman who successfully defies social norms and gains financial and emotional independence and autonomy (113). In her article, Cooke not only challenges the reader's presuppositions of what prostitutes are, but also what the reader's assumptions about how an Arab male writer, like Mahfouz, will depict them in his novels.

In this article, I shall continue Cooke's challenge to stereotypes but explore them from a different angle, arguing that the two main female characters in al-Liss wa‘l kilab can be read as female stereotypes, but that upon a closer examination of the characters themselves—in terms of both what is included in and excluded from the text—these stereotypes in fact collapse. Simply because Mahfouz's novels are set in Egyptian, or Arab, society does not mean that they should necessarily be read as sociopolitical documents on Egypt and/or the Arab world. Likewise, an examination of his female characterizations need not necessarily be read as an investigation of the role and position of women in Arab and/or Egyptian society. Rather, what I am specifically concerned with here is how within a given literary text Mahfouz creates vibrant, individual female characters by combining and manipulating common stereotypes of women.

Though the protagonist of al-Liss wa‘l kilab blurts out “I have absolutely no faith at all left in her gender” in a moment of anger and exasperation (32)³, the novel does not present simple, misogynistic portraits of women. The female stereotypes employed in the novel are more specific characterizations that are frequently applied to women. The two main categories are the loving and devoted wife/mother/sister, and the “fallen woman,” the prostitute. Though these paradigms have local variations and different symbols and meanings in different societies, they are easily recognizable to readers in whatever language they are reading. The dichotomy that has evolved is a divide between the virgin and the whore. One is pure and virtuous, the other dirty and disreputable. There are many permutations of these two main generalizations in literature, including the one employed in this novel, which combine these two types of women to create the “putain respectueuse” ‘respectable whore’ and the treacherous, unfaithful wife.

Though the two main female characters in al-Liss wa‘l kilab, Nabawiyya and Nur, both fit into this common pattern of female stereotypes, a close reading of their characters shows that no simple stereotype can fully explain them or their actions. This is partially due to Mahfouz's manipulation of these female stereotypes, challenging the reader to see beyond them and understand Nabawiyya and Nur as complex characters. Mahfouz simultaneously employs and subverts stereotypes of women, thereby creating complicated and ambiguous female characters who then defy accepted notions of what women are and should be. Mahfouz's motivation may not be a feminist project of rewriting women's roles in society to empower them, but what he does in thwarting such accepted notions is to write women as individual and autonomous characters who exist and act not only under the control and power of men. Mahfouz has been accused of creating flat and lifeless female characters who are only symbols. This may be because of a lack of imagination on the part of the reader or an implicit assumption that an Arab male author cannot write dynamic female characters. Though women do not tend to play the most important roles in Mahfouz's novels, many of them are among the most vital and original characters in his work.

Al-Liss wa‘l kilab is a study of Sa‘id Mahran, the eponymous thief, and his despair, destruction, and death at the hands of those who have betrayed him—the dogs. Because Sa‘id spends almost the entire novel in a state of despair and confusion, much of the novel is composed of his deluded rantings, fantasies, and distorted perceptions of reality. This often makes it difficult for the reader to distinguish between fact and fantasy within the context of the events in the novel itself.

The plot of the novel takes place over a brief but unspecified amount of time after Sa‘id's release from a four-year prison sentence. He visits several places and tries to rebuild his life, only to find everything in the world he once knew to have completely changed. His first visit is to his ex-wife, Nabawiyya, and her new lover, Illish Sidra, to try to gain custody of his daughter, Sana, who is living with them. Nabawiyya refuses to see him and Sana runs from the room screaming when he tries to embrace her (14–15). Sa‘id then visits the Sufi sheikh who was his father's spiritual guide, but discovers that the refuge he offers is in a religious language that he cannot understand. His next visit is to his former mentor in crime, Ra‘uf Alwan. When Sa‘id was a young man, Ra‘uf was a university student whose revolutionary ideals included stealing from the rich for the sake of the poor. The Egyptian Revolution of 1952 occurred while Sa‘id was in prison and post-revolutionary Egypt is not what he was expecting. For example, Sa‘id finds Ra‘uf and learns that he has become a respectable newspaper editor and wants to keep his distance not only from his former ideals, but also from Sa‘id.

In his state of confusion and alienation from everyone and everything in society, Sa‘id decides to take his revenge by killing Nabawiyya, Illish, and Ra‘uf. He is, however, unsuccessful in all these pursuits and instead kills innocent bystanders. He realizes that the only people who will help him are Tarazan, the owner of a cafe he once frequented, populated by underworld-types, and Nur, a prostitute with whom he has also had some sort of previous relationship. He hides out in Nur's house as news of his murders spreads and he is pursued intensely by the authorities. From this point on in the novel, his life becomes a spiral of despair that the reader realizes can only end with him being tracked down and apprehended yet again. The novel concludes with Sa‘id cornered in a grave, being ripped apart by the police dogs that have been chasing him throughout the novel.

Though al-Liss wa‘l kilab is the story of one character and his emotional and psychological state, the minor characters are important as well. In Mahfouz's earlier novels, there are more characters who are well-developed individuals, and description and detail illuminate their individual personalities. Though this is not the case in al-Liss wa‘l kilab, this novel is formed not only by what it includes but what it excludes. Absence and silence within a text contribute to the central textual functions. Female characters, especially in literature written by men, often play secondary roles and have less strong voices. This novel, for example, is concerned primarily with the male protagonist and though both female characters—Nur and Nabawiyya—are key to the plot development, Mahfouz spends little space expanding on or developing their characters. Nur is often present in the action of the text and speaks in her own voice in dialogue sections, but Nabawiyya is totally absent, has no voice of her own, and is only seen through descriptions, flashbacks, and interior monologues—all of which are filtered through the perceptions of the protagonist, Sa‘id.

Nur is the most interesting of all the minor characters in al-Liss wa‘l kilab because she speaks for herself in extensive dialogue sections, and the reader thus has information about her that is not seen from Sa‘id's perspective. In addition, Nur's personality develops more than any other minor character in the novel and she is the only character with whom Sa‘id has any kind of meaningful relationship (Mahmoud 67–68). The only information about Sa‘id and Nur's relationship before he went to prison is that her love for him was unrequited while he was married to Nabawiyya (49).

The first description of Nur portrays her as a bit of a pathetic creature who is slightly repulsive, uncouth, and lacking in self-respect (49). Sa‘id discovers her after his years in prison, noticing that she has grown thinner and attempts to conceal this with heavy makeup. He also comments on her dress, which clings to her figure like rubber. Despite the relatively negative descriptions, Nur's actions throughout the novel show her to be a loving and kind, almost saintly woman, who simply happens to go out at night and work as a prostitute. Moreover, Mahfouz makes several plays on her name, which means “light” in Arabic, and often associates her with sunrise (e.g., 123). Darkness plays an important role in the novel and is usually something negative to be avoided. Sa‘id constantly complains about remaining hidden in the darkness. Thus, “light,” represented in name by Nur, reinforces that she is a positive force counteracting the negativity of night and darkness.

Though Nur is almost always described in positive terms—the paradigm of the noble prostitute—she also is mysterious. She disappears without a sign or trace at the end of the novel, shortly before Sa‘id is finally hunted down and killed by police dogs. Is her disappearance a coincidence or is it related? These questions are vital in understanding Nur as much more than a woman with a loving and kind demeanor who wants to help a friend in need. In the following textual examples, the contradictions in Nur's character, created by manipulation of stereotypes, reveal a complex and substantial character.

One way in which Mahfouz manipulates stereotypes relating to female characters, and specifically the prostitute in al-Liss wa‘l kilab, is by showing prostitution as simply one among many disreputable professions belonging to the characters. In this way, Nur's role in the novel as prostitute is significantly different than prostitutes in other novels by Mahfouz, for example Zanuba of the “Trilogy” Unlike Zanuba, Nur is not a woman of a “dubious” background who is contrasted with men and women of a “more respectable” background. Most of the characters in al-Liss wa‘l kilab are part of the underworld. Sa‘id and his friends are all thieves and flashbacks remind the reader that though Ra‘uf and Illish have escaped this dark, seedy world, they once were thieves as well.

Though prostitution carries different connotations and is often subject to more value judgments in society than thievery, Nur is treated throughout the novel as “one of the boys.” Her profession is never commented on lewdly or judgmentally by the men with whom she interacts—it is simply a fact. Sa‘id has no interest in condemning Nur for her profession, as their relationship is based on class solidarity and alienation from mainstream society. Two examples illustrate this particularly well. The first is when he returns to her flat one evening and finds her vomiting because she has been attacked by some young male clients who refused to pay her for her services: “He muttered angrily, ‘Those dogs!’ … ‘It's not your fault at all, go wash your face and then get some sleep’” (94). The second example is when Sa‘id contemplates the possibility that Nur has been kidnaped or has died, near the end of the novel. He expresses true regret that a woman in her position has so little importance in their society: “Would her demise cause so much as a murmur anywhere? Certainly not. She is a woman with no allies, no protector. She is thus at the mercy of a vast sea of indifferent and hostile waves …” (126).

On the one occasion on which Sa‘id tries to challenge Nur for being out late drinking, he is met with indifference. The very first evening on which he uses her flat as a hideout from the police, Nur returns in the early morning hours. He queries her about the alcohol on her breath: “Have you been drinking?” Not intimated by Sa‘id at all, she responds directly and almost flippantly: “Goes with the job. I'm going to take a bath. Here are your newspapers” (84). This is the only passage in which Sa‘id seems at all bothered by Nur's profession and its implications. She is completely at ease discussing her profession and its requirements with him, and is not at all troubled that the man she loves knows about this part of her life.

Though there are many stereotypes of prostitutes, ranging from those who love their work to those who would do almost anything to escape it, Mahfouz's particular image of an Egyptian prostitute completely at ease with her profession while pursuing her true love, encourages the reader to question these stereotypes. On the one hand, Nur is the noble prostitute who is “too good” to be working in such a disreputable profession. She treats Sa‘id in the manner a model wife should—she cooks for him and mends his clothes, runs small errands, and helps him hide from the police even when she is appalled by his crime. On the other hand, she is a prostitute who is unashamed of her profession. Prostitution is neither denigrated nor glorified. The entire milieu of the novel makes it possible for Nur to be a prostitute, and it is considered simply another way for an underprivileged person to make a living.

Nur is not only comfortable and straightforward about her profession in these examples, but other dialogue sections show her to be feisty and clever as well. One conversation between Nur and Sa‘id highlights her wit while raising questions as to what her feeling and motivations toward Sa‘id actually are. They have a conversation about dogs. References and allusions to dogs surface continually throughout the text to indicate anything from animals howling to characters like Ra‘uf and Illish, to other governmental representatives Sa‘id feels are persecuting him. Nur and Sa‘id discuss the dogs in all these varied meanings throughout the novel. In this particular example, they are eating and discussing Sa‘id's fugitive status. He says to her, “Most ordinary Egyptians neither fear nor despise thieves, but they do instinctively detest dogs.” She licks her fingertips and responds to him, smiling: “I like dogs!” He then replies, “I don't mean that kind …” (100). This is an ambiguous and flirtatious interchange that can be read on several levels. When Sa‘id says, “I don't mean that kind …,” he uses the masculine plural demonstrative adjective “ha‘ula.” Because this word would only be used if Sa‘id were referring to a noun that represents a group of people, it implies that he understands her comment to mean that she likes men. He emphasizes that this is not what he is referring to by using the word “dogs.” She ignores his comment, however, and continues as if she had always meant to speak about animals: “Yes, I always had one at home until the last one died. I cried a lot and decided not to ever get another one” (100). On one level, Nur's reply in this interchange can be read as innocent comment about animals. Perhaps Sa‘id simply jumped to an ill-conceived conclusion about what she was saying. On another level, this passage is clearly an example of playful banter. The smile that crosses Nur's lips just as she licks her fingers and says, “I like dogs” is surely not a fond reminiscence about a pet who has died. I would argue that Nur is making a deliberate pun on the word “dogs.” In addition, it is unclear if she is referring to liking men in general, sexually, as a part of her personal or professional life. Because she spends so much time with Sa‘id and clearly likes him, she may even be implying that he himself is a dog. Thus, this particular passage highlights not only that Nur is clever and able to joke with Sa‘id, but that she is willing to joke with him about men being dogs in a way that he might find insulting and derogatory.

Though a stereotypical prostitute certainly might make sexual double-entendres in her speech, here again Nur's role is contradictory. She is the vulnerable woman who cried at the loss of her pet, the brazen woman who can joke about men being dogs, and in both she is more clever and witty than Sa‘id, whose contribution to the dialogue is “I don't mean that kind. …” Cooke states that “Mahfouz often portrays prostitutes as stronger and more intelligent than the generality of womankind” (113). I would add that they are often more clever than the generality of mankind in his novels as well. In al-Liss wa‘l kilab Nur is certainly one of the most interesting characters and shows her sharp wit in several passages of dialogue. Though Nur is only seen in brief glimpses, her strength of character as a clever, loving, autonomous, and devoted woman shows through clearly. Though these attributes are not necessarily contradictory, they are not often found in one female character with so small a role in a novel, and particularly not if it is the role of a “stereotypical” woman.

Another passage that underlines the ambiguity of Nur's character occurs just after the conversation about dogs. Nur is almost always portrayed as totally devoted to Sa‘id and willing to do anything for him, as when she declares, “… [Y]ou are dearer to me than my own life and breath, in my entire life I have never known happiness except in your arms …” (117). She is, however, also seen as suspect by Sa‘id more than once—both because of a white lie she tells Sa‘id and because of her disappearance at the end of the novel. The lie Nur tells is that her father was the village umdah and not the umdah's servant, as he asserts she previously had claimed (this previous conversation is not recorded in the novel). Nur is unconcerned by Sa‘id's challenge to her: “Nur laughed, revealing pieces of parsley stuck between her teeth and said, ‘Did I really say that!?’” (103). The actual content of this exchange is inconsequential to the plot, but Sa‘id's vehement reaction to it makes it an important detail: “He said bitterly, ‘Don't lie to me. A man who must constantly endure darkness, loneliness and endless waiting can not stand lies’” (103). To Sa‘id this small lie is yet another sign of perfidy by someone he has trusted.

This slip by Nur foreshadows the possibility that she might indeed betray Sa‘id at the end of the novel when she disappears without a trace. She is absent from the action of the text for its last three chapters. Sa‘id discovers that she is gone when her landlady moves into her flat because she has not paid the rent. He contemplates many possible reasons for Nur's disappearance, though neither he nor the reader ever learns what becomes of her. He considers briefly that she may have turned him in: “Here in the warm darkness one burning question became clear to him, ‘Was the promised reward having an effect on Nur?’” (123). The reader is left unsure as to whether or not Nur would turn over to the police the man she has spent the entire novel feeding, sheltering, and loving.

Nur's disappearance, foreshadowed by a little white lie four chapters earlier, raises doubts in the reader. Is Nur loving or is she treacherous? Is she the loyal woman who would defend Sa‘id to the end and disappeared aiding him? Or is she the self-serving prostitute who uses men for money, who turned in Sa‘id for a reward? None of these questions is answered in the text. These points in the novel remain ambiguous while assuring that all of the above solutions are plausible. Because so many stereotypes could possibly describe her if her character were examined only partially, no one stereotype can ever fit her. This reading of Nur as complex and ambiguous is an example of how Mahfouz creates a dynamic character by using but undermining commonly held stereotypes.

Nabawiyya is a more elusive character than Nur. Like Nur, she embodies a contradiction of female stereotypes, though she is an inverted mirror image reflection of her. She begins as the pure and clean wife but becomes, in Sa‘id's mind, the ultimate symbol of infidelity and filth. It is difficult for the reader to get a sense of her character because she is only mentioned in brief and scattered comments throughout the novel. Though her betrayal of Sa‘id is the impetus for many of his actions, the exact nature of her betrayal of him is unclear. In addition, she is never seen in the present action of the text, never speaks, and Sa‘id himself presents two completely opposite pictures of her in his interior monologues. All that the reader knows about Nabawiyya must be gleaned through Sa‘id and then extrapolated from there.

If Nabawiyya has betrayed Sa‘id in the way he suspects, she is a loathsome character. There is a possibility that she did have an affair with his friend and protégé, that they plotted together to have him arrested, that she then took his loot from stealing and used it to set up a new life with her lover after divorcing Sa‘id while he was in jail. The reader, however, never actually knows if this is what happened or if it is yet another paranoid delusion on the part of Sa‘id. The reader also knows nothing about Nabawiyya and Sa‘id's marriage before his arrest, though it becomes clear that he had had some sort of relationship with Nur during his marriage.

To get a clear picture of Nabawiyya's character is difficult because Sa‘id always either idealizes or demonizes her. The positive images of her and their relationship are found in the lengthy descriptions of their courtship, especially in chapter ten of al-Liss wa‘l kilab. These sections of flashbacks and interior monologues present Nabawiyya as a beautiful peasant woman with whom Sa‘id was smitten in an idyllic time in his life, which he refers to as “the palm tree days” (123; when Sa‘id and Nabawiyya were first in love, they used to meet under a certain palm tree). Sa‘id's memories of Nabawiyya from this era emphasize her beauty, purity, and chastity. One example is his recollection of the first time he was brave enough to approach and speak to Nabawiyya, and her brusque reproof: “I do not like disrespectful people without proper manners” (81). This response emphasizes that Nabawiyya is a proper and respectable girl who does not speak in the street to men she does not know. That she would refer to this action on Sa‘id's part as somehow improper, “qullat adab” in Arabic, reinforces her position as such. Sa‘id's attempt to impress her with his own proper manners, “Nor do I like such behavior! Like you, I dislike people who have no respect for others, I believe in beauty, respect, manners and elegance” (81), does not win him any special favors. She goes on to reproach him further for having approached her at all: “… [G]o away, you must go back! The lady I work for sits by the window and will see you if you come one step closer!” (81).

Sa‘id's descriptions of Nabawiyya stress her purity and the traditional nature of their courtship. When Sa‘id decides to actually propose marriage, for example, he uses the language of religion and tradition. It is in a section of contemplation where Sa‘id addresses himself in the second person that the reader learns of this: “… [Y]ou asked her to marry you, you said let's get married and do it in the proper Muslim way following the traditions laid down by God and the prophet Muhammad” (82). When he talks to her in the following section about the life they will share together, none of the bravado and self-delusion that the reader sees in Sa‘id throughout the rest of the text is evident. In this section, Sa‘id seems like an earnest young bridegroom in the most conventional of situations—a sharp contrast to his fugitive's life of darkness, despair, and murder in the present action of the novel. An example is the aftermath of his marriage proposal: “She seemed happy and looked at the ground shyly, her small forehead reflecting the light of the moon. I told her about my good salary, my excellent prospects for the future and my clean ground floor flat in Darrasa …” (82).

It is not only religion and tradition but specifically cleanliness that fills Sa‘id's descriptions of Nabawiyya, as in his description of his first impression of her:

… [A]nd Nabawiyya would come carrying her bowl to go shopping, wearing neat clothes, always more attractively dressed than the other women who were servants like her. This is how I knew she worked for the old Turkish woman who lived alone in a house surrounded by a large garden at the end of the road. She was an elderly and rich woman who insisted that everyone who worked for her be clean, attractive and well-dressed. Nabawiyya always had her hair combed into long braids which flowed all the way down her back. …

(78)

Nabawiyya is not only described as beautiful to the point of idealization by Sa‘id but specifically as cleaner and better dressed than other women who are of a similar class and professional background as she. Sa‘id reinforces here that she is an exceptional woman.

It seems impossible that this clean and pure woman who is described so extensively by Sa‘id could be the same Nabawiyya who is so harshly condemned by him as being the unfaithful traitor who ruined his life. Further, the language he uses in the present action of the text to describe Nabawiyya is often specifically related to her lack of cleanliness. References to Nabawiyya often contain a word meaning either dirt, decay, or filth, as in the very first reference to her in the novel: “… [S]he has forgotten as well, that woman who sprang forth from rot and decay, whose very name means betrayal and treachery” (8).

Who is Nabawiyya? Like Nur she is a character who is left ambiguous by Mahfouz but yet attributed enough characteristics to fit into many categories of stereotypes of women. Nabawiyya is an even more striking example of this than Nur because she is given no dialogue and very few real glimpses of her personality are permitted to emerge. Thus, the contradictory views of her are even more extreme. Because Mahfouz leaves room for speculation about her character while suggesting two contradictory stereotypes of her, the same process is at work in her characterization as that of Nur. Because she is so many things at once in Sa‘id's mind, the reader cannot know who she truly is at all. Thus, both the stereotype of treacherous whore and that of pure and perfect wife totally collapse under scrutiny.

The female characters in al-Liss wa‘l kilab present the reader with a more complex challenge than might initially seem obvious. Much about these characters is not revealed through the course of the novel and is left ambiguous. Though the two main female characters are in some ways the embodiment of stereotypes of women, they are much more complicated. Nur is neither simply a sweet and wronged woman who was forced to be a prostitute, nor clearly a self-serving slut. Nabawiyya is portrayed to be both the sweet and innocent virgin wife, and a perfidious and disloyal wife. Because there is so little information about these women, a close reading raises more questions about them than are answered. What was the exact nature of Nabawiyya and Sa‘id's marital relationship? Were Sa‘id and Nur romantically and/or sexually involved before he went to prison? Did Nabawiyya know? Did Nabawiyya actually turn him over to the police? Is this simply a delusion on the part of Sa‘id? Could Nabawiyya simply be a single mother struggling to raise her daughter alone after her husband was taken off to jail? There are several possible answers to each of these questions and others raised throughout the novel. This is what makes Nabawiyya and Nur ambiguous and complicated characters who emerge from a novelistic world riddled with contradictions. This causes even the stereotypes that seem to fit them to collapse.

The sparse style of this novel, which gives few details and sketchy characterizations of all but the protagonist, makes these women more ambiguous and intriguing. Because this novel is compact and economical in its use of description, the reader knows that each detail has a textual function. The way is thus left clear for creative and expansive readings of the roles and functions of minor characters. Reading the female characters both in and into al-Liss wa‘l kilab is thus a project consistent with its style.

The challenges posed by Mahfouz to female stereotypes can also be read in light of his broader criticisms of society. Mahfouz's al-Liss wa‘l kilab is a modernist literary project confronting the disillusionment many Egyptians felt after the 1952 Egyptian revolution. His exploration of Sa‘id's character, especially insofar as he feels betrayed by the revolution, shows his willingness to examine problems in society and challenge commonly held assumptions. In addition, the detailed investigation into the psyche of a thief who becomes a crazed and deluded murderer shows Mahfouz's interest in marginal characters. One could argue that this interest extends to women in a novel like al-Liss wa‘l kilab, which is mainly concerned with a male protagonist.

I do not wish to suggest that Mahfouz had a feminist project in mind when creating Nabawiyya and Nur, nor that they are perfect examples of empowered women from which generalizations about women in Arabic literature should be drawn. What I will conclude is that Mahfouz defies commonly held stereotypes about women in al-Liss wa‘l kilab by employing stereotypes that contradict and negate each other and thus necessarily collapse. This short study is meant to raise questions about two particular characters, Nabawiyya and Nur, and to suggest a way to read gender in Arabic literature that surpasses simple typologies and discussions of allegory. Part of this project is to question stereotypes of women in the Arabic novel—both in how they are written and in how they are read in/to texts. Re-reading women in/to Arabic literature not only points out some of the deficiencies of traditional interpretations of Arabic novels, but also produces a more nuanced understanding of the function of gender in them.

Notes

1. For examples of this in articles on Mahfouz, see Al-Ashmawi-Abouzeid. See esp. 161–62 for her discussion of the four representational functions of women in Mahfouz. See also El-Sheikh. See esp. 87 for the five types of women he identifies in selected works of Mahfouz.

2. See El Enany, esp. 75. See also Mahmoud (esp. 64) for a discussion of the character Ra‘uf Alwan's symbolic function.

3. All translations mine.

Works Cited

Al-Ashmawi-Abouzeid. La femme et l'Egypte dans l'oeuvre de Naguib Mahfouz, 1939–1967. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1985.

Cooke Miriam. “Men Constructed in the Mirror of Prostitution.” Naguib Mahfouz: From Global Fame to Local Recognition. Ed. Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1993. 106–25.

El Enany, Rashid. “The Novelist as Political Eye-Witness: A View of Najib Mahfuz's Evaluation of Nasser and Sadat Eras.” Journal of Arabic Literature 21.1 (1990): 73–86.

El-Sheikh, Ibrahim. “Egyptian Women as Portrayed in the Social Novels of Naguib Mahfouz.” Critical Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz. Ed. Trevor Le Gassick. Washington, DC: Three Continents, 1991. 85–99.

Mahfouz, Naguib. Al-Liss wa‘l kilab. Cairo: Dar Misr, 1961. Trans. in English by Trevor Le Gassick and M. M. Badawi as The Thief and the Dogs. New York: Anchor, 1989. Originally published by American University Cairo P, 1984.

Mahmoud, Mohamed. “The Unchanging Hero in a Changing World: Najib Mahfouz's al-Liss wa‘l kilab.” The Journal of Arabic Literature 15 (1984): 58–75.