The Thief and the Dogs

"But only shameful deeds can shame a man."

Ilish feels guilty about his obvious betrayal of Said by marrying Nabawiyya. When Said is released, Ilish's guilt manifests in self-serving idioms. He speaks in cliched phrases to try and convince Said not to seek revenge. Ilish’s use of idiom echoes the cryptic statements of the Sufi mystic, aligning Ilish and the Sheikh as two possible options for Said’s sense of moral right. Said must decide for himself how he will define shameful or justified deeds.

"You have not come out of jail."

The Sheikh speaks in cryptic phrases and Said must peel back the layers of metaphor to understand what the religious man means. Here, the Sheik diagnoses Said's problem instantly: Said may have physically left the jail, but he is still imprisoned by his emotional state. Said wants revenge and this desire for vengeance traps him in a position. He will not be able to escape his tragic fate without escaping first from the prison of his emotional state. The Sheikh implies that Said must abandon his desire for revenge if he is to be free.

"And now you've come out of prison to find a new world."

When he leaves prison, Said is convinced that the experience has not changed him. His previous feelings of paranoia and betrayal are still within him, though they have become more serious. But while Said has not changed, the outside world has moved on. Much to his shock, Said discovers a new world outside of prison, a world which has left him behind.

"But the dawn shed dewy compassion giving momentary solace for the loss of everything, even the two banknotes, and he surrendered to it."

Said acknowledges that, though individuals can change, the natural world is still as powerful as it ever was. He willingly surrenders himself to the dawn and allows the light to pour over him in a demonstration of the immensity of nature. While Said has his grudges against people, he knows that he is a tiny and irrelevant individual in a larger, powerful natural world.

"Somehow they're giving expression to my own situation, in a manner as shapeless and strange as the mysteries of that night." 

Said's struggles to see the world through anything other than the lens of his own existence. As a result, he relates everything to his current emotional state. The strangers' conversation that Said overhears cannot exist on its own merits. Instead, he decides that the strangers are providing a perfect encapsulation of his own predicament, even as he marvels at the possibility.

"Have you ever found it easy to change your job?"

Said responds to Nur's gentle criticism with a stinging rebuke about her life as a prostitute. However, the comment is both an insult and a confession. Said is admitting that he cannot change, suggesting that he is trapped in an impossible position from which he cannot escape. He subconsciously empathizes with Nur's tragic plight as he knows the feeling of being trapped in a never-ending cycle of tragedy. While Said is trying to insult Nur, he accidently reveals his own regrets and fears.

"I've enclosed you in a punishment greater than death; fear of death, the unrelenting terror."

Said is delighted that he has trapped Nabawiyya in a paranoid state. In his imagination, she will not be able to live a normal life because she will be in constant fear of death. He is describing his own existence: he is trapped in a paranoid state, unable to escape the "unrelenting terror" of his constant need for revenge, which is his only source of meaning.

"And therefore he loved the dawn, which he associated with the singing of the prayer-call, the deep blue sky, the smile of the approaching sunrise, and that unremembered joy."

Said's nostalgia is a complicated tangle of misremembered youth. One of his fondest memories is waiting up all night and witnessing the dawn. However, Said cannot remember the promised reward which kept him up all night. Said never achieves any revenge against the people who betrayed him, but he relishes the constant loathing he harbors against them. Just as he remembers the waiting, rather than the reward, he savors the hatred rather than the catharsis that acting upon it might bring. By contrast, Said fails to consider that the meaning of life may not be derived from the achievement of arbitrary goals.

"I've tried to solve part of the riddle, but have only succeeded in unearthing an even greater one."

Said is frustrated by the Sheikh’s cryptic responses to his questions. This frustration extends to Said's existential crisis. As he searches for meaning in his life, his minor actions only serve to unearth a deeper misunderstanding about existence. The more he tries to resolve his inner tensions, the more tensions he uncovers. To Said, life is a series of smaller riddles which reveal the existence of the even greater and more incomprehensible riddle that is life.

"I have no people."

Said frequently insists that he is alone, refusing to acknowledge Nur or Tarzan, and ignoring the friendship and support that they want to provide to him. If he wanted, Said could rely on people like Nur to support and love him, but he rejects their affections. When Said insists that he is alone, he reveals how much his isolation is self-imposed.

"Beware of sympathy!"

Said refuses to engage in sincere relationships or accept affection from others because he believes that doing so will inevitably lead to betrayal. For example, he warns himself about Nur's sympathy and does not allow himself to open up to her because of his paranoia. Said prohibits himself from real companionship because he is overwhelmed by the fear of being betrayed.

"If only a deceit could be as plainly read in the face as fever or an infectious disease!"

Said begins to feel as though deceit and betrayal are actual diseases which can be transferred from person to person. Said’s fear of betrayal is characterized here as fear of an undetectable threat. This portrayal echoes Said’s existential fear, and his inability to determine answers for his existential questions.

"He was the very center of the news, the man of the hour, and the thought filled him with both apprehension and pride, conflicting emotions that were so intense they almost tore him apart."

Said's sudden fame as a murderer is an ironic twist. The coverage in the newspaper allows Said to view himself as an agent justice, taking on the establishment using violence. Though Said is wanted by the police, he is delighted to see that people are paying attention to him. He turns this delight into a justification for his crimes, excusing his immorality on the basis of his newfound fame, failing to distinguish fame from infamy.

"All you graves out there, immersed in the gloom, don't jeer at my memories!"

The way Said looks at the graveyard reveals the extent of his paranoia. Said believes that the dead are mocking him. His insecure feelings and his paranoia grow until every silent grave is a potential enemy, out to make fun of him, symbolically suggesting that death itself is ridiculing Said’s life.

"I just want to sleep safe and secure, wake up feeling good, and have a quiet, pleasant time."

As Said begins to see himself as an ideologically driven folk hero, Nur's ambitions remain grounded. After a difficult life, she wants to be safe and happy. These limited ambitions are not out of reach. If Said were able to connect with her, then they may be able to settle down together and create a satisfying existence.

"If there's going to be any meaning to life--and to death, too--I simply have to kill you."

Said's journey has given his life purpose, but only at the expense of others. Said's internal monologue charts his constant need to justify his actions to himself. Unable to commit to or define a system of meaning, Said is left desperate to draw meaning exclusively from his vendetta.

"After that let come what may."

The further Said goes in his quest for revenge, the less the consequences matter to him. At the beginning of the novel, Said envisions a clean course of action in which he eliminates his enemies and escapes into the night. As time goes by, however, the thought of escape vanishes from his thoughts. He begins to accept that his life will end with his revenge against his enemies. He stops caring about the consequences of his actions and gives himself entirely over to the idea of vengeance.

"It's senseless all of it, a waste."

Said knows that the murders are a "senseless" waste of effort and human life. Said confronts the possibility that existence is a trivial and meaningless exercise but he still cannot bring himself to give up his desire for revenge. Said's desire for purpose is so strong that he can convince himself that his actions have meaning, even when he explicitly states that they do not.

"Whoever kills me will be killing the millions. I am the hope and the dream, the redemption of cowards."

Said begins to view himself as a savior of society, imbuing his actions with a glorious purpose which exists entirely in his mind. Said's delusions are enabled by Ilwan's newspaper, showing how both parties use their personal vendettas to exacerbate the problems in society. Neither Said nor Ilwan are acting in good faith or for the betterment of society. Instead, both men delude themselves into thinking that they are the only moral person in an immoral world.

"I didn't mean to harm him!"

Said rejects responsibility for killing the innocent bystander on the basis that the murder was unintentional. Said's delusions of grandeur reach their natural conclusion, allowing him to disregard the consequences of his actions because he believes that he is working for a moral cause. Instead of a fixed spectrum of good and evil deeds, Said conforms his sense of morality to justify his actions retroactively.

"He consumed them all, ravenously gnawing on the bones like a dog, then spent the rest of the whole day wondering why she had not returned, wondering if she ever would."

Said spends most of the novel raging against the so-called dogs which betrayed him. By the end of the novel, however, the language shows how the desire for revenge has turned him into one of the dogs he loathes. Said's transformation into a dog-like creature suggests that vengeance can be all-consuming, eventually turning Said into the very thing that he hates.

"I will turn my face to the wall."

Said turns his face to the wall in a metaphorical illustration of his relationship with the rest of the world. Now completely overcome by his desire for revenge, he refuses to acknowledge the moral implications of his actions. He has murdered two people, but still believes that he is the hero of his own story. He turns away from reality just as he turns away from the room.

"Memories of hopes once bright shook off the dust of oblivion and flashed with life again."

Said's situation becomes increasingly desperate. All that he has left are the memories of a simpler, more innocent time. He retreats into these memories to escape the horror of his current situation. Just as Said turns to the wall to avoid facing reality, he turns to his pleasant memories to avoid his unpleasant present. Memories of hopeful times become an escape for a man facing seemingly inevitable capture and execution.