The Thief and the Dogs

As a young man, Ilwan was a writer and a revolutionary. He preached on behalf of the working classes against the rich and powerful elites who ran life in Cairo. Ilwan's words had a profound effect on Said, a young thief who was searching for a meaning in life. According to Ilwan's view of the world, Said was not just stealing from the rich. Instead, his crimes were part of a justified war against the wealthy class. When Said is released from prison, however, he discovers that Ilwan has become exactly one of the rich and powerful people that he always claimed to hate. Ilwan lives in a big house with servants and writes an important column in a local newspaper. While Said has not changed in prison, the world outside is now unrecognizable. Ilwan's change from revolutionary to member of the elite is the perfect embodiment of this change, and foreshadows Said’s own eventual abandonment of his ideals.

Said views Ilwan as both a personal and ideological traitor. By becoming a member of the elite, Ilwan has undermined his own earlier revolutionary talk. The ideological foundation for Said's existence disappears once it seems that Ilwan is perfectly happy to change his mind. The effect of this is profound, as Said is robbed of a justification for his criminality, a crucial remaining piece of his identity. While Ilish might betray Said on a more literal level, Ilwan's betrayal cuts deeper as it reveals an inherent hypocrisy in Said's life. Like everyone else, Ilwan was only saying what benefited him most in the moment. There is no greater purpose or cause, Ilwan's betrayal suggests, other than immediate self-fulfillment. Ilwan is portrayed as the worst of Said’s traitors because he robs Said of a greater reason for existence.

Nur is a prostitute who knew Said before he went to prison. She has loved him for many years but Said's marriage to Nabawiyya meant that she could not be with him. Following his release from prison, Nur hopes that she might be able to convince Said to love her. She allows him to stay in her home while he is on the run from the law and she provides him with food and affection when he is at his lowest point. She also helps him commit crimes. Nur makes herself complicit because she is devoted to Said. Not only does she love him, but she sees him as an escape from her tragic life. She does not want to continue to be a prostitute and she worries that her looks will fade as she ages and she will have nothing left. Her attachment to Said is just as much about desperation as it is about love; she loves him just as much as she loathes her own life. By dedicating herself to him, she hopes to escape her misery and find salvation in the arms of a man she once loved.

However, Nur falls victim to the same pattern of behavior as Mahfouz’s other characters. She may have loved Said once, but the Said she knew before prison was quite different to the Said who emerges after prison. Now, Said thinks only about revenge and is unable to think about romantic relationships. He is so focused on avenging himself against the people that betrayed him that he ignores Nur's outpouring of affection. Nur becomes another victim in Said's campaign for vengeance, even as she represents Said’s best hope for reinventing himself after his imprisonment. While he might not kill her, Said’s inescapable march toward a tragic death takes away the one hope she had left. Nur's chances of escaping her life die with Said, meaning that she may be stuck in her same unsatisfying life forever.

Ilish Sidra is a former thief who has turned himself into a respectable member of the community. He has achieved this thanks to Said's downfall. When Said went to prison, Ilish used his close relationship with Nabawiyya to steal all the money Said accumulated throughout his criminal career. Said views this maneuver as a betrayal, while Ilish tells people that he is acting honorably by providing an escape for Nabawiyya and her daughter after Said was arrested and thrown in jail.

Like Said, Ilish chooses to believe that he is acting in a moral fashion. While Said convinces himself that his violent spree is a justified war against the rich and powerful, Ilish convinces himself that his decision to marry Nabawiyya was based on a duty to his former friend's wife. He tells people that he is acting honorably by marrying a woman whose husband is now in prison. Rather than honor, Ilish is motivated by greed. His lack of loyalty is because he values Said's money over Said's friendship. Ilish's delusions are as powerful as Said's delusions and demonstrate that both men prefer their own lies to reality, as these lies allow them to frame themselves as heroes rather than the villains that they know themselves to be. Said was Ilish's mentor, so their similar behavior demonstrates how Ilish learned more from Said than mere criminality. He learned how to justify criminality to himself and to present himself as the hero.

Once Said's wife, Nabawiyya is now married to Ilish. Said feels strongly that Nabawiyya betrayed him because although they were once partners in crime, she escaped prison and became free to marry Ilish. In Said's view, Nabawiyya was complicit in his crimes but not in his punishment. He blames her for benefiting from his criminality but suffering none of the consequences, which adds to his belief that he has been unfairly persecuted for his crimes.

After an appearance at the beginning of the novel, Nabawiyya fades into the background. Said focuses his rage on Ilish and Ilwan, though he never forgives Nabawiyya for her betrayal. While he wants to kill the other people who betrayed him, he is happy enough to allow Nabawiyya to live in constant fear that he might attack her. He views this fear as punishment enough for her betrayal, making the concession to let Nabawiyya live on the behalf of their daughter, Sana. Though he never forgives Nabawiyya, Said offers her this concession based on his own selfishness. He does not want to raise Sana himself, as he still feels that child rearing is Nabawiyya's responsibility. Instead, he will allow his daughter to be raised by a woman who constantly fears for her life. To Said, this is a benevolent act.

Sana is Said's estranged daughter. On his first day of freedom, he visits Sana but she rejects him. She breaks down in tears when she sees him and she cannot understand her true relationship to him, as Said has been in prison for most of Sana's life. Despite this, she occupies a key role in Said's psyche. He views her as the justification for his actions. Even though she rejected him, he believes that he can win her love by avenging himself against the people who betrayed him. Sana becomes an objective in Said's mind, as winning his daughter’s love becomes the most important part of his plan. Like all of Said's delusions, however, this cornerstone of his plan quickly gives way to a selfish desire for revenge.

Just like Said is not present in Sana's life, Sana is not present in the narrative. After the distressing scene at the beginning of the novel Sana disappears is not seen again, although she is mentioned often by Said. Sana becomes reduced to an abstract idea, a character motivation for her father. Said has no relationship with his daughter but he deludes himself into believing that they have a special bond. He feels entitled to her affection because of their biological relationship even though he has done nothing to fulfil his role as her father. Sana becomes another victim of Said's delusion, losing any potential relationship with a father who treats her as an excuse for his own immoral behavior rather than as a daughter.