Arabian Nights and Days Response

One of the questions that human beings have wrestled with from the beginning of time is the dotted line between justice and injustice. In Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Arabian Nights and Days he uses countless stories and examples to explore this question. I took a class last semester called “In Search of Justice” and left the class feeling like all it did was raise unanswerable questions.  I came out of the class with less confidence in my personal beliefs about justice than I went into the class with. I therefore found Mahfouz’s discussion and representations of justice and injustice particularly fascinating. 

            I believe that it is often hard to distinguish the difference between unlawful acts and unjust acts. Mahfouz played on this dynamic repeatedly in the novel and forced the reader to try and determine the ‘righteousness’ of a persons acts for him or her self instead of making it obvious who in the novel is ‘good’ and who is ‘bad’. If I attempted to discuss all of the dimensions that Mahfouz uses in the novel to explore the idea of Justice this paper would probably be longer than the novel itself. I am therefore going to focus in on the two ideas that stuck out to me as the most powerful and interesting. First the idea of what I would call ‘Robin Hood Justice’ and second the idea of justice in relationship to divine orchestration.

            I would define ‘Robin Hood Justice’ as not only robbing from the rich to give to the poor, but also as doing unlawful or ‘wrong’ acts for the right reasons or with righteous motives.  At one point the Skeikh describes Fadil Sanaan saying, “He is waging war against error to the extent of his ability” (p. 167). I found this statement very interesting, because the Skeikh does not exactly condemn or applaud Fadil’s actions, but he does seem to think him a righteous man, because he has the right motives. I found it interesting that it is possible for a persons motives in doing an action to be more important than the act itself in determining how just or unjust the action was.  In the beginning sections of the novel Gamasa al-Bulti assassinates the governor of the quarter, but instead of feeling remorse for the murder he tells “himself that he was now practicing a form of worship whose purity would wash clean the filth of long years of dissipation” (p. 47).  This section is reinforced in the following two sections where Gamasa al-Bulti returns as the Porter and as Abdullah and continues to carry out murders, supposable for the good of the quarter. These sections caused me to reflect at great length on whether or not Gamasa al-Bulti was a good, righteous man or an evil man. He was removing corrupt and evil men from power, which is itself a good thing to do and he also seemed to have pure motives with most of his killings. However, at the same time he was breaking the law and murdering men.  I personally think that unlawful acts can be just acts, however, I do not know if there is a way to draw a line as to what makes an act just or unjust. Pondering these ideas makes me grateful that we as Christians are not required to judge others and are instead suppose to live by the laws set down for us by the scriptures and leave judgment of others to God. If motives really do weigh into the justice of an act, we do not have any capability to judge that.

            There is also a strong theme of characters actions being controlled by God or gods in the novel. The characters often blame their actions on supernatural interference and leave many things in the hands of the supernatural. Almost all of the many murders and assassinations that take place are done in the name of God and often even considered acts of worship. Right before Fadil is executed he says to Sahloul “I want justice” (p. 193). Sahloul responds to this by simply saying, “God does what He wishes” (p. 193). This simple statement really struck me, because although the characters had been heavily calling upon God for the entire novel, I had never considered how God might play out his justice in what he allows to happen. When I think of God’s judgment and justice I tend to think of it in terms of judgment day and do not really think about how God may be actively playing out his justice in our daily lives. However, this idea also raises the question of why God allows injustices if he is acting out his judgment and justice in todays world.

            Over all Mahfouz did an incredible job of raising questions to engage his readers. Especially in respects to justice issues.   I do not feel as though I came away from reading the novel with any more answers, but I also think that sometimes realizing how little we really understand is more beneficial than gaining understanding.