Art,Humanity and Spirituality versus Science in an Arab World
...e numerous oppositions this narrator to this strong belief in a spiritual cure to his physical ailment, he persists in his beliefs and is a better person for it. In Zaabalawi, Mahfouz makes a commentary on the disruption of the Islamic culture due to the intrusion of the Western culture. Mahfouz laments the overriding of basic human values like human sympathy and spirituality due to the influx of the alien Western civilization. Mahfouz highlights the progessive loss of humanity, which is present in the narrator's quest for his cure and the prophet, Zaabalawi. Lawall chronicles the narrator's movements and shows a gradual move from Westernized to traditional Arabic culture (1). First, the narrator meets his late father's friend who is ostensibly more concerned with what he can get out of their encounter. When his 'friend' finds out that the narrator is no there as a client, he loses interest and does not volunteer any more inf...