“What a lot of graves there are laid out as far as the eye can see. Their headstones are like hands raised in surrender, though they are beyond being threatened by anything. A city of silence and truth, where success and failure, murderer and victim come together, where thieves and policeman lie side by side in peace for the first and last time”
This quote is the most beautiful description of something as dark and dreadful as death. Death is often referred to as surrendering- surrendering to the inevitable. The headstones raised in surrender are symbols of the bodies lying beneath them and how those bodies succumbed to the inevitable.
I love how Naguib Mahfouz describes the graveyard as a city with complete opposites residing in harmony. You know, I guess I never really thought about death that way- the only thing that truly unifies all people is death. It does not matter who you are or what you do or who you know, we will all experience death.
“Suddenly, he was assailed by light. It shone all around him, so powerful that it struck him with the force of a blow, making him shut his eyes.”
This quote by itself may seem unimportant, but it has value- I swear! The context of this particular quote is when Said tried to rob Rauf and Rauf turned on the light. Said had been caught. This quote occurs in one other place: the very end of the book….
“And suddenly there was a blinding light over the whole area…and the light spread all around like the sun.”
This blinding light occurred in the graveyard during the pursuit of Said. Helicopters and flashlights were being shone all around him. The police were on the manhunt!
These two quotes are good, but together, they are genius! In both instances, the blinding light was in the context of Said getting caught. One would think the first blinding light would have turned him around, but he never slowed down. There is a lot of irony in these quotes considering he never changed his ways. The light never stayed bright, at the end the light faded into eternal darkness.
“How did you spend your time?”
“Between the graves and the shadows.”
Here, Nur is trying to carry on a conversation with Said after a hard day on the job. The phrase “between the graves and the shadows” is a foreshadowing to Said’s destiny. At the end of the novel, Said’s final breath is between the graves and shadows of the cemetery he and Nur had admired. It’s a bittersweet for-telling of Said’s final moments.
