The character of Gamasa Al-Bulti is one of the most interesting ones in all of Arabian Day and Nights. He is first introduced to readers as the chief of police. Gamasa Al-Bulti is shown to be a corrupt government official who has no problem punishing innocent people if it serves his interests to do so.
However, Gamasa Al-Bulti doesn't remain this way throughout the rest of the story. Instead, he happens to meet a genie who attempts to show him the error of his ways. In order to achieve this, the genie causes crime to rise throughout the city. Al-Bulti begins to feel small and defensive, and he ultimately starts to see the error of his ways.
Gamasa Al-Bulti ultimately decides to kill the governor in order to make amends for his previous transgressions. He succeeds in this goal but is sentenced to death. However, before he can die the genie steps in and creates a double for him to be executed in his place. Gamasa Al-Bulti is saved and he gives up his name as a sign of how much he has changed. He becomes Abdullah the Porter and continues his new goal of trying to make the world a better place.
The character of Gamasa al-Bulti is used by Mahfouz to illustrate the complex nature of justice. Though himself a deeply flawed individual, Gamasa justifies his assassination of the quarter's governor on moral grounds, seeing it as a just, proportionate response to his victim's transgressions. The governor was himself a corrupt man, and whatever else we might think about al-Bulti, there's no doubting his sincerity here; he genuinely believes that he's done the world a big favor in carrying out this assassination.
But two wrongs don't make a right. The governor may have been corrupt, but so too is al-Bulti. Before he suffers a similar fate to the one he meted out to the governor, he must be shown the error of his ways, and this is what the genie Singam sets out to do. Yet even after receiving such a stern moral lesson from the genie, and even after being reduced to the humble condition of a mere porter, al-Bulti is still prepared to resort to extreme measures for what he perceives to be the general good. This would appear to suggest the impossibility in this society of achieving justice in the formal legal sense.
Gamasa Al-Bulti is the police chief under the Governor Khalil al-Hamadhani. Al-Bulti is a corrupt man who punishes innocent people and arrests his friend Sanaan Al-Gamali but who does not recognize that he himself has an evil side. Al-Bulti's main function is to serve his superiors rather than to mete out justice.
A genie named Singam decides to acquaint Al-Bulti with the error of his ways. Singam helps Al-Bulti to recognize his own corruptness by causing crimes to erupt across the city, making Al-Bulti feel futile and wounded. As Mahfouz writes, "He was angry about being insulted and his strong and defiant nature took control of him. His tendencies toward good became submerged and disappeared to faraway depths." In other words, the genie causes Al-Bulti to feel defensive, and, after feeling wounded, Al-Bulti resolves to do good and change his evil ways. When Singam asks Al-Bulti what his wish is, Al-Bulti responds that he wants to "destroy criminals and rule the nation with purity and justice."
To make up for his past errors, Al-Bulti decides to kill the governor, Khalil al-Hamadhani, as he believes that killing the corrupt governor is justified. After he carries out the killing, he is sentenced to die. However, at the last minute, the genie, Singam, saves Al-Bulti by creating a double who is executed. Al-Bulti witnesses his double being killed, and Singam explains, "You are alive—all they killed was a likeness of my making." The death of Al-Bulti's double symbolizes his turn to righteousness. Al-Bulti becomes a mad prophet named Abdullah the Porter, also called Gamasa II, who tries to rid the world of corruption and evil.
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