Reflective Statement: The Thief and the Dogs

The Thief and the Dogs took place in a country I knew very little of. I’d been interested in Egyptian mythology since a younger age, but that wasn’t even close to life in modern Egypt. I didn’t know much about how people were treated based on their genders, religions, or affiliations, and knew nothing of their laws at the time.

As I read the book, I began to learn about the Egyptian culture during the 1950s.  In the text, there were references to the 1952 Revolution in Egypt, and other events and leaders of the time.

Our interactive oral did not necessarily address the current political situations in Egypt, but instead involved a lot of the laws and gender roles. Our class created a model court, where the rightful custodian of Sana was to be chosen by the judge. Each student took the role of either a character, an advocate, the judge, or a UN representative. Being one of the UN representatives, my duty was to make sure the session was faithful to the Declaration of Human Rights. This duty was very beneficial for me because I had to research this Declaration, along with the laws of 1950s’ Egypt.

We generally researched child custody laws, and discovered that the mother has the right to keep her child until the child is of a certain age. But this rule becomes unimportant if the mother has done something against the law. The fact that Nabawiya, Said’s former wife, cheated on him with Ilish Sidra, meant that she could not keep Sana.

The overall process fit the articles of the Declaration of Human Rights, and was very ethical. The only problems were that some witnesses did not get balanced interviews from both sides, and this might come off as unfair. Perhaps our research of Egyptian courts could be more in-depth and detailed.  I was never really familiar with processes in a courtroom, so I would have liked to do more research on that.

The model court was a great experience because although it got frustrating at times, it was a realistic debate situation where you had to listen to everybody carefully to catch any flaws in what the witnesses and advocates say. Overall the process was very useful because I got to learn about a different culture’s laws, which helped grow my understanding of the book itself.