I'm reading another of Mahfouz's books, Children of the Alley, and I came across a line that seemed familiar:

Gabal found that he was not one person, as he had imagined he was all his life; he was two people. One of them believed in loyalty to his mother and the other wondered bewilderedly, "What about the Al Hamdan?" (106).

Gabal is a character that is supposed to be an allegorical figure for Moses, and he is torn between his loyalty to the woman who adopted him as a baby (and happens to be the wife of the person in charge), and the people he is related to in blood (who, like the Israelites, are persecuted).

This reminded me of the conversation Riyad and Kamal have in Sugar Street, when Riyad says:

Politics has recently handed me a new puzzle similar to the one I've had with religion. I have spurned religion with my intellect and yet from ethnic loyalty have felt sympathetic to it with my heart. In exactly the same way, I will spurn the Wafd with my heart and feel sympathetically inclined toward it with my intellect. If I say I'm a Wafdist, I betray my heart. If I say I'm opposed to the Wafd, I cheat my intellect. It's a catastrophe I never dreamed of. Apparently Copts are destined to live forever with split personalities. If all of us were a single individual, he would go mad (229).

While Riyad seems to see his split personality as necessary and Gabal finds his as difficult, Mahfouz is good at portraying the dichotomies of many of his characters (not just Riyad and Gabal) as something they need but are challenged by.

These dichotomies are not always between the secular and spiritual, or the body and the soul, as in Riyad's case. Like Gabal, many of Mahfouz's characters have difficulty reconciling two parts of their identity. Kamal stands out as the character whose constant internal struggle is revealed, and he seems to have abandoned his spiritual side, although his main dichotomy ends up being between not believing in anything, and really wanting to believe in something.

Kamal seems to really admire his two nephews Ahmad and Abd al-Muni'm for their strong beliefs in their separate causes, even though he doesn't really support either one. As the book progresses, it becomes obvious that Kamal has really begun to regret his lack of beliefs, and we see him fight with himself to marry Budur, and fail, but then tell Ridwan that he should get married if there is nothing to prevent it.

At the end of the book (and the end of the trilogy), Kamal is thinking of something Ahmad had said about his own beliefs, and says that

I feel obliged to advocate their highest ideals as long as I believe them to be true, since shrinking from that would be a cowardly evasion of duty. I also see myself compelled to revolt against ideals I believe to be false, since recoiling from this rebellion would be a form of treason (308).

It is here that Kamal recognizes that his lack of belief has been nothing but "an evasion of responsibility." But what is most appealing about Ahmad's strong convictions may be that it seems to be an answer to the dichotomy, since Ahmad claims to revolt against any ideas that would question or challenge his beliefs, thus making a clear choice of what is necessary, instead of constantly struggling between the two.