Men become victims of their misplaced trust in false friends Essay

Men become victims of their misplaced trust in false friends - Essay Example It is about the story of a prisoner, Gregory, who places complete trust in the friendship of his enemy. Gregory was given two chances to escape to save his own life but he fails to run away. Gregory is materialistic. He cares only for his present which is comfortable enough for him. He does not realize his friend must obey his superior and that means that his friend will kill him. Gregory is shot but he does not die immediately. He hangs on to his friend for life or for death. His friend is forced to shoot him several times in order to make a clean killing. His friend honors Gregory by not humiliating his body with a public hanging. Gregory thinks that his friend has breached his trust by shooting him. His soldier friend blames Gregory's stupidity for his death.Nabil Gorgy wrote Cairo Is a Small City in 1983. This story is about Engineer Adil Salim, who is killed in revenge for his murder of a bedouin man, Mubarak bin Rabia. Adil is a proud man who has a big ego. He thinks of himself being intelligent because he is educated as an engineer. He makes the false overture of drawing attention to himself by his blatant courtship of a beautiful bedouin girl named Salma. He is watched and recognized as the murderer of Mubarak. The bedouins plot their vengeance craftily. They are above reproach as they use the girl, Salma, as bait to ensnare Adil. Adil falls into their trap and is killed. Adil is a victim of his own carelessness, ego, lust, stupidity and trusting nature. Cairo Is a Small City uses an omniscient narrator. This essay uses these two short stories to compare the similarities on how trust is betrayed. The essay takes the position that the two victims, Gregory and Adil, deserve to die, because of the fault of gullible trust in their personal characters. Adil trusted in the shopkeeper's strategy of befriending the woman because he saw that it worked. Gorgy and the omniscient narrator want to blame the shopkeeper for showing Adil the flirtatious method of bartering for the woman's affections. The narration says; '...had it not been for that day, Adil's mind would not have given birth to the plan he was determined, whatever the cost, to put through, because of that woman who had bewitched his heart.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 24). Adil does not question the consequences if the trust goes wrong. He is gullible and the fault is his alone. Adil trusted in his own bravery. The evidence that supports this argument is in the narration; ''As every man, according to Adil's philosophy of life, had within him a devil, it was sometimes better to follow this devil in order to placate him and avoid his tyranny.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 24). When Salma's father asks Adil many questions, alarm bells started ringing in his head but Adil chooses to ign ore the feeling that something might be wrong. Instead, Adil sweeps the feeling of misgiving away. The narrator says; 'Though Adil noticed in the father's tone something more than curiosity, he attributed this to the nature of the bedouin and their traditions.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 27). Adil makes the mistake of taking the interrogation lightly. He places complete trust in Salma and her father who have invited him to their home. It is his mistake. Adil only realizes too late that his trust is misplaced; 'In the same way as Adil had previously built the seven storey building that represented the seven months, each month containing twenty-eight days, till he would see Salma's face whenever it was full moon, he likewise sensed that this was the tribunal which had been set up to make an enquiry with him into the killing of the man whom he had one day come across on the tracks between the oases of Kharga and Farshout.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 27). Adil was too trusting to walk into the lion's lair of the bedouins and he was served his punishment. In the story of Gregory, the narrator and