This summarizes the Sufi quest of not just seeking a union with the Divine Being, but the realization of the truth that the mystic is one with the Divine. To teach this, the Sufi poets used the imagery of the lover and beloved in the love poetry or romances. According to Hujwiri, the first Sufi in India, he who is purified by love is pure, and he who is absorbed in the Beloved and has abandoned all else is a Sufi. Attack on fossilized religious institutions; only certain figures such as artists (musicians, the calligrapher) and the drunk seem to be in contact with the truth symbolized by Zaabalawi. An allegory hinting at the possible human significance of religion and its supposedly transcendental symbols; an attempt to redefine God in human, social, and earthly terms. In Mahfouz's vision those who only seek personal gain and profit are distanced from the truth and genuine fulfillment; the happiness of the individual can only come through social engagement and contact with others, the merging of the self into a harmonious human collectivity. In awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Mahfouz, the Swedish Academy of Letters noted that "through works rich in nuance -- now clearsight only realistic, now evocatively ambiguous -- [Mahfouz] has formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind." According to John C. Hawley, “In the progression of his many books, Mahfouz’s faith in rationalism gradually softens, and he portrays the everlasting hunger for God (lying beneath the tendency toward grasping false gods)”. Likewise, the unnamed protagonist's desperate quest for Sheikh Zaabalawi is an allegory of modern man's futile search for God within a corrupt world where humanity has surrendered to materialism long ago. Rasheed El-Enany's definition of Mahfouz's attitude towards religion and God reads as follows: “... the totality of [Mahfouz’s] work appears to communicate a rejection of all forms of institutionalised religion while retaining belief in the abstract idea of God-a version of deism”. Indeed, the scene depicting the protagonist's inquiry of the bookseller in front of the Birgawi Residence where Zaabalawi once lived confirmed El-Enany's idea in that the deserted building now looks like a wasteland, occupied only by heaps of rubbish. In Mahfuzian terms the ruined residence stands for the present plight of modern man left without shelter, forsaken by God.