The narrator is struck by an incurable disease causing relentless anxiety, insomnia, and restlessness that ordinary medicine cannot treat.

Song lyrics from the narrator's childhood mention Zaabalawi, a holy man, sparking the decision to seek him out as a cure.

The narrator resolves to find Zaabalawi, remembering that the holy man once healed his father of a terrible affliction.

The narrator visits Sheikh Qamar, a lawyer in religious courts, because his father had once met Zaabalawi inside Qamar's home.

Sheikh Qamar reluctantly provides the address of Zaabalawi's former home before ushering the narrator out of his office.

The narrator arrives at Zaabalawi's old address in Al Azhar and finds the building abandoned and used as a local dump.

Most shopkeepers in the district dismiss Zaabalawi as a charlatan and advise the narrator to seek conventional medical help instead.

The district magistrate confirms that Zaabalawi is still alive and draws the narrator a detailed map to help continue the search.

Calligrapher Hassanein confirms he was once a close friend of Zaabalawi and that the holy man inspired his finest works of art.

Composer Sheikh Gad warmly confirms that Zaabalawi has visited him before, though he does not know when the holy man will return.

Sheikh Gad directs the narrator to Negma Bar on Alfi Street, where Hagg Wanas al-Damanhouri may have knowledge of Zaabalawi.

At Negma Bar, Wanas refuses to speak about Zaabalawi until the narrator becomes as drunk as he is.

After drinking deeply with Wanas, the narrator slips into a dream of an idyllic garden where everything exists in perfect harmony.

The narrator wakes from his dream to learn that Zaabalawi was present, sat beside him while he slept, and has already departed.

The narrator returns to Negma Bar the following evening but Zaabalawi does not appear, and the narrator vows to keep searching.

An unnamed narrator suffers from a mysterious, incurable illness and recalls that a holy man named Zaabalawi once cured his father, setting him on a search through Cairo. He begins with a lawyer named Sheikh Qamar, who knew Zaabalawi years ago and provides a starting address, though the former home turns out to be a ruin. The narrator works through the city district by district, encountering shopkeepers who mock Zaabalawi as a fraud and a magistrate who confirms the holy man is alive. He gradually draws closer through a calligrapher and a composer, both of whom knew Zaabalawi personally, until he is directed to a bar where a drunkard named Wanas is said to be in contact with him. After drinking until he passes out and experiencing a transcendent dream, the narrator wakes to find Zaabalawi was present and has already gone, leaving him to resume his search with renewed but uncertain hope.

The narrator's full quest to find Zaabalawi and be cured.

As a child, the narrator asks his father who Zaabalawi is, and his father hesitates as though doubting the boy can understand.

Sheikh Qamar's lavishly furnished office and self-satisfied bearing make a strong impression on the narrator upon arrival.

Qamar's manner turns noticeably cool when he realizes the narrator is not a paying client, though he praises the narrator's father.

The narrator leaves Sheikh Qamar's office so overwhelmed with shame that he can barely register the sounds around him.

At Zaabalawi's former home, the narrator meets a vendor selling old books on theology and Islamic mysticism from the building's doorway.

The book vendor recalls Zaabalawi warmly from his own youth but has no knowledge of the holy man's current whereabouts.

The district magistrate warns the narrator that Zaabalawi likely moves among beggars and would be nearly impossible to pick out.

The owner of a small ironing shop points the narrator toward a calligrapher named Hassanein who may have knowledge of Zaabalawi.

Hassanein laments to the narrator that he has not encountered Zaabalawi in a long time.

A lupine vendor on the street directs the narrator to the famous composer Sheikh Gad as someone acquainted with Zaabalawi.

Sheikh Gad plays his lute and sings freely for the narrator even though Zaabalawi is not present during the visit.

When the narrator says he has come in vain, Sheikh Gad firmly rebukes him for failing to value their chance encounter.

The narrator finds Wanas sitting alone at Negma Bar, surrounded by four mirrors, gazing at his own reflection with wine-flushed contentment.

The narrator demands Wanas send someone to stop Zaabalawi from leaving the bar, but the holy man is already gone.

Wanas tells the narrator he must leave to sell his cotton stock, and the narrator hears nothing more from him afterward.

The narrator's quest is shaped as much by the people he meets along the way as by the destination itself. His first stop at Sheikh Qamar's opulent chambers reveals a city where wealth has crowded out spiritual feeling, and the narrator's shame at being treated like an intruder sets an anxious tone for what follows. Moving deeper into the old district, he gathers scraps of information from a nostalgic book vendor, a warning from the magistrate, and a trail of street vendors who point him from one craftsman to the next. The calligrapher Hassanein and the composer Sheikh Gad each receive him with growing warmth, and Gad's rebuke when the narrator calls the visit wasted marks a turning point in his emotional attitude. The final trial at Negma Bar introduces Wanas, a figure surrounded by mirrors and wine, whose refusal to help until the narrator drinks forces a confrontation with the narrator's own resistance—ending in frustration when Zaabalawi slips away before the narrator can speak with him.

The encounters and details that texture the narrator's search through Cairo.

The narrator recognizes that his current illness, unlike every previous ailment, resists all conventional medical cures available to him.

The narrator recalls that his father was once cured of a terrible affliction by the holy man Zaabalawi long ago.

Some shopkeepers remember Zaabalawi fondly from earlier times but are entirely unable to say where he can be found today.

The district magistrate suggests to the narrator that Zaabalawi may be found among the places where dervishes perform their spiritual rites.

The narrator arrives at calligrapher Hassanein's workshop to find him carefully painting the word 'Allah' in silver with focused reverence.

Sheikh Gad greets the narrator with open warmth and does not ask what brought him, reflecting a deeper spiritual generosity.

Sheikh Gad tells the narrator that Zaabalawi is the epitome of all things musical, hinting at the holy man's transcendent nature.

The narrator reluctantly agrees to drink wine with Wanas in order to earn access to what Wanas knows about Zaabalawi.

With the third glass of wine the narrator loses his memory, and with the fourth all sense of the future disappears.

The narrator's perception dissolves into a meaningless blur of colored shapes and he loses all willpower as he drifts into unconsciousness.

Zaabalawi visits the narrator as he sleeps and gently wakes him by sprinkling water droplets on his forehead.

The narrator offers to pay any price for a cure, and Wanas reveals that Zaabalawi seeks only love from others, not money.

Wanas confirms that Zaabalawi has appeared at Negma Bar three consecutive nights, filling the narrator with renewed hope.

Time passes and the narrator receives no further word from Wanas, leaving him suspended in prolonged, uncertain waiting.

The narrator tells himself he cannot lose hope, trusting that Zaabalawi holds genuine affection for him and may yet return.

Beneath the surface of the narrator's physical search runs a deeper journey of spiritual awakening, marked by a series of quiet revelations that he largely fails to recognize. The search begins with the recognition that his illness is unlike any other and that its cure may lie outside the material world, a suspicion confirmed by the childhood memory of his father being healed. As the narrator moves through the city, each figure he meets reflects a different relationship with spiritual experience, from shopkeepers lost in nostalgia to a magistrate who hints at dervish gatherings and a calligrapher caught mid-prayer. At Negma Bar, wine dismantles the narrator's sense of self layer by layer until he dreams of a perfect world in which all discord has ceased—the very cure he has been searching for. Yet even after Zaabalawi visits him in that liminal state and Wanas reveals that the holy man wants only love, not payment, the narrator continues looking outward, resolving to wait for a return that the story quietly suggests has already occurred within him.

The discoveries, shifts, and revelations that define the narrator's spiritual arc.