The Dreams (6 page)

S
he was in the room with me—and no one else. My heart danced, singing with joy. I knew that my happiness would be brief: it wouldn’t be long before the door would open and someone would come in. I longed to tell her that I gladly accepted all the conditions that had been communicated to me, but that I would need at least a brief time to meet them. Yet, enchanted by her presence, I said nothing.

Seized by desire, I took two steps toward her—but then the door swung open. The professor came in. “You don’t know the meaning of time,” he told me sharply. I tore myself away and followed him to his institute, which was opposite our building. There he said to me, “You need to work ten hours a day until you perfect your playing.” He commanded me to sit down to practice the piano, and soon I was engrossed in my labor—while my heart hovered about back in my room.

When I was granted leave, the evening was descending in all its glory. I set out to cover the route quickly, yet there was no hope that she would wait for me all through my absence.

Just then a man from China with a long beard and a smiling face blocked my path. “I was in the institute
while you were playing,” he said. “There’s no doubt that a splendid future awaits you.” With a bow in my direction, he left.

I continued on my way, shuddering at the thought of the loneliness that attended me where I lived.

W
e met in my local café, where my friend read to us a detective story he had written. Nearing the end, he asked us to guess the killer’s identity—and who had paid him to commit the crime. I ventured the right answer—which made me incredibly glad.

After an hour, I excused myself to go home. But success had made me so euphoric that I wandered through the streets until, eventually, I found myself back in front of the café, which made everyone laugh. One of them volunteered to escort me to my house, and when we arrived there he said goodbye and left. My house was built in one story, set in a little garden. I felt like taking off my clothes, and when I was down to my underwear, I noticed a streak of dust projecting downward from one of the room’s corners. That same image was found in the story my friend had read to us—it was a warning that the house would fall down on whoever was inside.

I wept that my little place was going to collapse on my head. In the grip of terror, I fled for safety as far and as fast as the wind would take me.

O
n a ship crossing the ocean, people of all colors and tongues were arrayed. We were expecting the wind to swoop down, and when it did, the horizon disappeared behind the angry waves. I became frightened: it was every man for himself. I felt alone in the depths of the sea. An inner fear told me there was no way to survive the all-encompassing terror—unless this really was just a nightmare, to be shattered by a fevered awakening on my bed.

The wind became violent as the boat was tossed back and forth on the waves. Suddenly, I saw before me Hamza Effendi, my math teacher, wielding his wicker rod. He fixed me with a look demanding to know if I had done my homework. If I hadn’t, he would rap me ten times across my knuckles—which made them feel as though they’d been pressed with a hot iron. My hatred grew with the memory of those days.

I wanted to grab him by the neck, but feared that any move would cause my demise. So, saying nothing about my humiliation, I swallowed it despite the dryness in my throat. I saw my sweetheart and scurried toward her, cutting my way through tens of confused onlookers. But she did not recognize me and turned her back, proclaiming her
annoyance. Then she ran toward the ship’s edge and threw herself into the storm—I thought she was showing me the way to deliverance. So I rushed stumblingly toward the side of the ship, but the old math teacher stood in my path, brandishing his stick of bamboo.

T
he wheel turned and turned, and the money came and went, as the young beauty served the drinks, and sometimes sandwiches, too. Then fortune smiled on me and I won a good sum of pounds, which seemed immense in our limited world.

Feeling slightly dizzy, I announced that I would withdraw—yet no one believed my reason for doing so. As I was leaving, one of the players accused the girl of revealing what cards they held. She grew furious—as did I—in reaction to this baseless charge. The accuser stood up, along with two others, tearing the girl’s clothes until she was practically naked. All the while, she screamed and threatened to inform the police about the apartment, where gambling and other forbidden things were going on. At this, they all returned quickly to their seats, as I helped the girl back into her clothes—then departed for my own apartment nearby.

I had just sat down to relax when the girl came to see me. She said the group was angry and that drunkenness had made them even angrier—they were threatening to storm my house and create an uproar in the whole quarter. She advised me to return my winnings as a solution to the problem. I argued that they would consider that a confession to a
crime we had not committed. She replied that was less heinous than what they intended to do—so I deferred to her point of view, giving her the money. She took it and left.

The serenity of night returned—but I continued to expect a scandal or some other evil.

T
he place was new to me—I had not seen it before. Perhaps it was the grand salon of a hotel where the Harafish used to sit together around a banquet table. They were talking about the choice of the best female writer of renown. It seemed clear that the woman I had nominated would not be accepted. They said she was only superficially cultured and her behavior was depraved.

Playfully, I tried to defend her, when I noticed they were looking at me with unprecedented grimness, as though they had forgotten our lifelong intimacy. I got up to leave the salon, but none of them stirred, as they all glared at me, seething with rage.

I walked toward the elevator and stepped into it, nearly on the verge of tears. Then I became aware of a woman in the lift with me—her face was severe, and she was dressed like a man. She told me that she mocked what they call friendship: the way people dealt with each other had to change drastically. While I thought about the meaning of all this, she pulled a pistol from her pocket and pointed it at me, demanding any cash that I had with me. It was all over quickly, and when the elevator came to a stop and the door opened, she ordered me to get out.

As the lift resumed its descent, I found myself in an unlit corridor. Overwhelmed with the feeling that I had lost my friends, I feared that incidents like this robbery were waiting out there to ambush me, wherever I should go.

T
his was our house in Abbasiya. I went into the salon. My mother walked toward the entrance as my sister approached. My sister stopped for a few moments before joining her. We didn’t greet each other, but I declared my intense hunger in a loud voice. No one replied, so I repeated my demand.

I heard voices in the room overlooking the field, so I went toward it, discovering my oldest brother sitting in silence. Across from him, the Shaykh of al-Azhar sat cross-legged on the couch. The shaykh was speaking beautifully. When he finished, I told him I was hungry. He retorted that no one had served him coffee, or even a glass of water. I left the room and said—in a voice that my mother and sister would hear—that someone should bring coffee to His Eminence the Shaykh. But I heard only silence, except for the phonograph and the recordings that I adored—and I found the neighbors’ daughter who would visit me to borrow some records, especially that of Sayyid Darwish, which I loved the most. She was looking for a needle with which to play the record.

I told her I was hungry, and she said that she was hungry, too. My hunger overcame me and I went out of
the room and called out, begging for a bite of something! Finding nothing, I left the house as evening shaded the empty street. Fearing that all the shops were closed, I made for the bakery—faint with starvation, yet enticed by hope.