The Dreams (25 page)

I
was walking along with the employees of my office when I saw the ugliest city in existence. The employees suggested we improve the streets and squares, and create gardens too.

Meeting them in my office, I told them I was interested in what would benefit the people, such as public health spending, the provision of schools, water, and electricity. Then I asked the leading citizens to offer ideas of how to tempt themselves to invest their own money to bring all this into reality.

D
ebating with me, my friend declared, “The Egyptian, by nature, is either a peasant or a craftsman. As for progress in administration or politics,” he insisted, “that is best left to foreigners or naturalized Egyptians.”

“Nature has nothing to do with this,” I told him. “But the foreigners and those who have taken our nationality shared the power and the money and created a vacuum of creativity. Then the situation changed when the native Egyptian participated in the revolution against the French occupation, and then against the British as well, and pledged his allegiance to Urabi, Sa’d Zaghlul, and Gamal Abd al-Nasser.

“Next,” I said in conclusion, “he began to take part in running the country—and his creativity soared in every realm of life!”

I
was director of the Estates section of the Ministry of Religious Endowments. There I discovered that some of the residents were not paying their rent, in collusion with some of the employees.

So I resolved to recover the lost revenue and to put those responsible under investigation. But then I found myself all alone, heading toward an inquiry, accused of defaming the minister’s reputation—and such a war ensued!

I
was an officer sent to arrest the artist “Y.” In truth, I was one of his biggest fans; I loved him despite my scorn for his addiction to drugs.

The artist invited me to a singing party. I came, but put off arresting him until he finished his songs, as he kept chanting repeatedly:

I
received my sister, who said to me, “Your wedding has been fixed for next Thursday.” Reaching her house at the appointed time, when I entered the hall for invitees, I was greeted by loud applause.

At that moment, I realized that I did not know who my bride was to be. Too embarrassed to ask my sister, I looked around at the women present—and found that they were those who had given my life its light. Yet some of them were now quite old—and the rest had already left this world.

Finally, I told myself, “I’ll have to wait to know my fate.”

I
saw myself receiving an important piece of information—the building of the new Opera House had been completed. I went with my colleagues to inspect it thoroughly, and found it an exact copy of the original, which had been destroyed by fire.

We agreed on a work for the place’s opening; we wrote the play, and composed the songs and the music for it, but we differed over its title. The discord intensified until it broke into open warfare, threatening the safety of the opera’s new home.

R
eturning to our house, in my room I found my sister, who had come to visit us. I told her hello, then looked out toward the window in which—for a whole year—my adored one had not appeared. Not since the day of her wedding.

“I have a not very cheerful piece of news,” my sister remarked, “that nonetheless might help to console you.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“ ‘Ayn died while giving birth—her first—at the Maternity Hospital,” she replied.

A ferocious pain pierced my head, as darkness rose like a tent over the heaven and the earth.

I
was a censor charged with reading a play by the
littérateur
“Y,” entitled
Death
.

The first act was a dialogue between Death and the generation of pioneers such as Taha Husayn and Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad.

In the second act, the conversation was between Death and members of my own generation, such as Ali Ahmad Bakathir and Mahmud al-Badawi.

Act Three, though, was a musical in which young girls and boys of about age seven danced in a circle around Death, singing:
Your fate in life must befall you
.

And so I approved its performance for the public at large.

T
here I was in Abbasiya, on Lover’s Lane. Her sky, though missing a full moon, was able nonetheless to muster a few stars.

The breeze was pure and the water sweet, the street graced with a profound silence, but for a lone voice singing:

I
was called to meet with President al-Sadat, who informed me that he’d decided to appoint me as governor of Alexandria. Though I warned him that my eyesight and hearing were weak, and my right hand paralyzed, he wouldn’t change his mind.