The Dreams (27 page)

I
n Alexandria on the eve of Lesser Bairam, I was going from agent to agent, looking in vain for a vacant room. Finally—in despair—I decided to return to Cairo.

At Ramle Station, I met my friend “A,” who asked me to spend the days of the feast in his flat on Sa’d Zaghlul Street, where Umm Zaynab worked as his maid. Accepting his invitation, I thanked him for it. “Though it happened only by chance,” I told him, “this was the happiest encounter in my life.”

Since then the years have gone by, full of wonders of all different kinds. When I’m off by myself, I think back on that momentous coincidence, which the passing days have proved was the unluckiest one in my whole existence.

W
alking in a dear friend’s funeral, I saw another friend, “B”—who had been abroad for years—among the mourners, and said hello to him. Vastly cultured, he was rather eccentric, and infatuated with the latest trends in both the arts and in life.

I asked about his wife, who was like him in everything: he replied that he’d divorced her. The procession stopped in front of the mosque, and the coffin was carried inside.

As the people prayed over it, my friend went to join them within—and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

W
hen I saw the young lady “B,” my heart throbbed, as it did for my first love. I trailed after her, drinking in the sweetness of passion and the torment of the forbidden, craving more and more.

Then I saw myself with my sister’s daughter, who asked me, “How long, Uncle, will you remain a bachelor?”

She suggested that I marry the young lady “B,” who was her colleague in the Higher Institute. She confirmed that her role as intermediary had been agreed by “B,” and that gladdened me. But I was also full of fear, though I didn’t know why, and it made me flee. I changed my customary route in order not to appear, until I heard that she had gotten engaged to a suitable boy.

Standing in front of a photographic exhibit, I watched the girl with her husband dressed in their wedding clothes. I went back to drinking in the sweetness of love and the torment of the forbidden—but mounted in the frame of time.

I
was walking with Shaykh Zakariya Ahmed toward the hill covered with banks of flowers. At its center Umm Kulthoum stood with a delegation of people from the arts, such as al-Hamuli, Uthman, al-Manyalawi, Abd al-Hayy Hilmi, Sayyid Darwish, Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab, Munira al-Mahdiya, Fathiya Ahmad, and Layla Murad.

Umm Kulthoum sang:

She kept repeating it until we all grew anxious. Then the sound grew fainter little by little until it was gone.

Next, Munira al-Mahdiya sang:

I
was a minister in the cabinet of Mustafa al-Nahhas. I began to think about a project to create elementary, primary, and secondary schools that would be cost-free, including tuition, for exceptional boys and girls whose parents were peasants and workers.

We would follow up by caring for them at university and in study missions abroad. I presented the idea to the chief, and he welcomed it, while adding some changes of his own. He wanted these schools for super-achieving children to be devoted to building the entire nation.

He asked me to propose the plan in the cabinet’s next meeting, pledging his stalwart support.

I
learned that my friend “G” had sought refuge in his room and was threatening to take his own life. I went to his house, where I found his brothers and sisters gathered in the grand sitting room, which he gazed down upon through a peephole, a rope tied around his neck.

“Are you a believer?” I asked him. “The faithful don’t indulge in suicide.”

“The doors and windows have been shut in my face,” he replied. “When I tell them, ‘Get out of the way,’ they don’t move. I have declared my wish to die as a martyr, but they won’t let me leave. So all I have left is this.”

“Let him go out and do as he will,” I urged them, “for martyrdom is a million times better than just killing yourself.”

M
y comrade Dr. “M” told me that he wanted to marry Ms. “A” who was my neighbor and with whose brothers I was on good terms. I was the best one to talk to about her.

I loved “A” without any hope of success, so taking hold of myself, I began to tell him about her beauty.

He cut me off, saying, “Stop—that is always in my sight,” and changed the subject.

I started to say again, “As for her beauty …” and he told me, “Don’t talk about her looks to me.” Then he kissed me on my head.

At this, I found myself in a grand hall seething with the heads of society. There was great singing and dancing as I glanced about expectantly, awaiting the telling blow.

T
he Garden of Freedom, whose flowers were watered with lovers’ tears. I promenaded around its sundry parts, amidst the moans of passion and the cries of combat.

I have resolved myself to forget both lovemaking and fighting.

S
ir Rider Haggard on the Pyramids Plateau. I rush over to greet him, telling him that he was the paradise of my childhood and my adolescence, too, with his enchanting novels about Ayesha, Cleopatra, Saladin, and the treasures of King Solomon.

Then as I walk along with him, I ask him if the king’s treasures were real. Or were they but the fruit of his imagination alone?