Naguib Mahfouz - The Dreams

I sat on the balcony of the little hotel overlooking the sea, so absorbed in waiting for my girlfriend that I was oblivious to the gorgeous view. As the waiting dragged on, the hotel manager, who happened to be a childhood friend, came over to suggest that I cure myself of my worry by taking a walk.

I went to the shore where I kept marching back and forth, until I spotted my lover in a swimming race with a group of young men. One of them went with her out of sight behind a rock. I felt a stabbing pain in my heart and an unfathomable frustration. Sensing this, the manager said, “That’s the way of the world — don’t surrender to sadness.”

“You know, I know many things,” I replied, “but I don’t know how to swim.” So he took me to a quiet corner of the hotel garden, where I spent a distressed and anxious hour. Then, to my complete surprise, my girlfriend came toward me, her face grinning with happiness. I leapt up to pour out the weight of my anger, and in so doing encountered yet another surprise — completely unexpected, and incomprehensible, too, defying any explanation. For I was suddenly overcome with limitless joy as the grief was wiped out of my breast altogether, as if it had never been there. And so we greeted each other, in the way we always had in the past.

We walked around the city, as we usually did. Passing a gift shop, we went inside without wavering, heading straight for the department devoted to engagements and weddings.

My lover’s eyes studied the innumerable items. Finally she said, “We don’t have enough time.”

“We have all time,” I innocently replied.

We gathered in the old room: my mother, my four sisters, and me. No sooner had we closed the door upon ourselves than complaints arose about times past and people we knew.

My mother turned toward me apprehensively, swearing an oath that all she had ever done or said was out of the purest love. At this, voices were raised, demanding, “If that’s true, then how do you explain what happened?”

Scoldingly, my mother replied, “You have to account for yourselves, as well: don’t try to tell me it was all written and decreed.”

At long last I went to the mansion. I asked the doorman to inform the eminent woman that the winner of her literary prize had come to present his thanks in person, if only she would permit him.

The man soon returned to bring me into the reception hall, whose beauty and vastness dazzled me. Before long a musical tune signaling welcome was played for me — and I spied the enchanting figure of the madam moving gracefully to its rhythm. I undertook to present my letter of thanks — but she, with a chic sweep of her hands, opened up her breasts, drawing from between them a neat little gun.

She pointed it at me. I forgot the letter — fainting away before she could pull the tiny pistol’s trigger.

I was pleased that the new director had taken over the institute’s affairs — though I had not taken part in his selection. Yet every time I spoke appreciatively of him, my colleagues attacked me with sarcasm. This left me confused between approval on one side, and derision on the other. But I refused absolutely ever to despair.

I watched the cart carrying the enchantress of Crimson Lane coming, and drawing it was a winged stallion. I got in and sat at the rear. The steed responded by spreading its wings, and the cart began to fly until we were higher than the rooftops and minarets — and in seconds we arrived at the Great Pyramid’s pinnacle. We started to pass over it from an arm’s height above it. But then I rashly leapt down onto the pyramid’s summit, my eyes never parting from the seductive girl as she soared upward and upward — and the nightfall descended, the darkness ever deepening, until she was fixed in the heavens as a luminous star.

I dreamed I was on the Street of Love, as I used to call it in my hopeful youth. I dreamed that I sauntered between grand houses and gardens perfumed with flowers. But where was the mansion of my worshipped one? Gone without a trace, its place had been taken by a huge mosque of majestic dimensions, of magnificent design, with the tallest and most graceful of minarets. I was shocked. As I stood there in a stupor, the muezzin started the call for the sunset prayer. Without tarrying I went into the mosque, praying with the worshippers. When the prayers were finished, I moved slowly, as though not wanting to leave. Hence I was the last one departing to reach the door. There I discovered that my shoes had gone missing — and I had to find my own way out.

A tram station — and I was confused as to where in it I should wait for mine to arrive. But I was really awaiting the radiant face of the beauty in the window overlooking the stop, at which I kept on staring and staring.

My longing went on and on, and how many of my friends had asked me how long my torture would continue? Yet I was going on a trip that I could not avoid, as though it were Fate or Destiny. In truth, it was a strenuous, debilitating journey, much longer that I thought it would be. And on my return, the only thing that I could make out was a square-shaped enclosure, which was the window.

I spotted her within it, but she appeared to be mute, neither asking questions, nor answering them. As in the past, I stood beneath the aperture indifferent to the passers-by, until finally the sound of a conversation drifted down, like a whisper mingled with discreet laughter.

I heard a voice wonder, “What’s this guy’s story, the one who’s hanging around under the window?”

“He’s blubbering over the memory of a sweetheart — and her house,” came her giggling reply.

I was entrusted with carrying a letter to the late Dr. Husayn Fawzi. I told him that I had brought with me a proposal to restore him to the service with a significant increase in salary. He would also receive a luxurious office.

The doctor laughed, saying that the pay didn’t interest him, nor did the office. What mattered was respect for his ideas and his dignity.

I backed away, secure in the knowledge that my mission had failed.

The crime was discovered early in the morning. Before long, the story of its beastliness was on every tongue. Yet I couldn’t find anywhere to hide because the whole place was crisscrossed with policemen and female psychiatrists. I was in total panic until the greatest of the lady shrinks invited me to her office.

She told me that the majority of her colleagues attributed the crime’s brutality to the latent cruelty in the perpetrator’s character. She, however, thought it was due to the killer’s inexperience, as well as his ignorance of the modern scientific bases for the art of murder. For this reason she had decided to enroll him in the Institute for Contemporary Criminality — and may God grant him success!