Naguib Mahfouz - The Dreams

We meet as always on the Agricultural Road, reciting poetry and singing as we please until the time steals away. The sun has set without our even noticing.

We only remember it when, as darkness closes in, the baying of jackals assails us from every side.

Longing to see my family, I was instantly transported to our old home. But to my horror, I found it drowning in darkness, as though it had been destroyed by gloom.

I called out to scold them, to each man and woman by name — but no one replied. I kept on appealing to them in vain until I cried.

My sister’s dead body was stretched out on the bed. My girlfriend was with me, both of us very moved by the event.

Suddenly a beautiful young girl sat crosslegged on the bed, chanting dirges in a haunting voice. Then time sped forward and there was a corpse in her place — the cadaver of my lover, while my sister and I grieved by her side.

Meanwhile, the young girl appeared in her stead, wailing mournfully of woe.

Such a fabulous garden, with no beginning or end. Purity trickles from the sky above it, the earth hidden beneath its trees. We sit under one of them as we eat and drink.

Then a voice tells us that singers and dancers are coming — they’re coming our way! Another voice warns us not to listen to the sayings and proverbs that disparage time itself and days gone by.

And it says as well that these trees, whose fruits are infused with goodness and pleasure, are entrusted to our charge.

I was walking down a long street steeped in history, paying no mind to anything around me, when suddenly a hand tapped on my shoulder. I turned around to find a fantastically beautiful, stylishly dressed woman standing in front of me.

Astounded, I smiled at her, and she smiled back, before hurrying off toward an elegant green house. I made up my mind to follow her.

Yet when I looked around to be sure that all was safe, troops from State Security had spread throughout the neighborhood, blocking the road, letting no one move an inch.

But my eyes remained trained on the elegant green house.

An exhibition famed for its single painting in which the image changes whenever a viewer approaches it.

First it looked to me like a magnificent forest, but when I drew another step closer, the woods disappeared, replaced by a naked woman with many obvious attractions.

One more step, and the lady was gone. Instead, there was a raging battle in which every type of weapon, from stones to the latest gadgets, came to hand.

The woman had many charms; one look at her and I was already chasing her. Then her husband grabbed me, swearing he would take me to the police station, when a man from our neighborhood, famed for advocating absolute freedom, came into the room.

I fled after learning an unforgettable lesson — one that would take solid form whenever I met a woman. Yet I found myself face to face with the ravishing lady again.

I started to run away — and she kissed me, smiling, and took me by the arm. “My husband,” she assured me, “has now embraced the call for absolute freedom.”

Our dear old neighborhood. I’m rambling around it, my mind flooded with memories.

Then it occurs to me that I should live in our former place until the housing crisis eases.

But after only one day I see it’s simply not suitable for life in modern times.

This empty plot of land is my sole inheritance. I call it “the ruin,” because it has been neglected for so long.

After making a bit of money, I thought of building on it. Yet I made no progress, due to what I knew about the prevalence of fraud and financial corruption.

Finally, I asked a wise woman who lived next to me, “Is there an honest person left in the world?”

She answered that he existed indeed — but endless courage and resolve were needed in the ceaseless quest to find him.

Hearing an unfamiliar voice, I hurried over to the stairwell to find a strange man who aroused my suspicion.

I called to the doorman to take a look at the stranger. He calmly informed me that this person was a civil servant carrying out his official duty.

That was, he explained, to take individuals out of overcrowded buildings and to transfer them to places which have more room. I objected — for this, I said, was to tear people away from their own families, only to put them somewhere they would not be welcome.

But the doorman insisted that such was the law, and one could only obey and comply.

Peering into the shadowy past, I saw my sweetheart’s luminous face, though she’d been dead for fifty years. I asked her about the letter I’d sent her a week ago.

She said that she found it filled with affection. But she noted that the script of the person who’d written it revealed he was struck with the fear of life — especially of love and marriage.

“I was afflicted with the same fear,” she added, “and changed my mind about going to you.

“To save myself,” she concluded, “I decided to flee instead.”

Such a grand festival — all the top people from the government were there. The festival’s head summoned me and presented me with a ball, which he said was the event’s official prize.

The ball was made of solid gold. Congratulations rained down on me, and when I had recovered, I announced my desire to donate the gift to charity. So some men came with a saw and began cutting the ball up in order to divide it.

But when the saw bit into the ball’s core, the place went up in a huge, earth-shaking explosion, as bits of humans, animals, plants, and inanimate things flew everywhere through the air.

The enemy was triumphant. Yet before he’d cease fighting, he demanded that the golden statue of the nation’s reawakening, kept in the storehouse of historic treasures, be surrendered forthwith.

So a group of us went to fetch the storehouse key from the strongbox. But when we removed the box’s lid, a terrifying serpent rose up before us, threatening anyone who drew near with death.

As we hastily retreated, I concealed my joy — praying for the snake’s safety, and his success in guarding the key.