Naguib Mahfouz - The Dreams

Two days later, a doctor friend said that a world-famous specialist would be visiting Egypt, and they had booked a place for me with him: Congratulations! I was consumed with joy from head to foot — until I remembered the deadly food that I had devoured, and the marriage to which I had tied myself without really wanting it.

My ecstasy turned to vexation and concern.

The minister charged me with inspecting the ministry’s fine arts warehouse to prepare for an exhibition. Taking a team of helpers with me to clean up the dust and kill off the pests, I spied a large painting draped in a cloth.

Pulling the drape away, a portrait of Sa’d Zaghlul, seated on his prime minister’s chair, his hands clasped around the head of his cane, stared at me. Moved by the neglect of the leader in whose school of patriotism I had been raised, it seemed to me that the picture was alive. Sa’d’s eyes winked, his hands shifted on his walking stick, and he gleamed all over with a matchless magnificence.

In a flash, there appeared throngs of people from the pasha’s generation, all lining up to greet him, and to complain of the oppression that they have endured. Instantly I forgot the minister’s orders, and the job I’d come to do.

Instead, I queued with the largest group of those coming to pay their respects — at whose head was Mustafa al-Nahhas.

Some of the Harafish were summoned by Ustaz Sa’d al-Din Wahba. We went to him, and he welcomed us warmly, showing us a petition he planned to present to the higher authorities, to purge the organization of deviant elements.

He invited us to sign it — and we did so with enthusiasm. And at daybreak the next morning, our homes were broken into by “the visitors of dawn”—who drove us away blindfolded to the unknown.

I discovered by chance that I had the power to see behind closed doors.

Both astonished and delighted, I went to the reception hall and found the Brotherhood gathered around a gaming table. The young woman who served the drinks invited me to take a vacant seat. Feeling confident, I obliged her.

Looking at the back of the cards, I could see which ones they were, and pulled in great winnings. But then I heard a voice telling me, He Who granted this power is able to withdraw it if it is used to do evil .

So I withdrew from the game and made for the buffet, and at the night’s end, the young lady came to inform me that the winner at the table had been found murdered and robbed. I was astounded, and the woman told me that she hated this profession.

I offered her my hand. She gave me hers, and we walked out together without resisting.

At first the lissome, enchanting young woman hovered around me. Then she took me by the arm into a hidden-away corner, where there was a carriage to which a donkey was harnessed. She boarded it and motioned to me, so I also got in, huddling next to her.

She took the reins and drove the carriage with skill. The donkey began to move very slowly down the street jammed with people and and all sorts of vehicles, until it reached the Desert Road. Then it began to go faster and faster as though racing the cars and buses, until it seemed to fly in the air.

“Where are we going?” I asked the bewitching one in fright.

“To wherever the donkey stops,” she replied, “when he runs out of steam.”

I decided to walk all the way from the southern end of the Nile Valley to the northern one.

At the start of the journey, I met the girl who had been my sweetheart in childhood and early manhood. She had recklessly put on weight, and advised me to get married instead of undertaking this pointless trek.

I thanked her and resumed my march, until I encountered my friend “M” sitting crosslegged on a prayer rug. I was amazed — for I remembered him from the days of godlessness and rowdyism. “Guidance comes from God on high,” he said to me, inviting me to sit next to him: I wished him well as I bid him goodbye.

Then, halfway in my journey, I ran into “B”: I kept staring at her until she responded, “I waited until you proposed to my father, but you didn’t take a single step after the examination — and what’s the reason for that?” I told her that I, like her, wondered about it too.

Afterward I went back to my walk. And when I reached the north, sore-footed and fatigued, I saw my immortal beloved, the lower half of her body immersed in the waters of the Mediterranean, the upper half illuminating all that was around her.

In her melodious voice, she asked me, “What have you gained from this arduous sojourn?”

“How can a love without the least bit of hope endure through such a long, difficult life?” I asked her in return.

Hospital Square in Abbasiya saw my first meeting with Miss “R.” We talked about love and despair until I cut it off by saying, “Love is not enough.”

We next met at the Tea Island at the zoo, but she was then the widow “R,” who came to seek help from me having to do with her government job. The encounter revived buried feelings, leading to a conversation about love on my side, and despair on hers — for she was raising four children on her own.

Then she cut it off by saying, “Love is not enough.”

At the house of my girlfriend, Mrs. “H,” her sister’s daughter told me that she had gone to see her doctor, and she herself would like to drink some café. So, inspired by our being alone together, I took her hand and drew her to my side.

Suddenly Mrs. “H” came in, and her expression changed: “Go to your mother at once,” she ordered the girl. Then she fixed me with a stony look, and I left.

A downpour began, and I — longing for the young girl — went out of the house oblivious to all around me, calling out to her as I trudged through the deluge. Soon I heard the voice of Mrs. “H” wailing to me, as all three of us drowned in the rain.

I read a magazine article by Prof. “ ‘Ayn” that was cruelly critical of my person and my works.

Then he materialized before me apologetically, saying that he intended the article to lay the basis for a dialogue between us. This would generate an uproar that could bring the departed back to life.

“Who would believe in this dialogue,” I told him, “when you’ve been dead for fifteen years?”

“It depends on the fact that the present generations have lost all memory,” he replied.

“Your article,” I rejoined, “is dearer to me than stark indifference or deceitful flattery.”

I was in a private train heading to the Land of Light. The car was empty: its emptiness frightened me. I felt around for my wallet, as fears unsettled me, and I resolved to get off at the first stop.