Naguib Mahfouz - The Dreams

As he entered the main office, I rushed to catch up with him, offering my hand in greeting. Walking along with him, inside I saw a sprawling, spectacular garden. He told me that he had planted it himself — half with native roses, the other half with Western ones.

He hoped the two would give birth to a wholly new kind — in form perfect, and in fragrance, sublime.

“Have a good journey,” my friend and teacher said as he bid me farewell. “God willing, you will come upon that which you seek.”

I was delighted as radiant thoughts rained down upon me, reflecting their loveliness upon my soul, and the hearts of the beneficent beat with sympathy. I did not want for food, drink, or clothing — nor forget my city the whole time I was gone.

When I finally returned, my friend and teacher asked me, “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I will find it here,” I replied, “amongst the agonies, as well as the hopes — via my vision as an explorer, and my patience as one who abides in one place.”

Madam “S”—my old friend’s wife and my former fiancée — accosted me. “You’re the cause of my husband’s bankruptcy,” she scolded me.

I explained that he had told me of an idea that I found suitable as the basis for a film. But he stubbornly insisted upon writing the scenario alone, and financing it with his own limited money — then went bust as a result.

“It was your duty to guide him properly,” she replied. I answered that I had given him a great deal of good advice, but he would accept nothing less than error.

We were both employees in the minister’s office, each of us trying to get closer to him, as our jobs depended on him. At the same time, my colleague was saying bad things about me — but I didn’t meet evil with evil, relying on the thought that closeness would demand kindness.

Then, adjusting the budget, the minister issued two decisions. The first was to transfer my friend to another position in the ministry. The second was to appoint me as his parliamentary secretary — which would permit me to see His Excellency more than once per week.

And so I knew that he was aware of what was happening in his office.

I read an article by a woman, “K,” that was tauntingly critical of me. Seeing her in the club, I asked her, “Don’t you remember how I supported your getting your grant?”

“One couldn’t forget it,” she replied, “for you alone opposed the awful attacks against me. But after a while I realized that their criticism had been correct: I had traded sex in order to gain something for myself, while you defended me to do the same for yourself — so you fell in my regard.”

What she said was a nasty lesson indeed.

In 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.

Walking 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.

When 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:

I heard a voice calling before the dawn

.

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:

The night that you came

To Muntaza

,

We had hardly sat down

,

Our cups in our hands

,

When, ah

!

The day had come

.

After her, Sayyid Darwish sang:

Visit me once each year, for it’s wrong to abandon people forever

!

When he’d finished, Shaykh Zakariya sang:

Old closeness from the beautiful past, if only you could return

.

As for me, I just recited the Fatiha over them all.

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.