Мазен Мааруф - Jokes for the Gunmen

WHEN HOSSAM DREAMS, HE ISN’T THE MAIN character in the dream. In fact he may not even be a character at all. Every time he’s in a dream it feels like he’s been given a new soul and a new life, but it’s always in a context of marginal importance. ‘Why does this happen to me?’ he asked me one day, while I was paying bail to get him out of detention.

As soon as he shuts his eyes, he imagines himself in a changing room in someone else’s dream. He takes off his old personality and puts on a new one, and then he’s summoned to take his place in the dream. His name changes from one dream to the next. It depends on what he’s going to do. Very often he doesn’t have a name at all. And because he’s so insignificant in the dreams he finds himself in, it may be that no one addresses him directly. As soon as Hossam hears one of the cast members in the dream shouting something like, ‘Bring the pencil sharpener,’ or, ‘Where’s the dog?’ or, ‘Give the hero the ashtray,’ he gets himself ready, because that’s what Hossam’s going to be – the pencil sharpener, the dog or the ashtray. He’s never been the hero – unless a pencil sharpener, a dog or an ashtray can play the star role in some dream.

His dreams usually start in the same way, in a changing room. ‘It’s a noisy place. It’s like they’re filming the dream, as in the movies,’ he says. ‘Every dream has someone in charge, like the director of a film.’ His function is to manage the dream; he has the exclusive right to do so – because he’s the man who dreams. You’ll find him stroking his dog, scratching his balls, or lecherously kissing a girl who wants to be someone else. In his other hand he holds a pair of binoculars to monitor the progress of the dream. Hossam has even seen himself as the girl the director is kissing. He said he was annoyed, but he kissed the man and even let the director fondle his bottom. In a whisper, after I promised on my honour I wouldn’t tell anyone, he said, ‘I was a girl in the dream. Imagine. Have you ever dreamt you’re a girl? I have. Another annoying thing about it was that I was a girl who would do anything to be a star, a wannabe girl. That was bad enough, but the kissing made it worse.’ Then there are the mistakes that the characters in the dream sometimes make, which means they have to redo the whole dream. It doesn’t happen on the same night but on the following night, and without Hossam knowing about it. ‘That’s cheating, don’t you think? To go to sleep and find you’re repeating the same dream,’ he tells me.

In one six-dream sequence he saw himself laid out on a trolley in hospital. ‘That was frightening. There were nurses pushing me along the corridor but I didn’t know where I was going. I might have been going down to the mortuary or heading for intensive care. From the number of nurses around me, I gathered I was in a critical condition.’ Even so, Hossam wasn’t the main character in this dream. In every version of the dream his trolley went past a man shouting, ‘No, no, no,’ and this man was the main character in the dream, although all he said was ‘no’.

‘His shouting was annoying and unpleasant. I even tried to give him the finger, regardless of whatever tragedy he was going through, but apparently that wasn’t allowed. I tried to wake up but I couldn’t. He was the focal point of the dream, and I was just part of the décor. You know how in a dream you see people in the distance – in the background? I’m always in the background of other people’s dreams.’ It seems the dreamer wasn’t satisfied with his dream. He wanted his dream to be perfect from a dramatic point of view. So he kept revising it in his head for six days straight.

‘My God! That’s like having to sit through a trial,’ I joked. He said he didn’t care, trial or no trial, but he had to put a stop to it. ‘Why all these tricks? I’ve never done anyone any harm.’

‘Sure, not until you started seeing yourself in other people’s dreams,’ I said.

Hossam is right to object. Usually he’s extremely polite. For him, politeness is a choice, a defence, like the shell of a snail. It’s the most effective way to avoid people and keep your interactions superficial. ‘Then you can peel yourself away from them whenever you want, without them feeling any pain’ – that’s his philosophy.

Hossam lived in a small room, by himself. He shared the shower with neighbours. The shower was outside his room. He only took a shower after checking that everyone else had had a shower before him. Sometime he waited till late at night. And he had only one friend, which was me. And I loved his politeness.

In one of the dreams, he found himself in a romantic relationship with a girl. I don’t know if his politeness had anything to do with it. ‘We started the relationship quickly. Faster than you can imagine. Within minutes we were lovers. I ended up kissing her in her car. On the motorway. She was the one driving. But an old man came up alongside us and started cursing and making obscene gestures with his hands. Then he gave up and overtook us. A few minutes later we found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam, and we started kissing like crazy and the other drivers were looking at us. We took no notice. I even squeezed her left breast. But the dirty old man reappeared, parked close to a traffic policeman. He had reported us, and we were wanted for offending public morals. As soon as we approached, he pointed at us and started cursing. The policeman stopped us and started preaching a sermon, more like a priest than a policeman. I bowed my head in embarrassment and the girl started crying.’ The next morning, when Hossam woke up, he still felt guilty. He got dressed and headed straight to a flower shop. He bought a bunch of flowers and started to draft a message apologizing to the girl, whom he saw every day. She lived near the travel agency where he worked. The thing about her that had caught his attention was the fact that she wore white rubber boots.

The flowers he was carrying were also white. ‘She must love white,’ he said. She might even stick one of them in her boot.

Hossam went up to the girl, said, ‘I apologize,’ and offered her the flowers. The girl was surprised, or maybe she pretended to be surprised. When she asked him why he was apologizing, he said, ‘Didn’t you dream about me last night?’

‘Sorry? Why would I dream about you? Do I even know you?’

‘No, but you dreamed about me,’ he replied.

Then Hossam started to get agitated and more aggressive. Passers-by gathered around him. It was like a scene from Candid Camera . People were smiling and looking at the buildings to find the hidden camera. ‘This girl dreamed about me last night,’ said Hossam. ‘I’m sure of it. Ask her. It was just a few hours ago and now she’s trying to pretend I’m nothing to do with her. What nonsense!’ But the girl wasn’t lying. She really didn’t recognize him.

‘Liar! Liar!’ Hossam started shouting. Then he threw the flowers on the ground and trampled on them. ‘I hope your flowers burn in hell,’ he said.

He ended up in the police station and almost lost his job.

I fully agree that Hossam wasn’t responsible for his problems.

Sometimes he dreamed that he was a pressing human need. I remember him telling me how he saw himself in a dream as a pair of glasses hanging on the branch of a tree. The glasses belonged to a little boy who was crying beneath the tree. The little boy was the main character, since he was sitting in the dream director’s chair. But he didn’t do anything. The boy was lazy. Very lazy, in fact, because the branch wasn’t that high. ‘What was he waiting for? For an earthquake to happen and the glasses to fall and save the situation?’