The Dreams by Naguib Mahfouz
I found myself walking on the street going nowhere in particular, until a friend who owned a sweet shop called me over and offered me a job as the accounts writer in his store.
At that moment his father’s voice reached us from where he sat in the shop’s corner. “Don’t let personal feelings corrupt your work,” he warned.
So I went back to walking aimlessly on the street once again.
Dream 179
My dear, deceased friend came to visit me. He queried me, “Why are you so sad?”
I told him that my weak eyesight and hearing had cut me off from the sources of culture that I used to read, hear, and see. So he took me to a publishing house managed by one of our university colleagues, and asked him for a work on all the modern ideas about science, philosophy, and literature.
The man produced a big book. Along with it, he gave us a brand-new printing of the Holy Qur’an, saying that the hefty tome contained an interpretation of the sacred text that had never been seen before.
We took these gifts with us. On the street my friend said, “I will come to you every evening to read you a chapter from the Glorious Qur’an, as well as a chapter from the other book, until we finish them both.”
“May God grant you mercy,” I welcomed him, “and set you to dwell in the broadest glades of Paradise.”
Dream 180
I dreamt of my mentor, Shaykh Mustafa Abd al-Raziq, when he was the head of al-Azhar.
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.
Dream 181
“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.”
Dream 182
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.
Dream 183
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.
Dream 184
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.
Dream 185
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.
Dream 186
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.
Dream 187
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.
Dream 188
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.
Dream 189
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 a
Dream 190
I learned that my friend “G” had sought refuge in his room and was threatening to take his own life. I went to his house, where I found his brothers and sisters gathered in the grand sitting room, which he gazed down upon through a peephole, a rope tied around his neck.
“Are you a believer?” I asked him. “The faithful don’t indulge in suicide.”
“The doors and windows have been shut in my face,” he replied. “When I tell them, ‘Get out of the way,’ they don’t move. I have declared my wish to die as a martyr, but they won’t let me leave. So all I have left is this.”
“Let him go out and do as he will,” I urged them, “for martyrdom is a million times better than just killing yourself.”
Dream 191
My comrade Dr. “M” told me that he wanted to marry Ms. “A” who was my neighbor and with whose brothers I was on good terms. I was the best one to talk to about her.
I loved “A” without any hope of success, so taking hold of myself, I began to tell him about her beauty.
He cut me off, saying, “Stop—that is always in my sight,” and changed the subject.
I started to say again, “As for her beauty …” and he told me, “Don’t talk about her looks to me.” Then he kissed me on my head.
At this, I found myself in a grand hall seething with the heads of society. There was great singing and dancing as I glanced about expectantly, awaiting the telling blow.
Dream 192
The Garden of Freedom, whose flowers were watered with lovers’ tears. I promenaded around its sundry parts, amidst the moans of passion and the cries of combat.
I have resolved myself to forget both lovemaking and fighting.
Dream 193
Sir Rider Haggard on the Pyramids Plateau. I rush over to greet him, telling him that he was the paradise of my childhood and my adolescence, too, with his enchanting novels about Ayesha, Cleopatra, Saladin, and the treasures of King Solomon.
Then as I walk along with him, I ask him if the king’s treasures were real. Or were they but the fruit of his imagination alone?
Next I’m marching with him through an African jungle. When we reach a certain spot, he pulls a key from his pocket, then bends down until he disappears in the tall grass. Suddenly, a door swings open—to reveal a vast display arrayed with precious stones.
The sun’s rays gleam upon ingots of gold, whose glinting casts a light into the world of the Unseen.
Dream 194
From the radiating waves of light, my deceased friend “T” abruptly emerged.
Welcoming him, I told him he’d departed without even an obituary. Nor had he had a proper wake. The workers had shown up to set up the tent, yet no one came to offer their condolences. Not even a Qur’an reader appeared.
My friend then rose upon a throne, chanting with a pleasing voice the Chapter of the Compassionate One.
Dream 195
I laid out the little table with all that was good and delicious, when the doorbell rang. I opened the door and my girlfriend launched herself onto the couch. As soon as she landed on it, her head lolled on the cushion, and her arms fell limp. Scrambling over to her, I slapped her cheeks and and felt her pulse at the wrists.
“O my God!” I cried to myself in terror. “She’s dead!”
Already I could see the specter of crime and scandal. So I carried her with my own arms to the kitchen and threw her from the window that overlooks the building’s stairwell. Then I stood there, trembling from head to toe.
The full glare of morning found me standing with some of the tenants, plus the owner of our home, who talked with us about the lady who’d been taken to hospital.
“She’s dead,” I said.
“No,” the landlord replied. “The doctor told me, ‘There’s a lot of hope we can save her, and the prosecutor is waiting for the right time to speak with her.’ ”
The specter of crime and scandal reappeared before my eyes.
Dream 196
Our mentor invited us to lunch in his apartment. After we’d eaten, we all sat around him, asking him questions and discussing his answers, when suddenly the police burst in. They arrested us and drove us off to detention, where we spent six months without trial.
Then we were released without even knowing the reason for which we’d been held. To this day, whenever I recall the torment of prison, I wonder why it was that we’d ever been seized.
Dream 197
Our houses were built on the edge of the desert. Each one had an open-air stairwell where sat a large clay jar full of refreshing water. The thirsty would come to quench their need, and to pray for us.
One day a gang snuck in, concealed among those coming to drink. They attacked one home, robbed it, and fled. After that, we locked up all the doors—then we learned they were digging a tunnel in order to get at us. One of these tunnels opened a spring of water, which rushed out in a flood that made the desert bloom—heralding happiness for all.
“Open up the gates,” one of our wise men proclaimed, “and be blest with the best of neighbors!”
Dream 198
The film producer commissioned me to write a comedy. So I conjured a city whose inhabitants struggled for a morsel of food and bread, locked in mutual conflict, suffering from diseases and violent incidents. Next there came a devastating earthquake, which finished off all those who remained, wiping away their memory as though they had never been.
The producer burst out laughing.
“You really are a great comedian,” he affirmed.
Dream 199
I was strolling through the zoo with my girlfriend. Then we sat down in an empty corner of the Tea Island. Each time a roar or a moo or a howl reached us, we snuggled closer together, until, little by little, we both melted into one.
Dream 200
My friend “S” told me that the agricultural reform laws had hurt his father so gravely that he might collapse mentally—and he wanted to meet the Minister of Finance. “I have chosen you,” my friend confided, “to impersonate the minister, because you are my dearest chum.”
I found the great estate owner in a mournful state. “Your Excellency the Pasha,” he welcomed me, “are you really going to confiscate our lands?”
I denied every word, saying these were but rumors meant to win the hearts of the masses. As we left the man’s mansion, my friend thanked me profusely, drying his tears.
“All society’s progress comes at a price,” I said consolingly. “And don’t forget that you were one of those who called for socialism,” I added.
“Writing is one thing,” he protested sharply, “but actually applying it is something else completely.”
Dream 201
What a great reception hall, gleaming with light and colorful decor! I found myself in it with my brothers and sisters, my maternal and paternal aunts and uncles, along with their sons and daughters.
Then my friends from Gamaliya arrived along with those from Abbasiya and the Harafish. They started singing and laughing themselves hoarse, dancing until their feet gave out, and wooing for love until their hearts pined away.
Now they all lie in their graves, leaving behind them only silence—a warning against forgetfulness.
Exalted is He who alone remains!
Dream 202
The lovely young woman held on to my arm as we stood before the bookseller, who spread his wares on the ground. I saw that my own books took up a great deal of space.
Picking up one of them, I flicked back the cover—and was surprised to find its pages all blank. I tried another one, and another—and discovered they were all the same. There was nothing whatsover left inside them.
I stole a glance at my girlfriend—who was gazing at me in mourning.
Dream 203
I was reading a book when the New Year’s drunks started throwing around their empty bottles, the shards of glass flying
So I went to the top thug in our old neighborhood—and before I could finish my complaint, he and his men got up and attacked the tavern where the criminals were sitting. They beat them with their sticks until my former tormentors begged me to save them.
Dream 204
I was the director of cinema affairs when the actress “F” asked to be excused from working with actor “A.” Annoyed, I pointed out that this would change our whole plan—but she stuck to her demand.
Next, “A” came to me, insisting that I put pressure on “F” to keep working with him, but I demurred. Meanwhile, “F” was telling the actors’ ombudsman that I was forcing her to collaborate with my friend “A” against her wishes. Then my friend claimed that I had eased her release from work for some private purpose.