Three dreams

Ossama Soffar

It was a dream but, strangely, not a nightmare. I hold a giant knife in the kitchen and tell my girlfriend that I had dreamed of slaughtering her. I ask her to put on a red two-piece nightgown to complete the picture exactly as I had seen in my dream. She smiles, emphasizing the same wish. “Cut me into small pieces and then devour me to run in your blood,” she says with a tremble. The knife in my hand trembles too, especially when I see her rushing to the wardrobe, undressing, and then wearing only the two pieces. I approach her, assuring her that I will start. I put my hand on her neck. She pushes me gently toward the bed and lays with her head on my knee and touches me with her tiny hands; I thrust my hand with the knife towards her neck. Her little girl knocks on the door. She screams at the child that she is busy now and looks at me, apologizing for disturbing me. As I tell her the dream, she laughs like I have never seen her laugh before. Then she cries. “You have slaughtered me every day so far,” she says. “You are kicking me out of your life with all this madness,” I say. “You must come with your big knife and don't back down. I will be just as in the dream,” she says. She says, “All I wish before being slaughtered is a red rose. I have wanted you to give me one for years, although I did not ask you to do that. I hoped that you would initiate it.” “I can buy a white rose and dye it with your blood,” I say. She appears bothered because I will not give her exactly what she wants. She says, “Fine. I will buy the red rose.” She asks to leave at once. “You can go away; it is only two steps, after you go outside,” I say. She hugs me with hysteria and hot crying. I leave her to calm down, and then I asked her to explain my dream. “It is not a dream; you are of the age of prophecy. You must do what you are commanded, but the rose should be red,” she says. “I will always love you; you know that” I say. “I know,” she says, “but the red rose is the only proof.” She stops by the nearest florist. There is a dewy rose. She climbs the five floors and opens the door. She stretches out and becomes completely naked. She closes her eyes until the rose petals cover body. (2) This summer morning, there is nothing that disturbs life on the sandy seashore. Yousef Chahine, the famous filmmaker, was born in the building in front of me that faces the beach casino. Alexandria city and the sea are both endless. The sea and its restless waves are walking next to me. She walks with pathetic humility next to me on Alexandria beach, taking off her shoes, and drowning her feet in the water. She loves to walk. At the same time, I like to sit to meditate. We rent two chairs and sit next to each other. She wants to stick to me completely. A person appears as a demon circling around us, as if the extended shore were nothing but our chairs. He does not catch my eye at first, but his voracious looks, which indicate his desire to sneak into the air between me and the woman, provokes me. I try to ignore him, but he seems to want to encourage all my senses towards him. He is straying in a dream come true, or it seems so. I turn towards the strange person and decide to look at him as if he were the sea or Alexandria, whose houses and streets are stacked behind me. I look closely at him. I am astonished by the similarity of the features between us. He is skinny, moves with a strange lightness and unbalance, and approaches me whenever my hand touches her hand, or her body comes too close to me. She surprises me by asking me to close my eyes completely and not to believe that he exists. “He is a mirage, like water in the desert,” my girlfriend says. She puts her two hands on my face and hides the world from me. She snatches a kiss. I rush to push her. The strange person is laughing as he leaves into the sea. She comes closer; she becomes entirely in my hands. She seems fierce, looking for my shirt buttons. I pull her towards me more. We are wholly stuck together and drowning in a kiss. We can hear the strange person's cries because the voice has spoiled everything. We walk up to the street and walk along with laughter, anxiety, and heartbreak, all longing. In the Falls Garden, the atmosphere has more privacy. I sit with my knees stretched out, and she strokes my hair, but my face freezes as that strange person appears completely wet near my feet. (3) The transparency of the water conceals strangers. She usually says to herself and to me now that the conversation of death frightens us, together in times of despair. She dreams that she is drowning as the water covers her and reveals her body as a creature that I had never imagined in the depths of the water. I never imagined her in the depths of the water. She does not really have a "corpse" in the understandable sense of the word; perhaps she is only a mental image of a girl, or a woman, or a fairy that I know. She stands on the street's edge but does not want to enter the road. She always stands on the edge of life. She is stuck between life and death; she was never dead until the day of her death. They are carrying that tiny conception of a woman or a girl or a fairy or an illusion. I used to see her elegantly. Unusually - it was an elegant project that always failed - walking behind them and laughing for the first time in a jingling voice. She was the one who only smiled with meanness, sarcasm, or sadness!! I was not surprised that she was always alone until she surprised herself with the crowd, and a fire broke out between her and herself, and she fled for nowhere. She knows about herself and about the fear of a shameful death with loneliness and closed doors for days, and an unimaginable smell. Would it not be more merciful than dying suddenly in the street, lying down? At the same time, strangers' eyes examined the corpse or something like that. Then there was that bathroom or washing and being completely naked. No, it is impossible. This is too horrible to bear. Is she crazy shy, or does she want to hide the fact that she did not exist? Maybe she wanted to live in my loneliness to die in my hands, so I can cover her up until the dust covers her? Does she feel that it was a scandal walking on the ground?! She decides that she is dead and tells us. “I am dead,” my girlfriend says. She stops talking and closes her eyes, but no one admits that they have heard her. Her voice is speaking to itself. Her body wears an entirely fashionable covering from head to toe. No one knows where she might be. We want to bury her, but the land has its owners, even the land of the dead. We are looking for a place to bury her body. Many people do not want us to bury her in their ground. I do not get that. She must be buried in the cemetery of charity. Our souls are relieved when we open the coffin and find an elegant modern shroud without a body.