Free The Dreams by Naguib Mahfouz Page A

sea, so absorbed in waiting for my girlfriend that I was oblivious to the gorgeous view. As the waiting dragged on, the hotel manager, who happened to be a childhood friend, came over to suggest that I cure myself of my worry by taking a walk.
    I went to the shore where I kept marching back and forth, until I spotted my lover in a swimming race with a group of young men. One of them went with her out of sight behind a rock. I felt a stabbing pain in my heart and an unfathomable frustration. Sensing this, the manager said, “That’s the way of the world—don’t surrender to sadness.”
    “You know, I know many things,” I replied, “but I don’t know how to swim.” So he took me to a quiet corner of the hotel garden, where I spent a distressed and anxious hour. Then, to my complete surprise, my girlfriend came toward me, her face grinning with happiness. I leapt up to pour out the weight of my anger, and in so doing encountered yet another surprise—completely unexpected, and incomprehensible, too, defying any explanation. For I was suddenly overcome with limitless joy as the grief was wiped out of my breast altogether, as if it had never been there. And so we greeted each other, in the way we always had in the past.
    We walked around the city, as we usually did. Passing agift shop, we went inside without wavering, heading straight for the department devoted to engagements and weddings.
    My lover’s eyes studied the innumerable items. Finally she said, “We don’t have enough time.”
    “We have all time,” I innocently replied.

Dream 80

    W e gathered in the old room: my mother, my four sisters, and me. No sooner had we closed the door upon ourselves than complaints arose about times past and people we knew.
    My mother turned toward me apprehensively, swearing an oath that all she had ever done or said was out of the purest love. At this, voices were raised, demanding, “If that’s true, then how do you explain what happened?”
    Scoldingly, my mother replied, “You have to account for yourselves, as well: don’t try to tell me it was all written and decreed.”

Dream 81

    A t long last I went to the mansion. I asked the doorman to inform the eminent woman that the winner of her literary prize had come to present his thanks in person, if only she would permit him.
    The man soon returned to bring me into the reception hall, whose beauty and vastness dazzled me. Before long a musical tune signaling welcome was played for me—and I spied the enchanting figure of the madam moving gracefully to its rhythm. I undertook to present my letter of thanks—but she, with a chic sweep of her hands, opened up her breasts, drawing from between them a neat little gun.
    She pointed it at me. I forgot the letter—fainting away before she could pull the tiny pistol’s trigger.

Dream 82

    I was pleased that the new director had taken over the institute’s affairs—though I had not taken part in his selection. Yet every time I spoke appreciatively of him, my colleagues attacked me with sarcasm. This left me confused between approval on one side, and derision on the other. But I refused absolutely ever to despair.

Dream 83

    I watched the cart carrying the enchantress of Crimson Lane coming, and drawing it was a winged stallion. I got in and sat at the rear. The steed responded by spreading its wings, and the cart began to fly until we were higher than the rooftops and minarets—and in seconds we arrived at the Great Pyramid’s pinnacle. We started to pass over it from an arm’s height above it. But then I rashly leapt down onto the pyramid’s summit, my eyes never parting from the seductive girl as she soared upward and upward—and the nightfall descended, the darkness ever deepening, until she was fixed in the heavens as a luminous star.

Dream 84

    I dreamed I was on the Street of Love, as I used to call it in my hopeful youth. I dreamed that I sauntered between grand houses and gardens perfumed with flowers. But