The Dreams

Dream 158

The minister charged me with inspecting the ministry’s fine arts warehouse to prepare for an exhibition. Taking a team of helpers with me to clean up the dust and kill off the pests, I spied a large painting draped in a cloth.

Pulling the drape away, a portrait of Sa’d Zaghlul, seated on his prime minister’s chair, his hands clasped around the head of his cane, stared at me. Moved by the neglect of the leader in whose school of patriotism I had been raised, it seemed to me that the picture was alive. Sa’d’s eyes winked, his hands shifted on his walking stick, and he gleamed all over with a matchless magnificence.

In a flash, there appeared throngs of people from the pasha’s generation, all lining up to greet him, and to complain of the oppression that they have endured. Instantly I forgot the minister’s orders, and the job I’d come to do.

Instead, I queued with the largest group of those coming to pay their respects — at whose head was Mustafa al-Nahhas.