The Dreams

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.”