The Dreams

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.