The Dreams

Dream 35

In our house in Abbasiya, we were all going to sleep when the voice of my brother’s son awakened me.

“The roof’s on fire!” he shouted.

I arose in terror as my nephew brought a wooden ladder. We put it up in the salon and each of one of us mounted it, everyone carrying as much water as he could to throw on the fire running between the corners. I burst into my sister’s room and jarred her from her deep slumber: amazingly, she got up lazily, complaining that I never, ever let her savor her sleep. In any case, she helped us fill the buckets with water until we brought the fire under control.

We had begun to look for what caused the combustion when, in response to our neighbors’ call for help, the men of the fire brigade arrived. Opening up the balconies to inspect the furniture we had shoved onto them, they confirmed the fire had indeed died out. The disaster had come to an end — after dumbfounding us with fear.

But just as we sat down to regain our composure, the telephone rang. Here one must note the change of time and place — for our house in Abbasiya did not have a telephone. Hence we were in another home with other people altogether. On the phone was the owner of the building where we rented our apartment in Alexandria. He urged us to come without delay, for fire had broken out in our place there. He reassured us that he had called in the fire brigade and they had subdued the blaze, but naturally our presence was nonetheless needed.

Immediately my wife and I got dressed and hurried to the station for the buses taking the Desert Road north. By this time, we were so distressed and confused that I suggested to my wife that we empty the flat of our belongings and turn it back to its owner, especially as there had already been an attempted robbery there.

But she told me to wait until we saw what had been lost — and what still remained.