The Dreams

Dream 37

The mahmal wobbled atop the camel, festooned with many colors and bouquets of flowers. Leading it was a man holding a pole upright in his mouth, bangles dangling from the pole’s head.

The camel’s head was at the level of the first floor of the house from where I watched through the window. My eye met the camel’s own, and within his eye I read a smile and an esprit that placed a blessing within me. Suddenly, I flew from my spot behind the window and spun toward the camel’s head, dressed in my gallabiya, my hair blown about. The people shouted, “God is most great!” and “There is no god but God!” and cried out incoherently at the sight of my feat. All the while, I kept rising in the air, until I landed on the roof of my house.

After the mahmal had passed, the people all flocked in front of my home, demanding to see the boy who could fly. They then turned abruptly from joyous amazement to fearful alarm, saying that an evil spirit possessed the levitating child — meaning me — and that his flight around the camel’s head was an evil omen for all humanity. Therefore he must be freed of the Devil by flogging until he is cleansed completely. If he should refuse, then he would face the appropriate punishment — which was death.

Filled with fear, the lad and his family called in the police. The police chief demanded to see the miracle take place under his own eyes. He went to the house and witnessed the prodigious feat, and was truly dazzled by it. Yet he found himself torn between two points of view. The family claimed it was a wonder such as those performed by the saints — while the people denounced it as one of Satan’s pranks, and a portent of misfortune.

Finally, the police chief decided to put the boy in prison until the whole subject was lost in oblivion.