What has caused your face to invade my dreams tonight?
I haven’t seen you for ages and haven’t dreamt of you, so what brought you into my dreams tonight?
Sometimes you might go out early to enjoy the morning and the air cleansed by the aroma of dew, along the canal in which horses take their bath, with boys leaping around them as they washed them while playing about in the water on warm summer mornings. The leaves of the trees still carried drops of dew, cradled gently lest they fall down.
As you stand at the bridge regarding the rising of the sun your eyes continue to follow the tranquil red sphere, until, after a while, they find themselves lacing an unbearable brightness; so, defeated, they avoid it. while you go down to the road that will take you back home so you can sleep during the whole of the day’s heat.
As for now, I can watch neither the horses nor the sun, for I must go and bring some bread and wrap myself up against the cold of early winter. By the time the feeble golden threads of light make their way with difficulty between the clouds, I shall be on my way to work.
And now, what has brought this small strange bird that is flying close to the ground in search of bits left behind by the cleaners? A bird with a split tail flying with its eyes to the ground so that it would have collided with my feet had it not taken a sudden turn. Did it, at the last moment, see the movement of my foot? Or was it that its ears had heard them moving?
And you, you stupid tree, what has made you blossom into flower in the month of Touba? Your boughs are devoid of leaves yet their ends are full of strange, large red flowers. Why don’t you have the patience to wait, like other trees, for spring to come?
All classmates in the same school, yet you are always stirring up trouble, picking continual quarrels, and yet even so you are always welcomed. I have never understood how you manage it.
I was sitting over there in the far corner surrounded by hubbub. I was reading and in a world of my own, but the moment you enter you begin to pick on someone, “What’s up with you today—did your father’s wife beat you?”
“No, I met up with your handsome face!”
Loud laughter breaks out. You also don’t forget to have a dig at my being alone, “Have you been sitting over there forever?”
They take the opportunity to mock me. “Let her be—she’s not paying you any attention. Leave her alone—she’s busy with this book she’ll not be finished with for another year!”
There’s nothing for me to do but to appear calm. I give the smile of someone in retreat and once again immerse myself in my book, yet I don’t read: I watch them from afar, dreaming of some other world.
We were also living in the same house, and I would see her slipping out through the openings in the garden’s rear fence, laughing as I watched her.
“Don’t tell my mother that I have come back so late.”
“You’re drunk!”
“Drunk? That’s not true. I just feel slightly dizzy. I drank down a full glass at one go.”
“You’re joking.”
“I swear to you, I took a bet that I’d do so and I won the bet.”
“Listen, why don’t you come along so we can talk for a while in the garden?”
“What were you doing in the spinster’s house?”
“Oh, she was showing me an album of her photos.”
As for me, I was never able to intrude.
In class there would be a debate and the school would be quiet. From my place in the class my eyes would concentrate on a single tree whose branches were bare of leaves but were full of large red flowers although we were still in the month of Touba.
“What were you doing in the spinster’s house?”
“Oh, she was showing me an album of her photos.”
“Really, an album of her photos?” I said jeeringly. “And how did you like it?”
He laughed, “You all look alike!”
Angrily she answered, “Certainly not. You can’t say that she and I are alike.”
He gave an enigmatic smile, at which I became more angry. “Who do you think you are? You’ve become so conceited,” I said.
“I deserve to be,” he said gently.
“You’re all the same.”
“Men? Yes, of course.”
“Conceited and stupid.”
“Conceited maybe, but not the other.”
“But this is always with our volition—believe me!”
“Women rule over us.”
“And we rule the world.”
“A rule of destruction and ruin.”
“And yet we rule the world.”
“Only in appearance; it only seems that man is ruling.”
“Listen here, man rules and is in charge. You, what’s your name?”
He has begun to change. I say, “What do you mean?”
“After whom are you called? Isn’t it your father’s name?”
“Oh, these are appellations, the real extension is to the mother.”
“That’s not true. We are called by our mothers’ names only on the Day of Resurrection.”
“This is the proof. The true extension is the extension of the womb from the womb.”
A moment of silence followed. Once again he was quiet, then he answered, “This is only an organic extension, not a material one.”
“What’s organic and what’s material? You’ve answered yourself”
Then I remembered, “What were you doing in the spinster’s house?”
I was never able to break through.
I used to come here to make small purchases, but for a long time I’d not come and made any such purchases. But I was never concerned about that, not at all.
I didn’t see you going off and I didn’t want to see you going off, and now I ask, I ask you, overcoming a feeling of regret. Why did you move off at that time? And why have you come back once again?
What shall I say except to hug the sole thing that still concerns me, and I ask: What is it that has brought you to my dream this night?
I look toward the tree.
In the garden of the small, old house is a large mango tree that used to cast a shadow over the garden, and several other small trees, and when you stole your way in the evening from the rear garden fence, I’d always see you entering your house through the back window that leads into the bedroom you share with your brother. While I’m at my window, I always see you, but it would seem that you never saw me.
You would steal your way into the spinster’s house. As for today, no one steals into my house, no one.