Amr woke from a dream.
Its heightened rate of passing scenes was echoed as translucent screens flowing into the golden sunlit passage before him, blurring out bright moving colors - colors which fused with the dream-images to sometimes blot them out, sometimes enrich them. Cool wind blew, shaking at the suspended images, setting them into a timeless disarray finally lost when coherent reality flooded in. The last scene he managed to get a glimpse of sent through him violent ripples of deja vu, for it was so resemblant of the actual street ahead of him, with its pillared walkways and glistening hardened cow-dung tiles. When he finally blinked away the last few remnants of his fast-fading sleep, his eyes widened, and his face gave way to an expression displaying his shock. His eyes blurred again as dismay took over. I've been sleepwalking again.
He turned, and looked behind him. There was the fruit vendor, shrieking his odd call: "boort-aah-kul! Aayaaha! Boort-aah-kul!" Besides him was the shoemaker, who had charged him nine fils for a pair of wooden sandals. He remembered the transaction with some clarity, he remembered how the shoemaker had spat with disdain when he'd suggested a price of six fils. Further along was a tent he knew he'd walked through. If he went back there he knew he'd find the jolly man with an exposed hairy belly sitting behind a saffron milk counter, laughing at the japes of the mustached, reedy man next to him who would undoubtedly still be staple-fixing cans of sugarteak juice. Amr had purchased a can before the man had staple-fixed it, preferring to avoid the hassle of gnawing at it later with his teeth. The man had smiled, for every staple-pin saved meant a profit. The tent had a sorry lot of jambiya dancers - just half a dozen. Most tents of this size normally paraded over two dozen, along with other missing entertainers like snake charmers and scimitar weavers. He'd walked out of the tent, without pausing to gaze at the dancers who offered to slide a kukri into their ears for a dinar or two, his parched throat absorbing every milliliter of the sweet, cool sugarteak juice which he had drained in a matter of seconds.
Awake and afraid, he walked to a stall with a thatched roof - undoubtedly thatched with palm leaves, for the stall dealt in all kinds of products derived from desert palms - from woven mats and decorative stump-stools to hair oils and facial hair-removing gels. He paused for an instant, pointed at a stool and twisted his face into a tired semi-wince, looking at the shopkeeper. Looking at his garb and drained state, the shopkeeper nodded. Amr grunted as he seated himself on a stool embossed with glass pieces painted to look like rubies, onyxes and aliyas. He asked the shopkeeper for the date, and he just received some sort of guttural rumbling as a reply. This is obviously an Arabic culture, but certainly not what I'm familiar with. I've probably traveled half the world in these few weeks of distorted realities. If 'weeks' still means the same thing as it did during my last waking. It's physically impossible to travel a hundred miles on foot every night, yet every time I wake I'm a thousand miles from where I started.
The last time Amr was awake, he was on some kind of frigid, barren island, mottled with some reddish patches which he later identified as large crabs whose pincers really hurt. There was no one there who he could even approach to inquire the current date. Or the season, for it certainly was cold. For a minute he even wondered how he'd gotten there - he suspected he'd somehow mimicked a feat of Jesus, a particularly popular character from one of the Old Religions, by walking on water. Or maybe it was even colder then, and the water had frozen enough for him to walk all the way to the island. Later, when a shelf of hoarfrost had fallen on his head from a tall conifer, his mind had been brought back into enough focus to remember that there had been a boat. Yes, he'd arrived there on a boat which seemed to be a cross between a dinghy and a throne. He couldn't remember where he'd gotten there from. Or maybe he could back then. But he couldn't remember if he could remember it then, so, still seated on that most uncomfortable stool, he decided to let the matter rest.
And then, as it had done countless times before, his lungs caved in to this intense feeling. A feeling of great longing. An image of endless suffocation passed before him. He was in a sea, an unnatural sea. Green light dawned in a distance which stretched on into time. He longed to be submerged, but in that future miles away, he fought the deathly embrace of a thousand others. He smiled when teeth bit into the skin of his weeping self, and suddenly, when a hand forced its way into his mouth and his groin was punctured by a toenail six feet long, he fell into a deep slumber with his eyes wide open. Amr stood up, blessed the shopkeeper in the only Arabic he'd ever care to know, and walked into the dusty marketplace.
---
This is part of a story unfinished, a sort of preview to something greater.
The last time Amr was awake, he was on some kind of frigid, barren island, mottled with some reddish patches which he later identified as large crabs whose pincers really hurt. There was no one there who he could even approach to inquire the current date. Or the season, for it certainly was cold. For a minute he even wondered how he'd gotten there - he suspected he'd somehow mimicked a feat of Jesus, a particularly popular character from one of the Old Religions, by walking on water. Or maybe it was even colder then, and the water had frozen enough for him to walk all the way to the island. Later, when a shelf of hoarfrost had fallen on his head from a tall conifer, his mind had been brought back into enough focus to remember that there had been a boat. Yes, he'd arrived there on a boat which seemed to be a cross between a dinghy and a throne. He couldn't remember where he'd gotten there from. Or maybe he could back then. But he couldn't remember if he could remember it then, so, still seated on that most uncomfortable stool, he decided to let the matter rest.
And then, as it had done countless times before, his lungs caved in to this intense feeling. A feeling of great longing. An image of endless suffocation passed before him. He was in a sea, an unnatural sea. Green light dawned in a distance which stretched on into time. He longed to be submerged, but in that future miles away, he fought the deathly embrace of a thousand others. He smiled when teeth bit into the skin of his weeping self, and suddenly, when a hand forced its way into his mouth and his groin was punctured by a toenail six feet long, he fell into a deep slumber with his eyes wide open. Amr stood up, blessed the shopkeeper in the only Arabic he'd ever care to know, and walked into the dusty marketplace.
---
This is part of a story unfinished, a sort of preview to something greater.
