Hello ibhog,
I believe you were too acquainted with your dream to the extent that you forgot how special it was for me to have it. What if you only had it a month ago and didn’t get the chance to tell anyone about it, just before you receive my letter? Imagine how that feels for a second, and you’ll know my current state of affairs.
Look how years of suffering could cloud such a beautiful dream on a secluded night and look how tides of doubt could ruin how surreal it is for two to have it, ten years apart! I can only sense the tumult crushing right now against the walls of your chest.
First of all let me begin by expressing my sincerest admiration to your written word. I have been reading your published texts for roughly two years now, and I have been cornering myself into breathless silence since it started. I am sure you had praise come your way before, and I could tell how good it makes you feel. I also know how at times the small pieces of guilt associated with being vain for a change could accumulate into a crust that has part on heart and part in eyes, and I would like to tell you to be okay, because vain is about that nook of the self that is untrue, and you are true, although you have been struggling to make a solid conviction out of that the last decade of your life, I suppose.
I looked up the word ‘Ehaba’ everywhere. Arabic dictionaries, English dictionaries, and dictionaries of other languages, but it was all in vain. The morning I woke up to that dream I didn’t go to class, and I stayed in journey between my room and my dad’s study trying to figure out an interpretation for that dream, or should we call it a vision now? I had come to your blog only to find it closed, which very much qualified for being a sign, you know. When I was having my cereal I was so phased out my Mom had to rub my left shoulder so that I’d finish eating. What’s wrong with you honey, she would worriedly say. I’m okay Mom, I would respond, belatedly.
Have you ever known what does that peculiar word mean, though? And pray do tell me about that dream, what do you think it is? Who wrote those words on that paper? Could it be, and I admit writing this is truly different from thinking it, could it be God himself? I mean, when anyone reads about forgiveness and giving, they immediately attribute such actions to the almighty. I keep picturing the shift in your complexion in the dream the moment you read the sentence, and it just waters my eyes.
You were indeed quite callous in the opening of the first text I have ever received from you. My regret had already formed a gray hill with fog around it when your apology eased things a little bit. I’m sorry too for causing you any means of stress. And really, I’m not too inclined to continue writing to you, I had just made resolute with myself that it’s someone’s, or something’s right for you to know that that dream happened in my subconscious in one cold snowy night.
Sometimes things that don’t make sense at all do eventually make an appearance of absolute reason in that one moment in our lives. I like to believe that those special moments wait for someone to make use of them, before they fade away into the forest of time, undone – an emblem of loneliness.
Why did I write to you?
This would be a long elaboration. My faculties of expression are not ready yet to bear such a grave responsibility, dear sir. What I know, however, is that unstopping the flow of messages would eventually ease the burden off my powers of language. Your words make me want to write, indefinitely.
And there’s no other writing that helped me breathe that better that I know of.
As for my name, may I ask we leave it as ‘N.’? I profusely hope you’d be okay with this.
So, please tell me about that dream. What did you see in that window that brought you such noticeable malaise?
N.
ibhog 