THE MOROCCAN DREAM

AN ANTHOLOGY OF MOROCCAN NEW SHORT STORY

"Dreams are

Colourful balls,

Magnificent damnation,

Butterflies,

Obstinate and rhetorical images,

Dreams are

Dreams within dreams,

Distancing from charcoaled spaces

Towards the crystal world of astonishment "

               The cock, on the roof, is looking with its beak for a laughing sun. The hen, in the hen-house, is clucking, waiting for a shivering morning. The chicks open their eyes to bump against dawn-light  and …the husband, who has spent the night all alone watching the TV serial, is gazing at dawn threads penetrating into the sleeping-room and gathering the shattered dream in which he was the protagonist two hours ago.

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               Ibn Sireen saw, in his dream, the same couple going down dusty stairs while there was a voice of another man within his own shadow, stretching for his ears. As he turned around, his silhouette-man punched him so violently on the face that he was about to fall flat on his teeth, had he not taken hold of the banister at the last moment.

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At breakfast table, the husband told his wife:

«  Good morning! »

Then, the cascade of his dream broke out. His wife poked him with a long look and replied with a faint smile:

« These are the remaining images from yesterday’s film, I think? ».

Then, chewing bread and cheese, she left him, going upstairs probably to check out the hen-house or to look for an egg.

***********

The cock, near the hen-house, is looking with its beak for sun-rise. The hen, inside the hen-house, is cleaning parasites off its feathers. The chicks are fully absorbed in playing, careless of what is happening or about to happen. The husband is in the same room peeling out the dream that provoked him a few moments ago.

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              Freud saw the couple’s child crying in the hands of his grandmother who had not died enough. To cool down his howling, she leaned his twisted neck against the straw-filled pillow. Lying in bed, the child’s organ was as erect as a gun.

When the husband joined the sleeping-room, his wife was there, in front of the mirror, biting her nails. There was also his silhouette-man lying in bed, I dare say, naked.

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At breakfast table, the husband told his wife the same greeting that he had done the day before:

  «Good morning! »

              Hardly had he started telling her the details of the dream that he had peeled out when the  wife put her bag on her right shoulder and slammed the door behind her.

***********

What exactly happened is that the husband is weary of dreaming. He was dozing off in the drawing-room.

His mobile phone rang and there was that voice which had been targeting him on the dusty stairs:

   « Is your wife at home? »

The man got up violently, went to the sleeping-room and did not find his wife there. There was only his child sitting in bed, tearing out the photos in the family album.

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               At the beginning of the night, his wife leaned her head down to the pillow and…slept. He had to imagine her padlock and himself a key. The key approached the lock with his fingers climbing up her backbone and lingering on her hips. Then, she opened her eyes and asked him to postpone that to the following night. It was utterly dark around him and the sleeping-room door was locked.

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               At the end of the night, his wife was lying naked on her back. The husband understood that she was asleep and that he had to sleep, too, despite himself.

               At the beginning of the morning, the husband hurried out to buy shroud-like clothes to his wife who may put them on or just fold them away in her museum: her wardrobe.

               The cock’s beak did not find the laughing sun. The hen’s found nothing but white lice. The chicks are still busy playing. The wife is hanging the washing on to dry whereas the husband is … scribbling this short story.

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Translated by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani