When I told my wife that my dreams fly away from my head and I don't remember them, she said, with a severe imbecility that didn't surprise me, “Put an animal trap over your head while you're asleep.” She looked very serious. I left her and went to work. The next morning, I awoke gravely alarmed by her screaming. She held the trap in her hand, shouting, “You disloyal cheater. You ugly traitor.”
I rubbed my eyes in disbelief and saw a terrified woman, the size of a small finger, inside the trap.
“So this is your dream?” my wife asked angrily.
She came with a pot of boiled water and poured it on the trap, as if she were killing a mouse. The tiny, finger-sized woman instantly died.
I took a closer look at this creature dead in the trap and saw, much to my surprise, that she was the subway girl, that girl I always encountered in the Metro station on my way to work. She was very beautiful. I never had the chance to talk to her. I hadn’t dared speak to her, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.
I put on my suit and tie while my wife frantically packed her bags. She left the house, and I hadn’t uttered a word.
For the first time, I didn’t see that woman on the subway. Her friend, who always accompanied her, was alone. When I went back home, my wife wasn't there. I rejoiced that she had left home.
I tried hard to recall what had happened, but I didn’t fully understand anything, and I could not remember the dream that had brought me together with the Metro girl.
The next morning, I again found her friend on her own in the metro station. She looked sad. I plucked up courage and advanced toward her. I asked her about her friend. She wasn’t surprised or confused by my question, but I was shocked when she told me, with tears in her eyes, that her friend had recently died. When I went back home that day, I attempted to connect and link the events together and asked myself, Could my wife have killed that girl?
Suddenly, I had a thought. Before I went to bed, I got a picture of my wife and my mother-in-law, and I stared at them.
I made sure that I put the trap over my head and slept. In the morning, they were caught in the trap, looking panic-stricken. I put on my clothes, and before leaving the house, I poured some boiled water over them with a smile on my face.
The next night, I stared at an image of my boss at work. I slept, once again. As time passed, collecting pictures became my main hobby.
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A translation into English of a story by Yasser Bashiry
Catching Dreams
By: Essam Aljassim - on: Tuesday 25 February 2020 - Genre: Stories
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