The ideas have dried from my head and spread over the wide papers, vast white,  in front of the pen. I believed then that I am not one of those talented and creative people whose words and ideas flow between their fingertips easily and simply. 

I left the pen as the dawn was about to come and I fell asleep on my office chair.

 I saw myself between being awake and being asleep. In front of a great “castle”, with high gray walls and a ceiling of large domes that cut the clouds with its height. The castle looked like that of “Muhammad Ali” in Cairo, but it was not it, because that castle was thousands of years older than that of “Muhammad Ali.” It was in the middle of a flat land that was neither surrounded by buildings nor mountains, standing alone in a patch of vast land!

I approached the giant gate of the castle and pushed it with all my energy until the door opened, the light was dim inside, it seems as if I have crossed hundreds of years towards the past; whoever inhabits the castle indicates this. The clothes were loose and bright, the turbans were above men’s heads and the silk belts with their different colors surrounded women’s waists.

No one is talking to anyone, everyone was busy working on their own, and there were shelves of many books hanging on the walls of the castle and some passers held books to read them while walking inside the castle and that was not the habit of ancient from that age! 

I was surprised by how some of our world’s habits moved to that distant world, then the sound of a castle guard who shouted at me alerted me;

– Hey, who are you? What do you want?

–   I don’t know how to explain this, but you can consider me an unimportant person who came here looking for a new idea. Looking for a creator who could teach me how ideas are created and how seeds grow to be stories.

The guard looked at me as if he did not understand anything of what I said and then pointed to a forty-years-old man sitting beside a giant wall holding a large book, he looks at the first page of it in a strange focus, then turns several pages of the book in a hurry, then returned again to look at the first page in the same focus.

 

I asked the guard;

–   Who is this man? 

–   It’s the “dream maker!”

–   Dream maker?

–   Yes, he is the best creator in this castle. He weaves all night tales and stories. He doesn’t leave a man asleep or awake except making him a “dream”, so go to him.

I came close to the man and he didn’t seem to notice me.

• Hey dream maker, they told me you’re the most talented here in this castle. Would you teach me how fiction is made and how dreams are woven? 
• I am not talented at anything!
• Please do not be humble, everyone in the castle knows your value and talent. You are the owner of everything new!
• The truth is, as I told you, I do not create anything, but I play with events, times, and places. 
• Play?
•  yes, I play. I re-arrange the events of your day and mix them together, sometimes mix them with events from a distant past or scenes that passed in front of your eyes and sometimes I mix them with your thoughts about the future and so I do with places and people, transfer people from your childhood to your present and make you talk to people you saw maybe once in your life and but didn’t talk to them. That mixture becomes a “dream”, I do not invent anything. Do you think I have all the time to create a “new dream” every day and a new story for every person? I am not as you think and believe!

The man kept silent and turned his face to a very beautiful girl, and continued;

• Go to that girl, she is more skilled than me and I know, she is with no doubt the maker of everything.
• Who is that seductress?  She is beautiful, but why is she hiding half of her face with that scarf? And why is everyone looking at her like this?
• Go and talk to her 
• What’s her name?  What is she doing here in the castle? 
• It is the world!
• The world?
• Yes, that temptress is adored by everyone, everyone is head over heels for her, she gets what she wants, she orders and she gets obeyed!
• But she’s young!
• Beauty is young! It doesn’t know any age!

 

 I approached the girl with my heart strongly beating, I was afraid of my eyes meeting hers, as her eyes had that magic that would make you lose your mind. She swayed her graceful body in a lightness as she looked at me from afar as if she was calling me for a private conversation. I was very nervous. I was afraid to fall for her.

 

• Hey, world!
• What do you want?
• You are a great juvenile creator. Tell me how do you create and weave human lives with millions of stories and tales.

 

She laughed looking with coquetry with the scarf still hiding half of her face.

 

• I thought you were going to tell me about love?
• Did I mention love in my speech!
• Your eyes indicate a thirst of a lover?
• Please only give me what I want, I do not have the energy today to love, just tell me how to weave events and how to connect the ends of the threads until the stories intertwine and overlap until the story is constructed?  How do a person’s story or act affect others’ lives and stories, you are with no doubt the best creator humanity has ever known!
• I am the “story” itself. I am not creating a thing on my own. I am the “story” not its maker!  Her tone of voice has changed and she continues; I don’t think I’m the one who can help you!
• You are not creating anything?  You’re a dodger! 
• I told you everything! 
• You didn’t tell me anything!

 

The guard  shouted;

• Hey you, you have to go out, the doors will be closed now.
• Please wait, no one has helped me yet
• Get out, or the castle guards bring you out!
• Give me a little time…

 

The castle guards rushed towards me pushing me out of the castle doors and the girl stood looking at me. The scarf revealed half of the deformed face, and my body shivered from the horror of what I saw. I screamed from the arrogance of the guards while they were pushing me outside their castle until my face hit the castle’s thick wooden door! 

 

I got alarmed, my head fell over the desk, and the white paper pages are still in front of me, with no single letter written!