Last night I dreamt I was back in Jerusalem. I was wandering the streets at night, it was late, and yet the air was thick with heat and sweat. The alleys were as deserted as they get, the only movement was the shimmering of the paving stones, shiny with the scraping of a thousand shoes and so dark, so bright, like the illusion of water in the midst of the desert. It was all a familiar sight. And yet, in the dream, I was reassuring myself a little too much, a little too anxiously, how natural it was that no one was around, being shabbat at all. It wasn’t shabbat, and I knew that. And I kept wandering those places, simultaneously familiar and alien as dreams can build, and no one of my friends was around. Not the shopkeeper who entertained me with mint tea and told me stories of his land. Not the military officer who was talking with dreamy eyes of the dream of having a safe space to call home, where his family wouldn’t be persecuted. Not the merchant, who explained me the worth of a land as the only true wealth you can leave your children, ‘cause earth doesn’t know currency and can’t be burnt by a foreign invader. Not the children playing in the streets, nor the angry, violent man who broke my colleague’s camera. No one was around, and in the dream I knew I had to know the real reason, and I just couldn’t grasp it.
I woke up shivering, in a pool of sweat, but the dream is still here. And my fingers are grazing the quiet stones, warm of a sun that’s memory or myth; dark has swallen the palm trees whole, and it feels like daylight never existed.
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