Given

What do you do when your dream comes true? 

I know what not to do when a nightmare becomes a reality. I don’t go to sleep. At least until the panic wave passes, and my world turns, one hallucinatory sleep-deprived night after another, and I am delivered to a blissful state of acceptance.

But what do you do when the dream you have secretly nurtured for many years is finally materialized? Would you recognize it when it arrives at your doorstep? Would you embrace it with grace, with caution, with earthly humbleness and control? Or would you open your arms wide, immerse yourself in the contentment of satisfaction, abandoning your pre-dream self and become another person, dreaming a different dream?

Well, if it was one of my dreams manifesting its foundations in my world, I have probably chased after it and landed out-of-breath in the middle of its living room. I imagine I wouldn’t be surprised when I basked in the bright sun of its achievement, having worked hard to get there.

Boy, was I wrong!

Twenty years ago, my daughter came to me in a dream. She had pencils in her hair and wore newspapers for a gown. Her eyes wide, she floated toward me, her long braids writing words on the walls. The words disappeared as soon as they were inscribed, faster than I could read them. Her delicate fingers pointed to her news-adorned dress, a puzzled look on her innocent face. In that deviated world of sub-consciousness, my daughter was asking me questions. I had no idea what she inquired about. I awoke feeling helpless and confused. I failed to help her understand something. I had not yet birthed a child, either.

In the warmth and exclusivity of my small family, my husband and I celebrated our daughter’s nineteenth birthday a few days ago. I sat across from her during dinner at a Japanese restaurant and watched, bewildered, my dream play around me like a movie. A healthy vibrant young lady jotted down her order of sushi rolls with a pencil, then inserted it behind her ear while she waited for us to make our choices. She conversed, threw her head back in a genuine laugh and asked questions, some I had answers to, some I did not.

What wonder!

What great privilege!

My dream landed in my lap in the dining hall of a Japanese restaurant in a far away land where many forces worked against me getting there. I basked in the bright rays of my daughter’s smile and committed the memory to a special corner in my head.

I offer thanks to God, to the Universe, to unseen forces and to the great husband by my side. I remember what I was like before she was given to me. It is time to go to sleep and dream on.


Lilas Taha is a novelist, winner of the 2017 International Book Awards  and is the author of Shadows of Damascus and Bitter Almonds.