“Do you really want to remember your dreams?

I often wish to forget mine, probably because I sometimes remember them to the point that I get angry with people for what they did in them, or grow sad again over what happened as though it reoccured last night, or feel the bittersweet joy of having, for a moment, what enchanted me.

Sometimes I think I have in fact replied to work emails or finally sent my clothes to the cleaners. Or I remember in detail the circumstances of my death, again and again, whereas perhaps the only benefit to death, whether we go to heaven or hell or nonexistence, is that we are no longer preoccupied with it. Until then, what I sometimes want when I go to bed and remember my day is to suddenly discover it was nothing but a dream. I’d think about how I’d like to write it, and then open my eyes again to the world and to other dreams.”

Amr Ezzat is an Egyptian writer who remembers his dreams very well. Born in Imbaba in 1980, Ezzat studied engineering and philosophy, and worked as an engineer, then a journalist before becoming a human rights researcher and a writer for numerous newspapers and periodicals. His first book Room 304 or How I Hid From My Dear Father For 35 Years was published in English in 2018, and in Arabic in 2019. 

Translated by Jennifer Peterson