خشت و خون الفارسية 1447

“I am dreaming. All of this is a dream. I must wake up. Someone, wake me. If only someone would shake me. If only someone would strike my face and bring me back. I must rise.”

He resolved to retrace the corridor of dreams through which he had wandered; to pass once more by the tiles, the water, the mirror, and the well; beyond the river, the forest, the finch, and the star-filled night. Perhaps then he would awaken.

He gave himself a jolt. A stone as heavy as a mountain pressed upon his chest. He had to rid himself of it. If he remained beneath that weight, he might be buried there forever. Gathering all his strength, he rose from sleep.

The sunlight stung his eyes.

He slapped himself and stood bewildered. Then he touched his face again. A long beard covered it.

“I am dreaming! This is merely another dream.”

He pulled at the beard. A sharp pain shot through his face.

No. It was not a dream.

He stared at the beard. It extended a full handspan beneath his chin. Looking around, he found himself among the same people, each absorbed in their own affairs.

This reality was more terrifying than any nightmare he had endured.

Now that he understood he had spent all the days during which his beard had grown asleep, trapped within nightmares, he said to himself, “Perhaps this waking life is only the dream of that dream.”

Alas, it was not.

The prince began to weep. Tears streamed from beneath his sewn-shut eyelids. He sobbed and cried out.

When he was young, he had wished for nothing more than to sleep through half a day. But now that an entire year had slipped away in slumber, all that remained of him was a mute, bewildered grief.