palestine dream
This is something I wrote in October of 2006. I thought I'd post it here.
In a dream I had a couple of nights ago I found myself in the West Bank again, this time with my parents. We were walking along some kind of second storey catwalk above a street or covered market road. Suddenly people around us began yelling “get down!” and waving us down onto the sidewalk. As we were crouching down, I looked over the railing and saw a man on a cellphone. I said “I think he’s calling in our coordinates!” I was, for some reason, under the impression that he was calling in artillery to bomb the area. Then it was he who had some kind of mortar and as he fired it, my mom and dad and I were all crouching down and the shell shot out towards the roof of the covered market. There was intense heat and I grabbed my dad, trying to shield his back from the heat and flames. The mortar exploded in the ceiling and after the heat dissipated, I looked at where the explosion had occurred. There on the ceiling, embossed in gold, was a dollar sign and next to it, where another shell had apparently exploded, “$1.99” was embossed in the gold.
We were very frightened. I talked with some of the Palestinians around, mostly kids, trying to figure out what was going on and if we could still get to Nablus. I asked one boy if we could enter Nablus and he shook his head and said no, it was sealed off. I asked him and then another person, I think, if we could get smuggled in through a truck. Someone said yes, maybe. We were continuing slowly along the elevated sidewalk and approached a cement stairwell leading down to the ground level. I noticed a young man that I thought I remembered from being in Nablus before. I asked him about getting into Nablus in a truck and he thought that yes, we could probably do that and he told us to come with him. I told him that I thought I needed to have a little conference with my parents; I thought we should get out of there, that this wasn’t a good idea for my parents or us all. I turned around to talk with them and my mom was gone. I looked around and asked dad where she was. We immediately started looking around and found her lying in an alcove under a blanket, crying. I knelt down and took the blanket off and tried to comfort her and reassure her that it was alright. I wanted us to get out of there, to cancel our trip to Nablus. I felt so bad for my mom and scared for my parents. I remember looking down the stairwell and watching Palestinians and an older western couple, the man with a grey beard, walking up the stairs. I don’t recall what happened next but I awoke screaming.
In a dream I had a couple of nights ago I found myself in the West Bank again, this time with my parents. We were walking along some kind of second storey catwalk above a street or covered market road. Suddenly people around us began yelling “get down!” and waving us down onto the sidewalk. As we were crouching down, I looked over the railing and saw a man on a cellphone. I said “I think he’s calling in our coordinates!” I was, for some reason, under the impression that he was calling in artillery to bomb the area. Then it was he who had some kind of mortar and as he fired it, my mom and dad and I were all crouching down and the shell shot out towards the roof of the covered market. There was intense heat and I grabbed my dad, trying to shield his back from the heat and flames. The mortar exploded in the ceiling and after the heat dissipated, I looked at where the explosion had occurred. There on the ceiling, embossed in gold, was a dollar sign and next to it, where another shell had apparently exploded, “$1.99” was embossed in the gold.
We were very frightened. I talked with some of the Palestinians around, mostly kids, trying to figure out what was going on and if we could still get to Nablus. I asked one boy if we could enter Nablus and he shook his head and said no, it was sealed off. I asked him and then another person, I think, if we could get smuggled in through a truck. Someone said yes, maybe. We were continuing slowly along the elevated sidewalk and approached a cement stairwell leading down to the ground level. I noticed a young man that I thought I remembered from being in Nablus before. I asked him about getting into Nablus in a truck and he thought that yes, we could probably do that and he told us to come with him. I told him that I thought I needed to have a little conference with my parents; I thought we should get out of there, that this wasn’t a good idea for my parents or us all. I turned around to talk with them and my mom was gone. I looked around and asked dad where she was. We immediately started looking around and found her lying in an alcove under a blanket, crying. I knelt down and took the blanket off and tried to comfort her and reassure her that it was alright. I wanted us to get out of there, to cancel our trip to Nablus. I felt so bad for my mom and scared for my parents. I remember looking down the stairwell and watching Palestinians and an older western couple, the man with a grey beard, walking up the stairs. I don’t recall what happened next but I awoke screaming.
posted by matt iv at 3:03 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home