Dreams

A beeping entered my world like thunder from the sky, like a call for action. I was far, far away, lost in a dream among images, symbols, emotions, and immobilizing exhaustion. My consciousness parted with regret the reality it inhabited and flew in the direction of the new sound along a winding path, leaving behind what was born during the night. I could compare the fantastical world in which I had existed until then with the simplicity of reality, and that moment was stretched and prolonged in the strange state of dream-reality. The beeping got louder. It wasn’t just a sound, but a pulsating red light, a familiar feeling.I was awake. The memory of the heavy slumber remained.
It was dark in the room. The red numbers on the clock face were blinking and that was the only visible thing in the room. Mattresses stood up against the windows of the studio apartment to prevent the street noise and brightness. Not a ray of light could sneak into the room. I sat on the edge of the bed and stretched out my arm, reaching for the snooze button.It was seven o’clock in the morning — time to get up. I yawned, ruffled my hair, yawned again. Well, no matter how many yawns I was letting off, I had to get up. I found the string of the lamp on the table by the alarm clock and pulled it. The room suddenly lit up as if by my own tamed sun, which bright light bothered my eyes. I lowered my eyelids.
With my eyes barely open, I could still see well around the room. The apartment was very untidy. When I had worn out all my clothes, I had gone to the store and bought jeans, T-shirts, underwear, and socks. It took me less time to do that than going to the public laundromat two blocks away down the street. As a result, the clothes had overtaken the little studio. Clothes littered the floor along with two full black garbage bags filled with clothes piled on top of each other in the corner. Dirty clothes were strewn across the floor, over the bicycle frame, propped against the cupboard, and also hanging on the wall against the bed. Besides the clothes, there were books on the shelves — I hadn’t read them. I hadn’t read for a while — maybe for six months, but I still collected books.
The time I spent working at the fast-food restaurant, Subway, ate most of my time glutinously. I worked twelve hours a day from noon until midnight. It was easy, nice work to make sandwiches — eating as much as I felt like. Sometimes the owner called me to work for more hours — sixteen, eighteen. They had called me for eighteen hours the day before. That’s why I had set the alarm for seven o’clock. I had forgotten to change it. Well, no matter. I was awake — no point in going to bed again.
I got up from the bed and streamlined to the door to the bathroom. The window in the bathroom was letting the morning light in. The day had begun. The traffic noise came from outside too — honks of cars, the roaring of the engine of a truck or a bus, the shouts of people speaking in unfamiliar English language. My apartment was in a building at the corner of 95th Street and Third Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. The Verrazano bridge — a colossal bridge connecting Brooklyn with Staten Island was about five blocks down the road.
Stepping between the clothes on the floor, I returned from the bathroom to the room. I sat at the small table next to the bed, turned on the radio, killed two cockroaches wandering on the table and tossed their small carcasses at the general direction of the sink. The studio was infested with cockroaches. I had put pots full of water under the feet of the metal frame of the bed, but the vermins still managed to get in the bed. They climbed on the walls, the ceiling, and fell over me like paratroopers coming to crawl all over my body. It felt nasty, at least until I fell asleep and had to get up and clean the bed. Once asleep, I didn’t care of course.
The cockroaches came into the apartment from the hallway, making a trip from the garbage bins and the apartment next door where my neighbors lived. Their religion, I suspected, prohibited them from killing living creatures, including cockroaches. Who knows, they might be even feeding them. I, on my part, sprayed the surfaces of my apartment and hallway with Raid as well as sprinkled some white poisonous powder on the floor. Sometimes I opted to just step on them and squash them. Still, to no avail, the cockroaches streamed into my apartment through the slit under the door and traveled down the heating pipes. Those pipes were so hot that I wondered how the little buggers survived but they did and flourished in my apartment. The pipes led to a small radiator in the corner, the temperature regulator of which was broken. It was hot to the touch and maintaining a temperature of seventy-five degrees in the small apartment, but I had to get used to it.
I was twenty years old.
I got up, went to the fridge, took out a gallon of milk, lifted the cap, and drank directly from the jug. I pulled my cereal box from the refrigerator — all the food was there — the only place secured from cockroaches. I made breakfast by mixing the cereal with the milk in a bowl and gulped it before a cockroach had a chance to get in. I then went to the bathroom and took a shower. After I dried myself, I opened a pack of T-shirts and one with underwear and put the new garments on. The old ones I had tossed on the floor with the rest of the dirty clothes. I put on the new jeans, a sweater and a jacket. I wasn’t feeling like doing laundry that day. I felt like going for a walk, so I strode to the door, through the dirty clothes, put on a hat, got out of the apartment, and making sure that the keys were in my pocket, shut the door closed behind me.
I descended two floors down, finally leaving the building. The slight breeze was nibbling at my cheeks. It smelled of a sea. The ocean was just a few blocks down the street. I started down Third Avenue towards the Verrazano bridge. I reached the paveway by the river and propped myself on the railing. A seagull perched almost next to me — must be expecting me to throw it a piece of bread. It looked at me curiously with one eye; the other turned towards the Hudson river. In the distance, in the direction of Manhattan, was approaching a giant container ship. I started down the alley towards it. The seagull flew away once I moved. In fifteen minutes, when the ship was passing me I propped myself on the railing again, looking at it.
It was enormous. It seemed so big that I did not believe it would fit under the bridge down the river, but I knew better. If I were to look at it long enough, it would get smaller and smaller and when it was under the bridge, it will be just a dwarf — naught. Something about it reminded me of the things that happened in the present, which seemed so essential that they were consuming my whole attention in the moment, but with time, like that ship, they would become insignificant in the grand scheme of life.
I liked to think about the future. The future was more important than the past in my opinion. One must make plans for the future,on the other hand, the future has not happened yet. I had only the present moment and the past. And I had to analyze — not to do it for some moral conclusion. I wanted to understand the past. I needed to become a historian of my own life and to become the student who reads what the historian had written.
I continued up the alley by the river. Eventually, I reached its end and turned around. The Verrazano bridge had become so small behind me. I could see it’s beginning and end — it’s purpose — to connect two shores like one night connecting two other days with each other. But then what was a dream and what was real? I thought that in dream, reality might seem as a dream and dreamstate, as reality. Was I asleep and dreaming or was that reality?
Once I got back to my apartment, I took my bicycle and started pushing it down the hall, the noise of its rattling was bouncing off the corridor walls. When I was on the sidewalk, I climbed on the bike and started riding down 95th Street, turned left onto Fourth Avenue and in ten minutes was at the Subway restaurant that I am employed at. The store smelled like freshly baked bread. Nader and Walid, my coworkers– both of them Egyptians, stood behind the counter talking to each other. When they saw me coming in, they smiled and greeted me. I pushed the bicycle to the back of the store, put on an apron and a hat with the company’s logo, and joined Nader and Walid behind the counter. My workday began.
At noon it was busy, but later in the day the stream of customers coming to order sandwiches slowed down, and the time spent working at the store was pleasant. Around five in the afternoon, it became busy again, but we were able to manage it. Every four hours, I had a fifteen-minute break. I was using it to make myself a sandwich. It was no coincidence why I had gained about five kilograms in six months since I had arrived from Bulgaria and started working at the store.
At about six o’clock, Gregory, the store owner, arrived. Sometimes we would take on a project together which meant that he told me to do something and gave me direction on how to do it.That time it was cleaning a spot of dirty tiles on the floor with a small brush. “These Eastern-Europeans are very hard working” I heard Gregory remarking to Walid, who was something of a manager to the store. He laughed and nodded without seeming to be irritated by Gregory’s praise. We were already friends by that time.
Later Gregory and Walid left the store. The time passed fast, and around midnight, it became time to close. Time started running slowly then. Sweet and slowly. Nader was cleaning the counter — he had an eye for the details, and I washed the bread trays in the kitchen. Then I refilled the containers with vegetables, moved them to the big fridge at the back, took out the bread for the next morning from the freezer, and left them to defrost in the refrigerator. I then went to the front of the store and swept and mopped the floor.
The conversation with Nader was pleasant. He talked about his family in Egypt — his wife and two kids — a boy and girl. Nader imagined how he would build a small furniture workshop in his hometown. It was famous around the world for its furniture exports. “What do you mean around the world, Nader? In Bulgaria, nobody has even heard of your town,” I pulled his leg. “What do you know…” he responded, but he wasn’t mad at me.
Nader lived with Walid and two other people in a two-room apartment on 86th Street. My living arrangement was much better than his, I thought, even with the cockroaches. We spoke about the war in Iraq, and then we moved to the stock exchange. It was fascinating for us — not quite sure how it worked, but we knew that there was something interesting about it.
Once we were done cleaning the store, we took off the aprons and left, locking the door behind us and rolling down the metal shutters. We walked a few blocks together, then Nader turned down 86th Street, and I got on my bicycle and started down 4th Avenue towards home. The streets were deserted, devoid of people and traffic, the traffic light blinking in yellow. It was chilly. At home, I took my jacket, sweater, and jeans off and threw them on the top of the cupboard on the wall to wear the next day again. Then I brushed my teeth and went to bed. The dream crept on me fast. My last thought was that the next day was my free day — Sunday and I would be able to wash my clothes at last. I fell asleep so fast that I didn’t realize my transition to when I actually fell asleep.
An alarm clock is buzzing. It doesn’t sneak into my dream since I have been expecting it. Have I been asleep at all? My dream is not as deep as it once was, even with sleeping medications. I sit on the edge of the bed. Now I am in a dream-reality state, as it often happens nowadays. I need about ten seconds to understand what is real and separate it from the dream — and I did dream even though I wasn’t sound asleep. I look around the room. It is tidy. Now, I have a good, respected job. Not the Subway job. All is fine. I dreamed of something from another life — did it ever happen, or was it just a dream? At this moment, I still don’t know.
I play a song on the stereo. The music fills up the room. I close my eyes and for a short time, that feeling of a deep healthy sleep that I felt in my dream, on that morning twenty years ago, when I was sitting on the edge of the bed like I am doing now, fills me up. The memory seems refreshing. I open my eyes and smile. It’s time to start the day.