Lebanon: liberty in dreams

DAYS GO BY and if you’re lucky, you don’t feel the time pass. Nights in prison are another story.

Some prisoners choose to stay awake at night and sleep during the day so they won’t notice time passing. But if you want to get back to normal and sleep at night, you have to find the liberty that only exists when you sleep, because here, your only chance of tasting freedom is in your dreams.

You have a wife that visits you regularly…in your dreams. You have children, too, who come to see you. Sometimes, you travel and visit people who don’t even exist in real life. The most beautiful place I’ve visited is definitely Olympian. It’s an island covered in green spaces, and its low houses are surrounded by gardens. There is another place where the residents experience the most wonderful tranquillity. Their bodies are human, but their features are not. During my last visit there, one of them took me for a walk near a lake. When we arrived at its banks, he said to me, “Look at the lake of warriors”. Above the lake, a greyish cloud was taking shape. And I haven’t forgotten about women during all these visits. They are indescribably beautiful. I had never properly appreciated this beauty in the real world.

Another time, I went to a little hill near a calm lake. Two golden castles were built there. All of the places I visited were dominated by a dazzling brightness. But there was never sunshine.

Sometimes, I would visit my hometown, Sour (Tyre) and my home, although I don’t like to do that because it’s dark there. Before I fell asleep, I wanted to dream of the people I missed the most, and then I dreamed of Mouhanade, the cat I was raising at my place before being imprisoned. I also dreamed of my parents’ tomb; they breathed their last before I was ten.

 As for the rest of my family, I’ll admit that I forgot their features a while ago.

They never come to visit me and sometimes I wonder, “Would I recognize them if I saw them again? Assuming God decides that I can get out of here alive one day”. I don’t have answers to these questions.
How beautiful liberty and mercy are, even in the dream world! You smile when you read something about liberty or mercy in a story or in some religious or philosophical book. But in reality, what do liberty and mercy feel like?

Sometimes during the day, there are kittens who go out and regain their freedom. Once, with a close friend of mine who has been sentenced to death, curiosity pushed me to ask the kitten what liberty looked like, in the outside world.
My friend burst out laughing and told me, “Liberty is there, don’t strain yourself. The kitten was right, everyone wants to find Mercy, but will we succeed in getting it one day? Only time will tell…”