Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

Dream Envelope
Sometimes, he slept with his shoes on. There was no one to apologize to. He was rolled
tightly in his quilt, trying to form a barrier against the raging sirens that took turns bellowing
with the rainstorm.
Hamza always had dreams, every night that he could remember. His mouth filled with
the bitter taste of rust. Slowly unraveling, he found himself in a wet cave, sweating on his
bathroom rug.
There was a spiral disc spinning into the dirt and Hamza had found this endearing. He
gently scooped it onto the rug and watched it stretch and swell, dripping between his toes. He
grew disgusted and tossed it at the wall. The lights went off. Hamza assumed that he had fallen
asleep although he is not sure if that is within the realm of possibility in dreams.
Then cars were speeding past, rattling on the street that must have overtaken the cave.
His mind had scrapped the first setting and reworked it. Hamza reached his arms out to flatten
himself out onto the warm asphalt but another pair of hands slid over them. He felt a sharp pain
in his mouth and warm liquid streaming down his chest. As best as he could, he peered down to
find the spiral disc, for some reason feeling the need to get rid of it once again, but he could
barely sit up.
He rolled his eyes around instead. He felt sedated, pleasantly so.
“Why has the rain stopped?” he asked aloud. There was no answer.
He tried to repeat himself but found it difficult to speak, bloody spit dribbling down his
chin. His tongue wagged around the gaping spaces in his mouth. Looking up under the blinking
streetlights, he felt sick. A pale face darkened by time in the sun, wiry eyebrows and a curved
nose hung over him. The man was carefully flicking Hamza’s last crowning tooth from his gums.
“How do you have my face?” he asked around the fingers.
Carefully, the man collected them in both hands and counted them. Hamza watched him
curl his too-pink lips with each number. But this was not his face. The face moved down and it
looked like Qasim’s. Hamza wanted to close his mouth. He only noticed that he was shrieking
when the pain spread to his ears.
The man did not seem to hear him.
Hamza’s feet felt cold, he tried to rub them together but they too were held apart. He
managed to push himself onto his elbows and could suddenly see himself from a distance,
watching his shoes being pulled off by the man. It seems almost like a loving act, carried out
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