Castle in the Air

People always did ask strange things in dreams, Abdullah thought. “No, masterpiece of my imagination,” he said. “Know that I am really the long-lost son of a distant prince.”

“Oh,” she said. “Then that may make a difference. Does that mean you’re a different kind of woman from me?”

Abdullah stared at the girl of his dreams in some perplexity. “I’m not a woman!” he said.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “You are wearing a dress.”

Abdullah looked down and discovered that, in the way of dreams, he was wearing his nightshirt. “This is just my strange foreign garb,” he said hastily. “My true country is far from here. I assure you that I am a man.”

“Oh no,” she said decidedly. “You can’t be a man. You’re quite the wrong shape. Men are twice as thick as you all over and their stomachs come out in a fat bit that’s called a belly. And they have grey hair all over their faces and nothing but shiny skin on their heads. You’ve got hair on your head like me and almost none on your face.” Then, as Abdullah put his hand rather indignantly to the six hairs on his upper lip, she asked, “Or have you got bare skin under your hat?”

“Certainly not,” said Abdullah, who was proud of his thick wavy hair. He put his hand to his head and removed what turned out to be his nightcap. “Look,” he said.

“Ah,” she said. Her lovely face was puzzled. “You have hair that’s almost as nice as mine. I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do either,” said Abdullah. “Could it be that you have not seen very many men?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Don’t be silly – I’ve only seen my father! But I’ve seen quite a lot of him, so I do know.”

“But – don’t you ever go out at all?” Abdullah asked helplessly.

She laughed. “Yes, I’m out now. This is my night garden. My father had it made so that I wouldn’t ruin my looks going out in the sun.”

“I mean, out into the town, to see all the people,” Abdullah explained.

“Well, no, not yet,” she admitted. As if that bothered her a little, she twirled away from him and went to sit on the edge of the fountain. Turning to look up at him, she said, “My father tells me I might be able to go out and see the town sometimes after I’m married – if my husband allows me to – but it won’t be this town. My father’s arranging for me to marry a prince from Ochinstan. Until then I have to stay inside these walls of course.”

Abdullah had heard that some of the very rich people in Zanzib kept their daughters – and even their wives too – almost like prisoners inside their grand houses. He had many times wished someone would keep his father’s first wife’s sister Fatima that way. But now, in this dream, it seemed to him that this custom was entirely unreasonable and not fair on this lovely girl at all. Fancy not knowing what a normal young man looked like!

“Pardon my asking, but is the prince from Ochinstan perhaps old and a little ugly?” he said.

“Well,” she said, evidently not quite sure, “my father says he’s in his prime, just like my father is himself. But I believe the problem lies in the brutal nature of men. If another man saw me before the prince did, my father says he would instantly fall in love with me and carry me off, which would ruin all my father’s plans, naturally. He says most men are great beasts. Are you a beast?”

“Not in the least,” said Abdullah.

“I thought not,” she said, and looked up at him with great concern. “You do not seem to me to be a beast. This makes me quite sure that you can’t really be a man.” Evidently she was one of those people who like to cling to a theory once they have made it. After considering a moment, she asked, “Could your family, perhaps, for reasons of their own, have brought you up to believe a falsehood?”

Abdullah would have liked to say that the boot was on the other foot, but, since that struck him as impolite, he simply shook his head and thought how generous of her it was to be so worried about him, and how the worry on her face only made it more beautiful – not to speak of the way her eyes shone compassionately in the gold and silver light reflecting from the fountain.

“Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that you are from a distant country,” she said, and patted the edge of the fountain beside her. “Sit down and tell me all about it.”

“Tell me your name first,” said Abdullah.

“It’s rather a silly name,” she said nervously. “I’m called Flower-in-the-Night.”

It was the perfect name for the girl of his dreams, Abdullah thought. He gazed down at her admiringly. “My name is Abdullah,” he said.

“They even gave you a man’s name!” Flower-in-the-Night exclaimed indignantly. “Do sit down and tell me.”

Abdullah sat on the marble kerb beside her and thought that this was a very real dream. The stone was cold. Splashes from the fountain soaked into his nightshirt, while the sweet smell of rosewater from Flower-in-the-Night mingled most realistically with scents from the flowers in the garden. But since it was a dream, it followed that his daydreams were true here too. So Abdullah told her all about the palace he had lived in as a prince and how he was kidnapped by Kabul Aqba and escaped into the desert, where the carpet merchant found him.

Flower-in-the-Night listened with complete sympathy. “How terrifying! How exhausting!” she said. “Could it be that your foster father was in league with the bandits to deceive you?”

Abdullah had a growing feeling, despite the fact that he was only dreaming, that he was getting her sympathy on false pretences. He agreed that his father could have been in the pay of Kabul Aqba, and then changed the subject. “Let us get back to your father and his plans,” he said. “It seems to me a little awkward that you should marry this prince from Ochinstan without having seen any other men to compare him to. How are you going to know whether you love him or not?”

“You have a point,” she said. “This worries me too sometimes.”

“Then I tell you what,” Abdullah said. “Suppose I come back tomorrow night and bring you pictures of as many men as I can find? That should give you some standard to compare the prince with.” Dream or not, Abdullah had absolutely no doubt that he would be back tomorrow. This would give him a proper excuse.

Flower-in-the-Night considered this offer, swaying dubiously back and forth with her hands clasped round her knees. Abdullah could almost see rows of fat bald men with grey beards passing in front of her mind’s eye.

“I assure you,” he said, “that men come in every sort of size and shape.”

“Then that would be very instructive,” she agreed. “At least it would give me an excuse to see you again. You’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

This made Abdullah even more determined to come back tomorrow. He told himself it would be unfair to leave her in such a state of ignorance. “And I think the same about you,” he said shyly.

At this, to his disappointment, Flower-in-the-Night got up to leave. “I have to go indoors now,” she said. “A first visit must last no longer than half an hour, and I’m almost sure you’ve been here twice as long as that. But now we know one another, you can stay at least two hours next time.”

“Thank you. I shall,” said Abdullah.

She smiled and passed away like a dream, beyond the fountain and behind two frondy flowering shrubs.

After that, the garden, the moonlight and the scents seemed rather tame. Abdullah could think of nothing better to do than wander back the way he had come. And there, on the moonlit bank, he found the carpet. He had forgotten about it completely. But since it was there in the dream too, he lay down on it and fell asleep.

He woke up some hours later with blinding daylight streaming in through the chinks in his booth. The smell of the day before yesterday’s incense hanging about in the air struck him as cheap and suffocating. In fact the whole booth was fusty and frowsty and cheap. And he had earache because his nightcap seemed to have fallen off in the night. But at least, he found while he hunted for the nightcap, the carpet had not made off in the night. It was still underneath him. This was the one good thing he could see in what suddenly struck him as a thoroughly dull and depressing life.

Here Jamal, who was still grateful for the silver pieces, shouted outside that he had breakfast ready for both of them. Abdullah gladly flung back the curtains of the booth. Cocks crowed in the distance. The sky was glowing blue, and shafts of strong sunlight sliced through the blue dust and old incense inside the booth. Even in that strong light, Abdullah failed to discover his nightcap. And he was more depressed than ever.

“Tell me, do you sometimes find yourself unaccountably sad on some days?” he asked Jamal as the two of them sat cross-legged in the sun outside to eat.

Jamal tenderly fed a piece of sugar pastry to his dog. “I would have been sad today,” he said, “but for you. I think someone paid those wretched boys to steal. They were so thorough. And on top of that, the Watch fined me. Did I say? I think I have enemies, my friend.”

Though this confirmed Abdullah’s suspicions of the stranger who sold him the carpet, it was not much help. “Maybe,” he said, “you should be more careful about whom you let your dog bite.”

“Not I!” said Jamal. “I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.”

After breakfast, Abdullah looked for his nightcap again. It was simply not there. He tried thinking carefully back to the last time he truly remembered wearing it. That was when he lay down to sleep the previous night, when he was thinking of taking the carpet to the Grand Vizir. After that came the dream. He had found he was wearing the nightcap then. He remembered taking it off to show Flower-in-the-Night (what a lovely name!) that he was not bald. From then on, as far as he could recall, he had carried the nightcap in his hand until the moment when he had sat down beside her on the edge of the fountain. After that, when he recounted the history of his kidnapping by Kabul Aqba, he had a clear memory of waving both hands freely as he talked and he knew that the nightcap had not been in either one. Things did disappear like that in dreams, he knew, but the evidence pointed, all the same, to his having dropped it as he sat down. Was it possible he had left it lying on the grass beside the fountain? In which case—

Abdullah stood stock-still in the centre of the booth, staring into the rays of sunlight which, oddly enough, no longer seemed full of squalid motes of dust and old incense. Instead, they were pure golden slices of heaven itself.

“It was not a dream!” said Abdullah.

Somehow, his depression was clean gone. Even breathing was easier.

“It was real!” he said.

He went to stand thoughtfully looking down at the magic carpet. That had been in the dream too. In which case—“It follows that you transported me to some rich man’s garden while I slept,” he said to it. “Perhaps I spoke and ordered you to do so in my sleep. Very likely. I was thinking of gardens. You are even more valuable than I realised!”