I thought this story was short and sweet. Even though it wasn't as long as some of the other stories we've read, a point was still made by the end of it. In the story, a boy (who I assume is Mahfouz) is escorted to his first day of school by his father. When he arrives at school, he's a little hesitant, but then he eases up and starts to make friends. He does all sorts of activities, and he's having so much fun, but school time is finally over. When he walks outside, his father isn't there to pick him up- and he promised to be there, too. (Here's the freaky part.) Not only is his father absent, but the whole atmosphere around him has seemed to change- what used to be a beautiful road with gardens is now crowded with taxicabs and tall buildings. The boy decides to try and get home himself, but he can't even find his way because everything around him has drastically changed. The story ends with another boy coming up to him and saying, "Grandpa, let me take you across".
I think this story has a lot to do with time and growing up. The interaction that they (time & growing up) have is interesting because they seem to make sense at first- it takes a long time to grow up and become an adult. But no, it's exactly the opposite! Like our class has discussed in previous discussions, when you're growing up, the days feel long and the years feel short. It all goes by at an unbelievable pace. In the story, the boy was only at school for half a day, and at the end of it all, the country becomes a city and he turns into a grandpa. Just looking at that out of context, it shows that this story is pretty weird. Still, Mahfouz does a good job of conveying how time works and how it, too, is pretty weird.
This is a dream that I had pretty recently, sometime this year. So I'm running through a town that's not Chicago, but in the dream, I subconsciously know that I live there. As I'm running, and I'm running home, but to a home that I made up, I'm singing show tunes- not any particular ones, just the genre in general, I guess. I get home and I immediately run to the back door- it's a wooden door, then a screen door that leads to the back. In the back, there's this loooooong staircase that leads to this river (casually in the back of my house, I know). Anyways, I'm standing at the top of this staircase, and all of a sudden, an orangutan and a red fox are walking along the river together. I'm standing there in shock, and the me-that's-sleeping is also shocked because why did those specific animals pop into my head?! Back to the dream: a bigger red fox shows up and starts to fight the orangutan. I don't know what to do, and maybe I try to stop the fight, because the big fox sees me and immediately pounces. I run for my life, up the staircase, slamming the door. After a few minutes, I open the door again, and the animals are still there, except they look extremely sad. Meanwhile, it's pouring rain outside, and one of the foxes is howling at the sky.
The End.
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