by Dara Horn
“I dreamt last night that my mother and I were at my husband’s funeral,” Nasreen said.
This was more information about Nasreen than Josie had amassed in a week. Was Nasreen married? Widowed? She glanced at Nasreen’s hands, searching for a wedding ring, but Nasreen had rings on several fingers, and it occurred to Josie that there was nothing universally symbolic about one’s left fourth finger, that she had no idea what was normal here.
“It wasn’t an ordinary funeral, in the dream. It was a pharaonic funeral, like the ones painted in the tombs.” Nasreen lowered her voice as she continued, a rushed hush of words that hovered in the library’s chilled air. “My husband’s body was in a sarcophagus on a mourner’s boat, and I was riding on it with hundreds of women I had never met before. They were all wailing and weeping, and I knew they were our slaves. But even though the boat was a pharaonic boat, the city on the riverbanks looked like Cairo or Alexandria now. There were dozens of houseboats and restaurant boats tied along the docks, not far from where the funeral boat was sailing. Then I saw my mother standing near the edge of the boat’s deck. She was wearing a white robe and beaded necklaces, like the women in the tomb paintings. All around her were those wailing women, but she was standing there smiling. I never saw her so happy, and I was very relieved, because I thought it meant it was all a joke. She took my hand and pulled me to the side of the boat. She pointed at all the houseboats and floating restaurants and said, ‘Now you can do it, habeebti. You know how to swim. Just jump.’ I thought about it. I could even hear the music coming from those boats. But I didn’t jump.”
Josie exhaled, a long breath. Cities of the dead, she remembered Nasreen saying. It made sense now. She tried to think of something compassionate to say, but her mind went blank. Your problem, Josie, she heard Judith insulting her in her head, is that you have no empathy. None. But I suppose when you’re a genius, it doesn’t matter if you think no one exists in the world but you. She had to respond, if only to prove Judith wrong. But Nasreen spoke first.
“How would I create the catalogue for this dream?” Nasreen asked.
Josie was grateful for the chance to play along. “Well, if we were going to archive this, we’d try to sort everything by category,” Josie said. “Let’s create one category for ‘mother,’ another for ‘husband,’ another for ‘funeral,’ and then one for ‘pharaonic period.’” She knew she sounded cold, clinical, heartless. But surely this was what Nasreen was looking for. She dragged a finger over the screen. “You want to create as many categories as you can think of. Maybe create one for ‘boats,’ and another for ‘slaves.’ And then you always need to add at least a few conceptual ones, like ‘grief,’ or ‘antiquity.’” Josie typed quickly, more quickly than she spoke. “The conceptual ones are especially important. The idea is to see what reappears in other dreams. Then you can draw conclusions from the patterns. In the future, once the software learns what you care about, you won’t have to do any more than enter a word or two.”
“Of course,” Nasreen said. With Josie showing her how, she classed the dream expertly. “I should also like to include a category for ‘anachronisms,’” Nasreen added, in her British syntax.
Josie nodded. “Right, because the pharaonic funeral had modern people in it.”
“And also because my mother could not be present at my husband’s funeral. She died when I was nine years old.”
Josie jolted, startled. Again empathy failed her. Perhaps Judith was right. “I’m—I’m so—I’m so sorry,” she stammered.
But Nasreen was not interested in Josie’s forced pity. She waved a hand. “If I have enough of these dreams, the program would begin to catalogue them for me. Is that correct?”
“Yes. And then you’d see a cloud emerge.”
“A cloud,” Nasreen repeated. There was a skeptical edge in her voice. Or was it just her accent?
“A cloud, like the ones we’ve been creating for the library catalogue system,” Josie explained. She suppressed a snort. Had Nasreen heard a single word she had said in the past six days? It was like talking to Judith. Some people just didn’t get anything the first time. “I don’t mean offsite data storage. I mean a network of associated words or ideas, for search purposes. You’ll have a statistical analysis of how often certain images come up. Once you start entering other dreams, you’ll be able to see the prominence of certain themes. And then the variations on the themes will probably trend in specific directions.”
“I have had this particular dream over a hundred times,” Nasreen said.
“Well, that will make the archiving very simple,” Josie replied curtly. She was done with Nasreen. She focused her eyes pointedly on the screen, aggressively closing programs, returning to the library catalogue. “Now you can see how this same program works for the—”
“What do you think my dream means?” Nasreen asked.
Josie turned to her. Was this an attempt at friendship, or a challenge? It was degrading not to know. “Are you testing my talent for psychoanalysis? Because I really just do software,” Josie said.
“I am testing your talent for prophecy,” Nasreen replied.
Was she joking? Being in Egypt was like being a child, unable to hear the words beneath the words, incapable of getting the jokes. She forced a laugh, hoping she had guessed correctly. But Nasreen did not smile.
“You are clearly a very intelligent woman,” Nasreen said. “You are able to see patterns where others do not see them. So I would like to know what you think my dream means.”
Josie drew in her breath, looking at Nasreen’s shoes. Nasreen was wearing black ballet slippers, the kind that hip American women wore years earlier. But Nasreen’s looked new.
“Well, without knowing you at all, I would say that you probably miss your husband very much, and your mother as well,” Josie replied. It was the most innocuous thing she could think of.
“Why would it be necessary to know me in order to understand my dream?” Nasreen asked.
This was baffling. Was it not obvious? “To know what these people and ideas mean to you, of course,” she said. The challenge of not condescending was immense.
“Why would it matter what they mean to me?” Nasreen asked. “The message ought to be clear on its own.”
Josie considered this. In fact the dream did have a rather obvious interpretation, but it didn’t seem like one Josie should share. “That would depend on if you think dreams are internal or external,” she said. “I suppose the message ought to be clear to anyone if you believe that the dream’s source is something outside of your own mind. But if the dream’s source is in your own mind, then it should matter what these people meant to you.”
“In the end it is not that different, is it?” Nasreen said, her dark lips set in a smug grin. “There is a message either way, just as I said.”
For a moment Josie was silent, hovering on the edge of a respectful nod. But then she could no longer contain her irritation—with Nasreen, with the library, with the radiance of the past buried under the nonsense of the present, with the thick walls of illogic that had been closing in around her from that very first moment at the airport, when she had been sagely informed that she was a mistake. It was like being with Judith. Or like being Judith.
“It’s actually extremely different,” Josie said. She no longer held her exasperation under her breath. Her voice rose. “If the dream is some sort of supernatural message, or something reflecting the—the will of God, so to speak—then it should matter a lot, and you should care a lot about what it’s trying to tell you. And if the dream is that kind of supernatural message, then presumably what it is trying to tell you is some sort of—prophecy, as you put it. Some kind of prediction or warning about the future that you couldn’t otherwise know.”
“Precisely,” Nasreen said. Her boarding school accent was comically precise.
“But if the dream is actually an internal message, something from your own memory or imagination, then it can’t be any
thing beyond that. Then it’s just like—like a book the library owns but hasn’t catalogued yet,” Josie fumbled, unsure of the analogy. “It could be valuable, or it could be worthless. But if it’s coming from your own mind, then it can’t be a prophecy, because there’s no external source of new information. It can only be like the archive, which is made up of things you already know, even if you’ve forgotten them. Then it isn’t about the future, just the past.”
“In the end,” Nasreen said evenly, “they are the same.”
This was becoming maddening. “They’re not the same. They’re opposites.”
Nasreen smiled at her. “Josephine, I think that for you it is daytime all the time, even at night.”
“What do you mean?”
Nasreen kept smiling. “For you every confusing thing on earth is a problem that can be solved.”
“That’s because every confusing thing on earth is a problem that can be solved.”
For the first time since Josie had met her, Nasreen laughed. “The car you called should be waiting outside. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I HAVE ANOTHER DREAM for you,” Nasreen said ten days later, after Josie had walked her through four different software options for sorting manuscript images. It was ridiculous even to be here, Josie thought. No one needed a CEO to do this. But Judith had been right: the trip had resulted in several news stories about the company’s prescience and generosity in aiding the “emerging knowledge economy” in the Arab world, for which Josie had been cheerfully quoted by phone. One reporter for a television network had even done an interview with her in the library’s imposing glass lobby, followed by interviews with two of the mustached men. The publicity had been perfect; the stories had been reposted across the internet, and investment inquiries had been coming in at home.
But during her second week in Egypt, Josie had begun to understand that her Egyptian sponsors had their own goals. For them, her visit was their chance to set up a “joint venture,” as the Egyptian businessmen liked to put it. It was going to be difficult to explain to them why that wasn’t going to happen. There was no possibility of doing business here, Josie knew. Even the ancient tombs were often “closed for repairs” until the tour guides pressed cash into various people’s hands. The most eager collectors of cash were the police. Was she being greedy? Or racist? Or merely smart? She was relieved that once she got home, she wouldn’t have to think about it. Egypt would become a three-week pocket in her life, a brief and vaguely remembered dream. Two days before she was due to leave Alexandria, she was invited to a dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel where she was staying, with all sponsors present. By then she already knew how it would go: everything said by circumlocution, the words between words the only ones that mattered, and the brilliant prodigy Josie sitting at the table like a child, noticing with a sinking feeling that the adults were talking about her in her presence, and not in entirely flattering terms. That afternoon at the library, she was just starting to worry about what her inner businesswoman knew was coming: the “ask.”
“In my new dream, I moved to America, and someone there buried me alive,” Nasreen said. “What do you think it means?”
Josie grinned. “I think it means you’re afraid of me.”
Josie was going back to Cairo in three days, and back home two days after that. She was exhausted by Alexandria, by its insatiable library and the perpetually confounding Nasreen. She looked forward to freedom in Cairo, where she would be beyond Nasreen’s orbit, shepherded only by the more pliable mustached men. She had plans to see the original genizah, the room in the nine-hundred-year-old Ben Ezra synagogue where hundreds of thousands of medieval Hebrew documents had been stored for centuries, because no one was allowed to throw away anything inscribed with the name of God, and because no one had bothered to throw away anything else. Her friend who had lived in Egypt had told her that a few Hebrew books still remained there, guarded by a Muslim man whose forehead was callused from years of daily prayers. All around her, centuries opened their doors, waiting for her to enter. Yet here in the library, the reincarnation of the great archive of the ancients, her world was reduced to Nasreen.
Nasreen smiled. She drew up a chair to Josie’s computer and sat down beside her. “I have been meaning to ask you this,” she said. “I have never been to America before, and I have often wondered: in America, what is the purpose of being alive?”
Poetry again. She couldn’t possibly be serious, could she? “What do you mean?” Josie asked.
“I read once that it was the pursuit of happiness.”
“After life and liberty,” Josie retorted, in a jocular tone. But an unease hummed in her body, like a dull chronic pain.
“Doesn’t happiness seem rather selfish, as a goal for one’s life?”
A challenge. But Nasreen’s voice was pleasant, almost upbeat. Josie considered it.
“There isn’t any official purpose of life in America,” Josie said. “The whole point of America is that the country leaves you alone to find your own purpose.”
“What is your purpose, then?”
It was the same question Nasreen had asked the previous week, the one about the will of God. Perhaps this was a hobby for Nasreen, fishing for souls. Could she avoid taking the bait?
“To devote my life to helping other people,” Josie answered. It was something her mother had often said, before early-onset dementia began devouring her brain: Josie, you are the purpose of my life. Josie imagined an adult’s smile, a game-show buzzer ringing: her answer was correct. She turned back to the screen, hoping Nasreen would disappear.
“Is that what you are doing now?” Nasreen asked.
This was more than a challenge. Josie tapped the screen in front of her, swallowing sarcasm. “I’m helping to develop the greatest scholarly resource in the Arab world, aren’t I?”
“But you are making money,” Nasreen said quietly. “Quite a bit too.”
Josie clenched her fingers over the keys. It was like sitting with the businessmen in the Four Seasons Hotel. Her wealth was her shadow, covering all of Egypt in its darkness. “Maybe you don’t know this, but my company is doing this pro bono,” she said, her lips tight.
“I do not mean now, I mean always,” Nasreen replied. “You cannot claim that when you work for your own company you are devoting your life to others. You work for yourself.”
Was this some sort of post-Communist nonsense? “Of course there’s a profit motive,” Josie said. “That’s how you ensure quality. It doesn’t mean the product isn’t worth anything beyond the material. Your library wouldn’t have invited me if they didn’t think my systems were valuable for your future.” Suddenly Josie missed her mustached escorts, the elegant businessmen with their filed fingernails and their eternal disappointment. At least they hadn’t questioned the premise.
Nasreen hesitated, then spoke, more loudly this time. “You create ways for people to gather tiny pieces of information, but you do not give them any way of knowing which information matters.”
Josie uncrossed her legs, stamping, too loudly, against the refrigerated library floor. “That’s not my job.”
“You cultivate the trivial,” Nasreen said.
Cruel! “What seems trivial now may become important later,” Josie countered.
“You say it is not your job to tell anyone which information matters. But your program does try to predict what it will mean to each person. You interpret the information for them.”
Josie felt the stone floor giving way beneath her feet. “The software just aggregates patterns. It isn’t interpretive. It tracks the data. That’s all it does.”
Nasreen dismissed her. “You trust the trivial to dictate the future. You do not give any thought to what is truly important in life.”
Now Josie was genuinely angry, anger she could taste in her mouth, her fury burning her in the refrigerated room. She was no longer arguing with Nasreen, but with Judith—and before Judith, with her father. She imagined holding up a mobi
le screen against this moment, seeing her father and Judith and her mother, The Ashkenazi Family, Late 20th Century. She refused to click on the link.
“You don’t know anything about my life,” Josie said. Her voice was cold, controlled, a cage containing a roar. “This is just my job.” It wasn’t even slightly true, of course. Itamar would have laughed. Even Judith would have laughed. But she needed to say it. “I have a husband and a daughter at home,” she announced. “My life is devoted to them.” The words sounded self-righteous, fake, even to her.
“You left them behind to come here. They are thousands of miles away.”
Unfair, absurd! “I’m only here for three weeks.”
“No woman here would have done that,” Nasreen said.
“No woman here would have been invited,” Josie snapped.
She would have left the library, if she had known how. But she was at the mercy of the car service. Nasreen left instead. By nightfall Josie was alone, waiting for a car to pick her up.
“ITAMAR, YOU HAVE TO save me,” she pleaded on the phone that night, in her frigid hotel room. The room’s air conditioning was recalcitrant, refusing compromise, offering only frigidity or suffocating heat. She huddled under the bedspread at the Sahara’s edge.
Itamar grunted, pecking at a keyboard on the other side of the world. “I can’t talk, I’m at work. Can you text me instead?”
“I can’t stand another minute here. This place is like living in an existentialist play.”
“Yosefi, what are you talking about?”
“There’s this woman here who keeps trying to lure me into some sort of existential crisis. I can’t even explain it.”