Dream Last Night

Normally my dreams are random but last nights was actually pretty impactful and complex.

It began in Egypt during what I later found to be the 1930s. Technically my dream wasn't exactly historically accurate. Or based on reality.

There was an Egyptian woman who was married to the Pharaoh. She was his favorite wife (he had 4 total). The Pharaoh was a cruel man and the wife sought to have a better life so she took her 10 year old son and fled. They ended up being taken in by a husband and wife who lived in a small house. The guards found her and brought her and her son back. As punishment for leaving the Pharaoh sentenced her to death and she was lashed until she died.

In a moment of anger and frustration at his favorite wife's betrayal and death the Pharaoh grabbed his scathe and cut off the left hand fingers of his 2nd wife who was standing next to him. She flinched but knew not to scream. She then walked off slowly as if nothing had happened.

The next day her 10 year old son was in the market and she came up to him and told him to go to the temple and pray. The son was confused since his mother hadn't really been religious before, but the mom told him that she'd heard if you pray to the gods they sometimes intercede and help people. So the two went into the temple together and the son started praying.

After a couple minutes the mother stepped outside the temple. A guard who had saw them go in stood outside -knowing it was the Pharaoh's son and that he should be looked over. He glanced at the woman and then started to walk away to attend to some other business. He took about 3 steps forward and then froze -remembering that the woman had been killed the day before. He turned around and she was gone.

A couple days later the Pharaoh was spending time with his son -who was also his favorite. he was asking the boy about the couple he had stayed with when his mother took his outside the city. The boy was sharing his experiences and the Pharaoh started getting jealous that the son had connected to the husband of that family and saw  him as a father-figure. The Pharaoh asked him, "So what did you think of that man?" The boy said, "He was a nice guy." The Pharaoh then felt reassured that the son didn't think of the other man as a father.

The Pharaoh then asked the son if the couple had brought him and harm or troubled him in any way. The son told him that at one point the couple had asked him to pitch in and clean the bathroom since they were sharing the small house together. The son described his experience scrubbing the toilet. The Pharaoh lost it. He ordered the couple be brought to him and when they were he laid them flat on the ground and beheaded them himself with his scathe.

Seeing this, the mother then went to the 10 year old son and told him they needed to flee the kingdom. The son was busy decorating the new, big room the Pharaoh had just given him in the palace. But he was loyal to his mother and went when she told him to leave.

The ended up coming to America -California to be specific. The Egyptian woman had heard of a place where many women lived so she went there. It was a 3 story house made entirely out of dark wood. It was similar to a plantation in size and architecture, but the yard in the back was not a typical orchard. Their was a small field of orange flowers and then a series of winding paths around hills with black trees looming.

The man who owned the house was Indian and called himself Gande -which he named himself because he admired the fame of Gandhi. He took the woman for a ride in his horse and buggy in the back yard and they started off on one of the trails. Then the man went wild and charged the horses forward. They stopped at a small mill/shop/factory at the edge of his property. He showed her the mill -where many men were working on the creation of replicas of ancient artifacts. They were counterfeiting priceless items from around the world.

Gande then led her back tot he house and showed her a hidden room in the basement of his home where he openly discussed murdering women. He acted like it was a bad habit of his -like nail biting. He made it clear to the Egyptian woman that she was here to stay and could not leave. She said as long as no harm came to her son she would do whatever he asked of her. She then went off to join the other women of his "harem".

The women spent most of their day cooking and cleaning. She talked with them to find out more about the serial killer she was now working for. She asked if he would come to rape her soon as her husband had since she was his "property". The women told her that Gande never raped women. He would try to seduce them or ask them to sleep with him and often they would freely. The Egyptian woman felt a little bit better after finding this out. But she mostly decided to avoid the man whenever she could and do her daily business as expected.

At some point the police became aware of what was going on in the house and a team of 10 men was sent to arrest Gande. Gande's men who worked for him and felt loyalty to him charged the police as they walked through the door and shot at them until none were left standing. A war then  began between the police and Gande's men. They would go into the house in small groups, but never made it out with Gande. The war which started off with great frequency began to die down as Wolrd War I and II kicked into high effect. There were fewer men around to do anything so the local politicians and police decided to put their efforts of arresting Gande on hold until after the war. They would attempt to take a stand periodically, but never to any avail.

As time went on the Egyptian woman began to get closer to Gande. Gande was fascinated by Egyptian culture -one of the reasons he had made so many artificial artifacts of their items -and would often talk to her about it. Gande began having feelings for her -none of the other women really meant anything to him. But the Egyptian woman remained paranoid that at any moment he could change his mind and kill her.

As time went on, Gande started confiding in the Egyptian woman and decided to make her "head of the harem". She was then allowed to leave the house and go into town with a few of the other woman and get supplies for the house.

On her first trip to town she and another woman went down a back street and saw 3 things happening simultaneously that radically changed her views of the world.

The first things she saw was a younger 19 year old girl begin beaten up and kicked and cursed at by her drunken boyfriend. The second thing she saw was another young girl who had a physical impairment on her leg and was limping. A man walked up to her and started making fun of her and tried knocking her off balance so she would fall. The third things she saw was a beautiful young woman walking with a man who was telling her what her options were for her future.

At one point the woman with the limp shoved back the guy who was picking on her and started yelling and cursing at him. She said she wasn't going to take that crap from anyone anymore. Then she walked over to the girl whose boyfriend had just kicked her and said, "You don't have to take that kind of crap from him anymore." The 19 year old looked up at her with bruises on her face and said with wide, innocent eyes, "I don't?" It's as if it had never occurred to her before that it was even an option to stand up for herself.

The woman with the limp then walked over to the man talking to the beautiful woman and told him to leave her alone because she had a brain, it was her life, and she could decide her own future for herself.

After that the Egyptian woman became certain of 2 things.

1. The outside world was filled with cruel men who ruled over women -just like every other place she had known before.

2. There was a shift happening among women where they gained the confidence and self-assertion to stand up for themselves and proclaim their autonomy.

The Egyptian woman decided that while she was living in the house she shouldn't continue living in fear like a turtle in its shell -she should own her position and claim her life as her own.

As time went on and the years passed her son was adopted into Gande's company and he began counting the gold that they amassed from killing foreign visitors who would come in search of the treasures they claimed to sell. They also made a great deal of money off of the artifacts they did sell of through foreign trade.

Gande also put the Egyptian woman in charge of a new project: creating a facade outside his house like the temples of Egypt with symbols and molding that depicted Gande as the Pharaoh of the house.

Although she had no experience building anything, she did not question him and went along with creating a new look for his house. At one point one of the other women asked her, "Will you ever travel anywhere else or move on someday?" The Egyptian woman shared her dream of one day leaving and possibly moving to Texas -the only other state within the U.S. she had heard about.The woman told her Texas was the worst state she could have chosen. She said, "You're Egyptian. They'll just assume your black and then you'll be put into those neighborhoods to live in the ghettos. You won't find any work there and there's so much gun violence in those areas..."

After the facade was completed the Egyptian woman took a walk around the front of the house. The lower base of the facade was uneven and crooked, but it served its purpose. Now it just needed to be painted. When she reached the far end of the house there was a door leading directly into Gande's office. But the woman feared that if she walked in and he was upset he might kill her, so she went all the way around to the front of the house. She went down 3 flights of winding stairs to where his office and bedroom were. The door to his bedroom was open and she stood in front of the doorway.

She looked into his room and saw Gande in bed with another woman on top of him. Embarrassed, the Egyptian woman quickly walked away and started heading back up the stairs. Gande quickly shoved the woman off of him and fell to the floor and crawled out into the hallway. He called to her and they began to talk across the stairs -not facing each other. She then told him of her plan to paint the outside red crimson and gold -the colors she associated with him. He approved.

More years passed. At this point the Egyptian woman was starting to age and wrinkles began to emerge on her forehead. Gande and she began to get restless -with time marching slowly and nothing ever really changing. The Egyptian woman had dated 3 men over this time -all of which died. The first man was shot and killed walking down a street at night. The second fell into a snow drift up in the mountains during winter. The last went off to war and was killed. She hadn't really loved any of them and at some point she had to ask herself, "Is it better to be with good men you don't love or try to find love with a dark man you fear?"

Gande on the other hand had grown tired of his longings for her and had finally decided to consummate his feelings. He cried out for her one night as he was walking around the house in search of her. She knew what he wanted, but didn't want to sleep with him so she hid. She then ran into 3 men from Europe who were visiting from Ireland. They were talking about the environment in Ireland and how different it was from the nature in California. They talked about mist and fog and things the Egyptian woman had never heard of.

She then began to think that maybe there was somewhere else out there she could go. Her son was old enough now to take care of himself and she began thinking of a place where she could go to at last be free.

Then I woke up.

The whole dream kind of reminded me of Django in some ways. There were 3 main things I got out of the whole thing.

1. Women do have a reason to stand up for themselves and the fight that they made all those years ago was justified. Not having a voice and having your free will decided upon by someone else just because you were born a woman and deemed incapable of pursuing your own dreams was something that needed to be overcome.

2. It's a lot clearer what Africans and African Americans have and are fighting for in this country. What I felt from the Egyptian woman was a sense of constant enslavement. Enslaved in marriage, enslaved in servitude and manipulation, and enslaved by fear. Everywhere she went she was enslaved by the gender role she was assigned to and by her race. There was never any freedom to escape to.

3. I learned what life would be like if ghosts got their way. She died physically, but when she moved to America it's like her life just continued where she left off. Initially she was just staying to look after her son, but as time went on she began to live for her self. She tried creating a life of her own and found that physical reality was still limiting her and defining her life for her and subjecting her to whatever hand it dealt. She continued to long for a place where she could be free and find peace but was forced to remain because she didn't know where that place was.