I don't remember exactly how old I was when Margot and Claude came to visit Egypt all the way from the United States. However, I do remember they brought along a plastic pumpkin, filled with, what seems to my memory now, countless amounts of snickers and twix bars. I never liked chocolate, not even then. But the second I saw that plastic pumpkin, I actually thought they'd brought along my old Halloween costume. That's where mom hid it, right? Back in New Jersey. But didn't I see it a couple of times here, in Egypt, somewhere around the house? I stared for a few long seconds at the pumpkin. I touched it. I held it. I picked it up. And I was disappointed. There was no way I could ever fit in there. But I remember being a pumpkin at some point. My hat even had that little green bit and it was secured around my head with a white and thick elastic band. And my arms and legs were green too. When I looked down, I saw the green triangles of fabric that hung loosely around my neck. And the rest of me was a perfect shade of orange, round and just.. pumpkiny. I was definitely a pumpkin at some point.
Maybe that's where it all started. Maybe that's when I started being so afraid of losing parts of myself, just like I lost the part of me that was a pumpkin. That has to be it. Why else would I still be keeping all my toys? Why would I be so afraid of losing anything I own. And why would I be so afraid of owning new things?
There are no pictures of my beloved pumpkin suit, and I'm afraid of the disappointment that will inevitably follow the mention of it to my mom. She means well, but my mother has managed to convince herself that all the nightmares that I'd tell her about after I'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night, are actually one dream.There's my first nightmare, where the green hollow being walks into my parents room and picks me up from where I was sleeping (between them), and the dream continues for a few seconds with the vivid image of both my parents still fast asleep and not affected by absence. There's my reoccurring dream, which I still get when I'm really frustrated or tired and which happens to be the reason I hate the color pink. In this dream, I do not even appear, but there's a pink squishy substance and voices. The voices are counting something that has to do with me, and at the same time parts of the pink squishy substance are (by some invisible force) attempting to fit into a space not big enough for them. I don't ever remember waking up after that dream with my eyes dry. It has always made me cry for days after it's dreaded appearance.
There's my dragon dream. The dream takes place in Lusaka, Zambia, in our beautiful villa and probably the only place I've ever felt I could be a child. In the dream, Damien and his brother twin Cosmos, two of our housekeepers in Zambia and also two of the people I can never forget, run out of the terrace screaming that there is a dragon that will burn the whole house down. I run to my parents' room screaming only to find my mother watching television in bed and my father sitting on a tiny chair infront of the dresser trying concentrating on something that has to do with sellotape. I tell them that the house is going to burn down but they don't believe me, and my father looks back at his sellotape in frustration. I run to the terrace and I see the dragon (who happens to have a human head by the way) getting ready to blow fire out of it's mouth at all the children of Zambia who were, for some reason, all stuck in our terrace.
There's my miniature cartoons dream. I don't remember falling asleep before having this one, because it feels so real till this day. I blink three times, and look at the little light coming from my side on my brother's bed. And there he is, the evil villain from Power Rangers. I blink again, and he laughs and tells me that there is no way out of this. He is real. I blink again, There they all are, the villains from power rangers, all of them. The ones that used to laugh every time they thought they will finally kill the power rangers, and would scream at the end of every episode mourning their defeat. I walk out of the room only to find the lion king stickers on the wall right before the bathroom door, dancing and singing. Why would Simba want to be king? I thought about asking him, but I was too scared. I would blink so many times and run all over the house and back to my brother's bed until all of them are finally gone. I don't even remember how many times I had that dream.
And there's the dream where I accidentally slit my brother's throat. I think, The dream started out with me holding a knife to a rabbit's throat and then somehow it turns into my brother. Or was it my sister that slit his throat? I don't remember. What I do remember is that I woke up in the middle of that night and ran into my brother's room, I found him there, safe and with his head intact. I sat in his room for hours.
There's the one where mom had a different voice and wouldn't listen to me. She was on the bed and I was on the floor. I tugged at her clothes and begged her to talk to me with her real voice, but she laughed and stared at me with the eyes of a little child, not any child.. A little brat. I begged and cried, but the voice stayed and the laughter didn't stop.
Then there's my pink substance dream again, only a different version of it. In this one, my sister makes a guest appearance. And she yells at me for doing something which I haven't really done. And I happened to have that dream just after my sister moved to Egypt alone, and I was in Zambia with the rest of the family. I cried for days after this one, and my mother called my sister and asked her to let me know that she is not mad at me, and that it's only a dream. I don't remember if she did, maybe she did.
The thing is, I've told my mom about all of those dreams at some point or another. And till this day, my mother thinks the one and only nightmare I ever had was the one where "The pink dragon was trying to eat my sister". I don't really blame her, if I were her, and I'd raised two children before me... I wouldn't remember my dreams either.
Now, as disturbing as these dreams seemed and still seem to me, I do understand how amusing they may sound to others. And to a mother, they might even sound "cute". I do. I do understand. I understand.
I Undersatnd.
I understand now, but the intensity of the parts of me that run to my mother's defense every time I hear her say "No, Eman, that's not how the dream was, I remember that dream like I was the one who had it, and yesterday! In that dream, There was a pink dragon, and it was trying to eat Amany!", will never be strong enough as the parts of me that want to scream.
So let's say I do ask her about my pumpkin suit. I have no proof the pumpkin suit ever existed, no photographs, no video tapes.. nothing. Would I be able to handle hearing that she remembers that Halloween.. because I was dressed as a doctor in a television set. (two separate Halloweens, once as a doctor and the next as a television set) Or maybe she'd remember that Halloween, because I was dressed as The Pink Dragon That Was Trying To Eat My Sister.
I thank god every single day that I remember bits and pieces of my childhood, because I have no idea if I didn't remember that part of me, then who would? Who would know that someday, somewhere on this earth, a little girl believed she was a pumpkin?
