Queen of Dreams

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  And with that I remember my daughter.

  “I’ve got to go get Jona from school,” I cry.

  “Rikki, I’m scared. I called Jespal, both at work and at home, but there was no answer. Where can he be?” She’s weeping in earnest now.

  I think fast. “Belle, I want you to come over here. I’ll leave the key for you under the doormat. It’ll be better for me, too, to not have to be alone. Don’t worry about Jespal just yet. He may just have stepped out. You can call him from my phone. He can come over also.”

  “You’re right,” she says in an uncharacteristically meek voice. “I’ll come over. I shouldn’t worry just yet.”

  How sadly easy it is to convince people of what they want to believe.

  The streets are curiously empty as I drive toward the school. Perhaps everyone’s inside, watching TV, mesmerized by those towers disintegrating in slow motion, over and over. I turn on the radio. So far, four planes have been hijacked. All four were destined for California. Flights across America have been canceled. The stock market has closed. The president, his wife, and the vice president have been moved to an undisclosed location. I peer upward nervously as I listen, though there’s nothing in the sky except a few bay gulls.

  About two blocks from the school, pandemonium has broken loose: lines of cars locked in a traffic jam, drivers honking at one another as they try to find parking. A mother abandons her mini-van in the middle of the road and runs into the school building. Drivers stuck behind her begin to yell, and a man shakes his fist and shouts out an obscenity.

  I finally find parking and make it to the entrance, only to be stopped by the vice principal. She entreats me not to disturb the children by pulling Jona out of class. They’re perfectly safe here, she insists. It’s more traumatic for them to see their classmates being taken away without explanation. “Most parents are too distraught to discuss what’s happened in a calm manner,” she says. “You’ll just scare the children more. And what are you going to do with them? Take them home to watch the news with you all day? They don’t need that.”

  She’s probably right. The children don’t need that. It’s us, the parents, who need them with us so that we can touch their small, sturdy bodies and heft their weight in our laps, so that we can nuzzle their necks and comfort ourselves with their smell, that one familiar thing in this world turned unrecognizable.

  “I’m sorry,” I say as I push past her. “I have to have my daughter.”

  In the car I force myself not to turn the radio on, even though I’m anxious to hear the latest update. First I must tell Jona what has happened—how, literally, the sky has fallen since I kissed her good-bye just a few hours ago. How do you explain to a child that someone deliberately slammed a plane full of people into a building full of people, three times in three different places? That this might be the beginning of a planned terrorist attack across America? What do you say when she demands to know why people would kill themselves just so they can hurt people they don’t even know?

  By the time I reach my apartment’s parking lot, I still haven’t found the words to talk about the attack. I’m thankful that Jona hasn’t asked me why I took her out of school—but I’m surprised, too. She’s been gazing out the window all this time.

  “Jona,” I say. “I have to tell you about something really bad that happened today. It might upset you and scare you, but you do need to know.”

  “I already know.” She says it in a flat voice without turning to me. “The buildings exploded and burned. People died. Some of them jumped from windows. They were screaming. We couldn’t help them.”

  My heart pounds in agitation. I should have been the one to break this traumatic news to my daughter. “Who told you this? One of the teachers? A parent? Did they turn on the TV at your school?”

  This time she does look at me. Her face is expressionless, and that frightens me more than if she were hysterical. “I saw it in my dream. Don’t you remember?”

  It all comes back to me: her sweaty head pressed against mine in her fever bed, Sonny’s hand and mine, intertwined, riding the uneven rise and fall of her chest. Her restless dreaming, and my own, and how I thought, with mistaken complacence, that they were the same.

  And that is how I learn two painful facts in one morning:

  1. There are people out there who are willing to do whatever it takes to destroy us—even kill themselves. That’s how much they hate America—and they want us to know it.

  2. The gift I’ve longed for all my life has passed over me and lighted on my daughter. Only it’s not a gift but a terrible weight she’ll have to carry from now on by herself. Much as I want to, I can’t help her with it.

  We’re sitting in front of the TV, Belle, my father, Jona, Jespal, Sonny and I. We know we should turn the machine off, shouldn’t watch the replays over and over, the towers flaming and crumbling, crumbling and flaming. But none of us can gather the energy to press the power button. We see clips of firefighters heading into the blaze; we see the buildings collapsing under the weight of their own rubble. Ambulances wail as though they’ll never stop. Thousands of people died in the towers. Some of them called home before they jumped. We see the ruined walls of the Pentagon through smoke. Police cars. The hijackers were armed with box cutters, we’re told. Mayor Giuliani comes on: Stay calm and stay indoors—unless you’re south of Canal Street. A man in a uniform claims he’d filed reports stating airport security was too lax. President Bush comes on, vowing revenge. We look at them all, then at each other in disbelief. How could this have happened— here, at home, in a time of peace? In America?

  A new broadcast is woven into the replays: a street somewhere in the Middle East where people are dancing and handing out sweets because the American devils have finally got what they deserve. Men in turbans and black beards clap their hands and chant slogans. Children are waving miniature paper flags. There are women in the crowd too, in long black burkhas, their heads covered in shawls, faces gleaming in sweaty satisfaction. One of them shouts, Let them learn what we live with every day. The words are translated at the bottom of the screen for our benefit.

  The scenes of devastation in New York had been terrible, but this broadcast upsets me differently. It makes me want to drop a bomb on these people and end their hellish celebration. But then, as I watch it come on a second time and then a third, I start getting scared in a whole new way.

  “Idiots,” my father says. “They shouldn’t keep showing that at a time like this.” He rises unsteadily to his feet, switches off the TV and takes Jona off to play Chinese checkers. And as though his action had released us from some kind of spell, we all get up. Belle and I go into the kitchen to make sandwiches. I’m surprised to discover that I’m ravenous. We all are. Belle says it’s from the relief of being safe. We decide that we’ll switch the TV on once every hour for updates. Belle says she’s going to bake a cake, and I bring out a sweater of Jona’s that I’ve been working on desultorily for the last several months. Jespal says he wants to go back to work just so that he can feel halfway normal. “I’ll come see you in a few hours,” he tells Belle. “You going to be at the Kurma House?”

  “I guess so,” Belle says.

  “That’s not a good idea!” Sonny says sharply. “You should keep the store closed today.”

  I’ve had the same thought, but I don’t like his tone. Sonny-Know-It-All. Maybe because I’m already tense, anger flares up in me. “Why?” I ask.

  “Can’t you see?” his tone implies that I had better not enter any IQ contests. “It’s not safe.”

  “Maybe Sonny is right,” Belle says. “I don’t want to go anywheretoday. Not even home. Rikki, can I sleep here tonight?”

  I nod. But I’m not done with Sonny. “And why isn’t it safe?”

  He gives an impatient sigh. “Are you really that dense? People would think you didn’t care about the folks who died, about America being attacked. They’d think all you cared about was making money.”

  He kn
ows exactly how to get under my skin. “You mean to say every business in this country is closed today?” I say, my voice rising. “That closing is the only way we can show we care? What about the fact that it might be good for the country to keep running as normally as possible, and not allowing everything to come to a standstill, which I think is exactly what the terrorists want—”

  Sonny shakes his head tiredly. “Let’s not make this into a sparring match, not today. I’m just telling you how the average man on the street would react. I’m just telling you what would be a safer course of action.”

  There’s truth to what he’s saying, but it only makes me angrier. I look at Belle, then Jespal. They look away. It’s clear they agree with Sonny. I clench my teeth. I’m even more determined not to give in. But as I try to figure out a plan of action, support comes from an unexpected quarter.

  “We can’t close the shop,” my father says. “Especially today. For a lot of our customers, it’s their only meeting place. If we’re upset and worried, so must they be. We owe it to them to stay open so they can come in and talk about what’s happened, draw support from each other. Maybe we can help them deal with the shock.”

  This is my chance. “You’re absolutely right, Dad,” I say. I give Sonny an angelic smile. “We’d be providing a valuable community service.” I turn to Belle. “And don’t you think we’ll feel a lot better off if we’re busy doing something useful, rather than sitting in front of the TV listening to a bunch of experts conjecturing about what terrible thing’s going to happen next?”

  She looks uncertain, but finally she nods.

  “I think you’re making a mistake,” Sonny says to my father before he leaves. He doesn’t speak to me. From the way his eyebrows are jammed together, I can tell that this time I’ve really managed to annoy him. I count it as a small victory on this day of defeats.

  35

  FROM THE

  DREAM JOURNALS

  The story of Tunga-dhwaja was a perplexing one, because unlike the other stories we studied with Elder Jahnavi, it contained no obvious dream. Discussing, we wondered if the king had dreamed the entire story from the time he fell asleep in the forest till he awoke there the second time. Was it a warning dream, heeding which he escaped an ominous fate? Yet that was too easy a solution. It negated the king’s suffering and undercut the magnitude of his transformation.

  “You are right,” Jahnavi said. “That is not the answer. Think again.”

  After more thought, we decided that the forest was a magical dream space. What the king did there called down a curse upon his waking life so that people were no longer able to recognize him. The curse could only be negated by a reparation performed in the same dream space.

  “You are getting closer,” Jahnavi said. “But you’re fixing your attention on the wrong things. You’re trying too hard. Forget all you have learned about interpreting. Unfocus your eyes. Then maybe the real picture will appear before you.”

  But we did not know how to unfocus.

  At the end of a week of waiting, Jahnavi took pity and gathered us around her. She drew a diagram on the sand floor, two ovals connected by a tube. She added small squares along the circumference of each oval. A few squares had thicker outlines than the others. She looked at us hopefully, but we had no idea what it meant.

  “The story of Tunga-dhwaja,” she explained, “is important because it illustrates a rare yet pivotal occurrence in dreaming.” She pointed to one of the ovals. “Think of this as waking time, and the other oval as dream time. The connecting tube is called the gateway, and allows us to pass from one time to the other. Under normal circumstances, the oval of dream time is always in motion, so that whenever you pass through the gateway, you enter a different door”—here she pointed to the squares—“and thus experience a different dream. The oval of the waking state moves, but with infinite slowness. Thus, throughout a human’s life span, he or she will reenter the same door, and experience the same story, which we have termed reality. Now do you see what happened in the case of Tunga-dhwaja?”

  “He upset the balance between the ovals somehow,” one of us ventured.

  “Yes,” Jahnavi said. “Usually when the balance is upset, the oval of dream time comes to a halt, and people dream the same story over and over. But the king’s problem was unique. By angering the sages in the forest he speeded up his waking time, so that when he returned to it, he entered through a different door into a different life. Here, he paid for his earlier arrogance by being reduced to the lowest of the low.”

  “But why did that happen?” I asked. “All of us do what we shouldn’t, from time to time, in our dreams. But we aren’t pushed into other lives in punishment—”

  “It is because, in the magical forest, the king had entered a transforming dream.” Here Jahnavi pointed to one of the thickly outlined squares. “Transforming dreams are rare. They come to a human once or twice in a lifetime, or perhaps not at all. What we do in these dreams transforms our natures and affects our waking lives in powerful ways. In most cases, the dream erases itself from our consciousness once we have dreamed it, and we can do nothing to change its effects. Tunga-dhwaja was fortunate in that he remembered, and even more fortunate in that he could reenter the same transforming dream, where he was forgiven. Otherwise he would have been trapped in his new life, and doomed to spend his days as a beggar.”

  That night I lay on my pallet in the sleeping hall and contemplated what Jahnavi had said. The tale of Tunga-dhwaja was meant to caution us, but it filled me with exhilaration. To think that there existed, just beyond our perceptions, different realities! To think that they might become available to us—to me, even! That I might slip, by virtue of something I did in a dream, into another life, and become a new person, possessed of talents and joys I could not even imagine at this moment! The law of reversal had transformed Tunga-dhwaja from a king into a beggar. Couldn’t that same law transform me—an orphan and a novice, a beggar girl of sorts—into a queen?

  As I thought this, a strange discontent took hold of me. Until now I had loved the caves. I’d blessed the day I’d been accepted here to become a dream teller. It had allowed me to escape the hopelessness of my life in the slums. It had opened for me a world I’d been ignorant of, had stirred within me powers I’d barely guessed at. It had given me a reason to live. But today the darkness of the sleeping hall pressed upon me with a heaviness I’d never felt before. The curved roof of the cave was like a hand held over my mouth, suffocating me. It might be years before the elders decided I knew enough to go out into the world to practice my craft. By then my youth would have passed away, and what beauty I possessed, and along with them, my hopes for happiness and adventure. A great despair filled me as I thought this. I gathered all the power within me into a dream-seeking wish. I knew the elders would be furious if they found out, and not only because of the dangers involved in wishcraft. The dream chooses the teller, they had told us over and over. The teller must not choose the dream.

  I felt the wish leave me the way a powerful bird takes off for the sky, beating its vast wings, confident of its destination. I was filled with elation. Until that moment, I hadn’t believed I could accomplish such a complex task. But—I would learn this later—it wasn’t a bird wish I’d sent forth. It was a boomerang, and it would recoil upon me in the way I least expected.

  What did I want from my transforming dream? I wanted it to take me into a new world, one unshackled by the rules that guided every moment of our lives in the cave. I wanted reckless passion. I wanted adventure. I wanted a man who’d be willing to kill himself for my love.

  Did a transforming dream come to me that night? I was no Tunga-dhwaja; in the morning I remembered nothing. All was as before, except the discontent that had been a grain of sand in my eye had grown into a ball of iron in the pit of my stomach. It continued to grow in the weeks before we went on our trip to Calcutta. It unbalanced me.

  Transformation is an erratic phenomenon. It strikes people in d
ifferent ways. Tunga-dhwaja’s change was like a tower cracked open by lightning. My own would be slower, subtler, more insidious—a rodent gnawing at the roots of a banyan. But it had begun.

  36

  Rakhi

  For a long time after we open, no one comes into the shop. Most of the businesses around us are closed, and the street appears abandoned. Even the homeless people have disappeared, leaving the streetlamps to throw shivery pools of light on empty pavements.

  “Maybe we should go home,” Belle says again.

  “Let’s wait a little longer,” my father says, “until the time our musicians usually come in.” He disappears into the back room, and when I look in, I see him sitting in front of the empty alcove where my mother’s photograph used to be.

  The door chime rings, but it isn’t the musicians. It’s Mr. Soto, the owner of the Mexican restaurant next door. It takes me a moment to recognize him—I’ve never seen him without his chef ’s hat and apron. I hadn’t realized he was bald.

  “You planning to stay open?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Wouldn’t do that, if it was me,” he says. “I only came in to make sure everything was locked up safe, with the alarm turned on. I’m going home now. Too many angry people around—”

  “But why would they do anything to us?”

  Mr. Soto shrugs. “Angry and scared—that’s a dangerous mix. People don’t think much when they’re like that.”

  I peer out the window at the deserted street. Then I notice that the lights are on in Java. I point. “She’s open.”

  “Si. You seen what she’s put up?”

  I peer out. A big banner hanging from the storefront proclaims, PROUD TO BE AMERICAN.

  “She’s quick, that one,” Mr. Soto says with a grin that’s more a grimace. “Can’t blame her this time, though. I myself—” He gestures with his chin toward his store, and I see there’s a large American flag taped to the inside of his window. Under it a sign in red, white and blue reads GOD BLESS AMERICA.