NADEEM PARACHA - Dreaming of rubble

By Dilip -
 Pakistanis may now actually be going about their daily lives with thoughts and behavioural patterns that are unconsciously being driven by the constant fear of indiscriminate violence. This should also explain why we say what we say.
Last Friday night I had the most curious dream. The curious bit had little to do with the surreal imagery that most dreams usually consist of. Instead, it was the thought process of the dream’s main protagonist (me) that was intriguing.
It was one of those dreams that keep slipping to and fro from being regular to nightmarish, from the ‘normal’ to becoming riddled with anxious images and emotions. But the bit I most clearly remember about the dream is me being driven to my office by my late father (who passed away in 2009).
In the dream I’m in a plain t-shirt and jeans, looking (and feeling) like I used to in my 20s: Lean, agile and a swift walker; no ‘pot belly’ or that stoic post-40 calm.
I often dream about my father, to whom I was very close. Perhaps my mind has yet to accept his passing away. Nevertheless, in the dream he drops me in a busy area full of traffic and shops, and where lots of construction work is taking place.
I get off, and that is when I realise I am carrying a black knapsack. This is strange because I have always hated knapsacks. Even when I travel across Asian and European cities and walk for hours, I refuse to carry one. So I wonder what the knapsack symbolised in the dream? Some sort of a burden or a worrying thought, perhaps?
Well, I get off the car, bid goodbye to my father and as I walk towards my ‘office’ I come across a huge mound of rubble near a construction site. The sight saddens me because (in my dream) the rubble is of a cinema that has been torn down.
As I walk towards the office I decide to eat at a roadside restaurant.
I eye a café that is serving barbeque dishes. It’s one of those congested eateries one comes across in Karachi’s Burns Road area. So as I move towards it I suddenly realise I do not have the knapsack hanging from my shoulders anymore. I panic... 

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