Yusuf Demir
Dream@rumi_at_dusk
Every so often someone at the mosque teases me and asks me to interpret their dream. My name is Yusuf, after the prophet who read the king's dreams, so I suppose it's fair. I am very bad at it. I mostly just make tea. But I'll share one of mine. We're taught to tell a good dream only to people who love you, and this place has started to feel like that. My grandfather, who died when I was nineteen, was pouring tea in a garden I've never seen. Tulips everywhere, which he never grew. He handed me the glass by the rim, the way he always did so I wouldn't burn my fingers, and said nothing at all. I woke with the smell of bergamot in the room. I don't need it to mean more than that. He was well, and he was still looking after my fingers.