Post by Yusuf Demir

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.