Live Encounters Arab Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Five
November- December 2025
The Burden of Dreams, story by Radwa El Aswad.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
With bulging eyes that threaten to pop from their sockets, they never stop looking at me! Their eyes don’t blink, wide open with an undimming astonishment. They seem to me steadfast, defiant, pregnant with tears that refuse to stream down the cheeks stretched taut by that very astonishment.
I was a student who adored history, especially the kind that exposes one’s lusts and deep-seated love for power, and the gambling of everything to satisfy that lust. I also adore art, particularly visual art.
I was captivated by Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. They say he was a high-ranking Freemason, and that his painting holds symbols understood only by members of his order that speaks only of good, yet knows no actions but evil ones!
I would often stand by the gas stove in endless attempts to recreate a recipe I had just seen on one of the many cooking channels flooding satellite TV. And every single time, I remember that moment from 1811, when Muhammad Ali invited the Mamluk leaders to the Citadel to celebrate his son Tusun being appointed commander of the army heading to the Hejaz. Then he locked the Citadel’s gates and ordered his soldiers to eliminate them in a treacherous plot he orchestrated to monopolize the rule of Egypt and enjoy absolute power. He cornered them at Bab al-Azab, a descending passageway surrounded by rocks on both sides with no escape or way out and killed them all.
From my earliest years, I felt immense energies occupying my depths, grand, winged dreams. I fueled them with a remarkable academic excellence. At one point, I felt the sky was close, the stars within reach, and the moon was waiting for me to begin a free run together. Those were the beginnings, and beginnings are always soft, tender, gentle with us and with the great hopes they carry—hopes whose weight we don’t feel despite their burden. But I was a butterfly, and butterflies are fragile creatures.
When I grew a little older, and the marks of womanhood adorned me, my mother, father, grandmother, aunt, and uncle stripped away all the dreams I had masterfully hung on the coat rack of my soul. They told me they were too heavy a burden and they pitied me because I couldn’t carry them any longer. They warned me against them. Instead, they hung countless warning signs and lists of prohibitions, emphasizing the necessity of memorizing them by heart, assuring me they were less burdensome and comforting me that their load was light.
When I grew older still, my grandmother had died, and before her, my soul had died. But I became the most skilled woman in the family at preparing feasts. And I invited them all: my mother, father, aunt, and uncle for dinner. I prepared it with the essence of the love they had given me throughout my life.
I see them directing scorching looks at me that ignite a fire within me, in my heart, in my soul, in my body, in the house curtains, in the entire place.
I don’t understand the secret of this hatred they pursue me with, which I sense from those vibrations their lifeless bodies still send me, even though I have freed their bodies from the burden of life, just as they freed me long ago from the burden of my dreams!
© Radwa El Aswad
Radwa El-Aswad is an Egyptian writer, born in Cairo in 1974 and a graduate of Ain Shams University’s French Language department. She is the author of several novels, including The Centennial Party, Zigzag, and The Many Faces of Death, as well as non-fiction books. Her critical articles have been widely published in prominent Arabic newspapers, magazines, and online platforms across the region.
Dr Salwa Gouda is an accomplished Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic affiliated with the English Language and Literature Department at Ain Shams University. Holding a PhD in English literature and criticism, Dr. Gouda pursued her education at both Ain Shams University and California State University, San Bernardino. She has authored several academic works, including Lectures in English Poetry and Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, among others. Dr. Gouda also played a significant role in translating The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers, a comprehensive project featuring poets, philosophers, historians, and literary figures, conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. Recently, her poetry translations have been featured in a poetry anthology published by Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Her work has also appeared in numerous international literary magazines, further solidifying her contributions to the field of literary translation and criticism.