HOW TO REMEMBER YOUR DREAMS by Amr Ezzat

“Do you really want to remember your dreams? I often wish to forget mine, probably because I sometimes remember them to the point that I get angry with people for what they did in them, or grow sad again over what happened as though it reoccured last night, or feel the bittersweet joy of having, for a moment, what enchanted me. Sometimes I think I have in fact replied to work emails or finally sent my clothes to the cleaners. Or I remember in detail the circumstances of my death, again and again, whereas perhaps the only benefit to death, whether we go to heaven or hell or nonexistence, is that we are no longer preoccupied with it. Until then, what I sometimes want when I go to bed and remember my day is to suddenly discover it was nothing but a dream. I’d think about how I’d like to write it, and then open my eyes again to the world and to other dreams.” – Amr Ezzat

The book is a sharp and creative reflection on the interweaving of personal and national/ideological dreams. The chapters are on facts and fictions created in both, how one retraces one’s way through them, and through the numerous philosophers/thinkers/ideas (from Sartre to Zizek, Abdel-Nasser to Ibn Taymiya and others) that appear and shape his life journey, studies and dreams.

Amr Ezzat is an Egyptian writer who studied engineering and philosophy. He worked as an engineer and then a journalist before becoming a human rights researcher and a writer for numerous newspapers and other periodicals. He remembers his dreams very well.

Kayfa ta is a publishing initiative that uses the popular form of how-to manuals (how=kayfa, to=ta) to respond to some of today’s perceived needs; be they the development of skills, tools, thoughts, or sensibilities. These books situate themselves in the space between the technical and the reflective, the everyday and the speculative, the instructional and the intuitive, the factual and the fictional. Kayfa ta was founded in 2012 by Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis.