Dream with me next to you

"Tonight is my date with you. I will not tell my mother that I will read your novel "I Will Love You Forever" without anyone joining me. I want to get to know you with my feelings. You and I will be alone all night. Tell me before I start reading, and no one will see us or anyone else. He hears us: Where will you take me with you tonight in your novel? Are you, as my mother says, a great liar, or are you, as my feeling tells me, a great writer?! *** She waited for him in wakefulness and sleep, and when the dream came true, he was the same man who had tortured her mother in her youth, and reading novels remained a protection and residence with her blind mother, and the balcony of her room overlooking the garden of the house was the royal door to the heroes of stories and novels who comforted her loneliness every night, and transformed the world. The quiet around her became noisy.

زينب عفيفي.. كاتبة صحفية، مدير تحرير «أخبار اليوم». خريجة كلية الإعلام، جامعة القاهرة، صدر لها روايات وقصص قصيرة منها: رواية "شمس تشرق مرتين" ومجموعة قصصية " خمس دقائق"، ورواية "أهداني حبا" ، ترجمت بعض أعمالها إلى اللغة الإنجليزية عن دار نشر أسترالية، لها العديد من المقالات الأسبوعية في الأدب والثقافة.