Four Ghosts and an Indian

I dreamed last night that Ali, Zaid, Hisham and I had a reunion in Los Angeles. The old foursome from high school. The four ghosts of Christmas past, or should I say Eid past. The four musketeers Ali and Zaid's mother used to call us, though I never thought of us as being that united or mutually supporting. Too many power struggles and influence battles, mostly because of Ali's mind games. Nevertheless, no matter what the truth was of our friendship back then, I still have this dream often, the four of us together again, though the circumstances change from dream to dream. Why I still dream this, I don't know.

In this particular scenario we were in our early thirties perhaps, as I was no longer a bike messenger but not far from it. I hugged each of them hard when we met, and a few tears sprung from my eyes.

We had lunch at an outdoor restuarant, went to a movie, and later just hung out at the hotel. Ali was very serious. He's always been moody but this time he was unusually silent. I tried hard to cheer him up, spending a lot of time with him and telling him jokes, but without success.

We went to another restuarant and took a trip on the metro, arriving at the other side of town, maybe at the Pacific, and I realized that I had left my backpack with all my important belongings back at the eatery. In a panic I called an Indian friend of mine, who said that he was busy. But when we arrived at the beach, there he was, with the backpack. He was very apologetic, saying that he should never be too busy to help me out and he is always at my service. I think this represented Fuad, who became my fast friend in our senior year, after Ali had already graduated and gone.

When I awoke with this dream fresh in my mind, a somber feeling settled over me. Ali will not be reuniting with anyone anytime soon, and the rest of us have not spoken in many years. Perhaps the dream was prompted by the recent communication I received from Fuad, who located me (not hard to do) and contacted me out of the blue, twenty five years downstream. Perhaps he is indeed at my service, here to salvage my memories of the past and thereby ward off these dreams of the spectral foursome.