The Dreamseller: The Calling by Augusto Cury Page B

killed, tortured, waged war, conquered, wounded, excluded in his name. They ignored the gentleness of Jesus, who never manipulated anyone, who would not hear of servants. Centuries of opposition and hatred toward Muslims followed, an animosity whose roots are perpetuated even today. In traveling with the dreamseller, I had begun to suspect I wasn’t the confirmed atheist I thought I was. Deep down, my disgust was with organized religion.
    The Miracle Worker was dumbstruck: Never had anyone corrected him without scolding him. The dreamseller, having said all he needed to say, turned and left, leaving several who witnessed the confrontation confused. We were immensely relieved. For how long? We didn’t know.
    The next day, a newspaper report on the recent events appeared in
The Times,
under the headline, “A Stranger Turns a Wake into a Garden.” A photo taken secretly as we left the wake was on the front page of one section. The reporting wasn’t an attack; instead, it contained many interesting facts. It said that a bold stranger wanted to change the dynamic of wakes, to transform them from settings of despair into platforms for paying homage to the dead.
    The journalist had interviewed people who had heard the dreamseller speak. Some said they planned to write their families to say that, when they died, they didn’t want a funeral marked by despair, loss and self-pity, but one highlighting their best moments. Mourners should instead be revelers, recalling the deceased’s acts of love and kindness, their words, their dreams, their friendships—even their foolish moments. They wanted those saying good-bye to remember that day joyfully, despite the pain.
    The article said that the stranger was the same one who had caused a flurry near the San Pablo Building. And it ended with two questions: Are we witnessing one of the greatest atheists ever, or a man with incomprehensible spirituality? Are we witness to a modern-day prophet, or a lunatic?
    When we awoke the next morning, we found the dreamseller off by himself, deep in conversation. It was the second time we’d seen him carrying on this monologue. He gestured as if he were having hallucinations or questioning his own reasoning. Ten minutes later, he came to us relaxed. He seemed to have cleansed his mind of the day-to-day noise.
    The sky was darkening, threatening a heavy rain. Lightning ripped across the sky. Dimas didn’t fear the police or jail time, but he was terrified of lightning storms. We were walking along a wide street when the thunder made our usually unflappable friend cower.
    I tried to calm him by telling him that by the time we heard the thunder, the lightning—and the danger—had already passed. But the mind is riddled with traps; he understood my words but they could not calm his irrational fears. I couldn’t criticize him, though. I was no different. I had always valued logic over emotion, but it was no consolation from the esoteric pain of my past. It haunted me.
    The rain soon began to fall. We quickly sought shelter in a large shopping mall. At the entrance was a vast department store. As we went inside, we heard the earsplitting crack of lightning strike. Dimas dove beneath the first table he found. He was like a child who had seen a ghost. I thought to myself, “The dreamseller is right. There are no heroes. Eventually, every giant encounters obstacles that transform him into a child. All you have to do is wait.”
    The last lightning bolt overloaded the mall’s grounding system and the electricity pulsed down the walls of the building. Two painters, cousins, were repainting the store. One of them, who had a stammer worse than Dimas, was working on the walls. When he was nervous, his voice shut down and he couldn’t say a word. The other was on top of a six-foot ladder, happily retouching the steel window frames.
    When the lightning bolt hit, it coursed through the walls and bounced into the window, striking one painter. The noise was