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Seeking help through anyone else (al-tawassul) is not permitted. . Writing letters to someone like that is idolatry (shirk). . Luckily it has gotten less, the problem of people writing letters. One or two centuries ago people used to do it much more. Now they understand better. Because of science (`ilm) their minds are enlightened (yastanïr al-`uqül). And of course the mind tells you that it’s wrong. That he’s dead. That he won’t solve your problems for you. Dream Trouble / 37 From a reformist point of view, the dead, including the Prophet and the awliyä´, are truly dead; mutual visits and conversations between the dead and the living are impossible.

When I was around, he would either play the role of a fatherly teacher or simply ignore me. I spent numerous days and evenings at the shrine, where I spoke to many of the people who visit Shaykh Nabil to seek his advice and to get their dreams interpreted. On one occasion, a woman invited me to come along to meet “her shaykh”—Shaykh Qusi. Shaykh Qusi is a cosmopolitan and highly educated spiritual leader. The first time I met him, I was immediately struck by his charismatic aura. Yet even though he is revered as a living saint and treated with much admiration and awe, the shaykh instantly put me at ease.

A family friend in Luxor predicted that Sufis would share with me only theoretical insights into the importance of dream-visions without saying whether they themselves see dreams of this kind. Dreams constantly seemed suspended between secrecy and everyone having a story to tell. Fluctuating between revelation and concealment, they were both omnipresent and entirely evasive. 36 As the following chapters repeatedly return to these four key interlocutors, I would like to introduce them briefly. Shaykh Nabil, skinny and feisty, is the protagonist of chapter 2 but is present throughout the book.