unbelievably realistic dream i had last night.
my girlfriend and i are in an unnamed country in the middle east, probably afghanistan, and are wandering a major city street. american military presence is strangely absent. we window shop, looking towards street vendors and convenience stores. the city appears to be more modern than i would assume afghan cities to be, however, i’ve never been so, i don’t know. suddenly, i hear people yelling down the street, and then, gunshots. i look and see a truck full of men with AK-47s driving towards us. people are scattering, running inside, hiding. i grab my girlfriend’s hand and lead her into the nearest building. there’s a counter to the left immediately inside. there’s a couch and recliner a few yards to the right, facing a tv that’s running the news. i lead her to the couches, and there i tell her to crouch behind a couch. i kneel down and cover her with my body, hoping this decision is enough to keep us alive. then i look up and notice an old woman sitting in a couch near us. she looks down at us and i peer back, we are both silent. i hear the truck drive by, and men running along behind it, yelling in a foreign language, arabic, farsi, idk. they shoot their guns into the air. they pass the building we’re in. i feel slightly relieved, which is short-lived as the old woman gets up and runs to the door, yelling something out to the street. i don’t know what’s going on, but i don’t imagine it is good. i grab my girlfriend and tell her to get up and follow, and whatever she does, stay low. i look around and see a door in the back. we rush to it, our backs bent forward, heads tucked in. i look and see that it leads into a stair well. i close the door behind us and lock the conveniently located bolt lock. on the other side of the stairwell is another door that appears to lead outsides. i walk to it and look out. there’s a parking lot just beyond it and i think that we might be able to make a run. i open the door slightly and am about to lead my girlfriend out, when from the corner of my eye, i spy a man with an AK, walking away from the building, apparently patrolling. i quickly and quietly hold my girlfriend back, as i slowly shut the door again. i turn around and start making my way up the stairs. we make it to the second floor, which happens to be the top floor, and i look through the door window. there are no armed men, just a main room with a hall way full of open door frames. i open the door and we walk through, looking around carefully. we start walking down the hall, peering through the open doors as we do, and slowly, i begin to realize that we are in a hospital of some sort. i think it might be a mental facility. it’s full of people in gowns, walking around, slowly, droning about their day. some are in their rooms sleeping. others are just up, doing whatever. there seems to be no security. i lead my girlfriend around, and figure we can hide in one of their rooms. i look around and i find a room with a boy our age who looks caucasian, sitting and drawing. i walk in and ask him if we can join him. he agrees and we sit down next to him at the table where he’s drawing. we talk with him, because he apparently knows english. the conversation was vague and unmemorable, however, though i am hazy on this detail, i do believe i ask him why he’s in the facility and he tells me he suffers from a disease i can’t remember, probably because it’s not real and was just garbled gibberish, but i take it to be something that has to do with eyes or sight, not in the physiological sense, but psychologically, as in he has a mental disorder related to eyes or sight. his name is john, or joe maybe. as we start to explain to him about us, i begin to feel nervous, slightly tense. i’m not sure if we can trust him. i vividly imagine that he attacks me with his pencil, going after my eyes, all as i’m sitting peacefully across the table from him. my girlfriend carries on conversation as i walk over to one of the two beds in the room. eventually, i fall asleep on the bed, and when i wake up, my girlfriend is lying next to me. i lean over and kiss her neck and whisper that i think the men with guns have probably left. she turns to me and says that john (or joe or w/e) had already told her the men had left. i smile and hug her. then i wake up.
this was very likely a culmination of my watching huff, apocalypto, and my ongoing interest in the middle east.