Stephen has had a dream in the darkness preceding June 16.
Like Bloom's dream on the same night, it was tinged with
Middle Eastern exotic mystery and seemed to forecast some
important change or discovery. At several points during the
day, he works to remember the dream and realize its prophetic
potential. In a wonderful evocation of the act of trying to
recall a vivid dream, he thinks, "I am almosting it."
In Proteus, Stephen thinks back on Haines' dream of
the black panther that
woke him up so violently, and remembers that he himself had a
dream after he went back to sleep: "After he woke
me up last night same dream or was it?" It
may, then, may have been one of those repeated dreams
experienced on multiple nights, when the brain seems to insist
on working through the same material until it is sufficiently
processed. Stephen tries to remember the details: "Wait.
Open hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al
Raschid. I am almosting it. That man led me, spoke. I was
not afraid. The melon he had he held against my face.
Smiled: creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come.
Red carpet spread. You will see who."
Harun al-Rashid (ca. 765-809) was the fifth Caliph of the
Abbasid Caliphate, which ruled territory from north Africa to
the borders of India from its capital in Baghdad, a new
metropolis established close to Persia to enable the
triumphant Arabs to draw on Persian expertise in governing.
His name means Harun the Just, or Harun the Rightly Guided,
and his reign initiated what has come to be known as the
Golden Age of Islam, when arts, sciences, and philosophy
flourished. He was famed for maintaining a sumptuous court.
Thornton notes that "He is known primarily through his role in
several of the Arabian Nights tales. 'Sinbad the Sailor' is set
during his caliphate." Gifford adds that "He is reputed to
have disguised himself and wandered among his people to keep
himself aware of their moods and concerns." Gifford argues for
a Middle Eastern provenance of "the rule" as
well: "Stephen's dream involves the Hebraic 'rule' that the
firstfruits of the land were to be brought to the holy place
of God's choice and there presented to the priests."
Later, at the end of Scylla and Charybdis, Stephen
remembers something that happened before the encounter with
the strange man: "Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men
wondered. Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he
held to me. In. You will see." Dreams of flying
like Stephen's are a kind of lucid dreaming, in which the
dreamer can control his movements through the air. They are
typically exhilarating, accompanied by feelings of power and
liberation.
The Haroun part of Stephen's dream is clearly precognitive,
since on June 16 Leopold Bloom will befriend Stephen in the
red-light district, take him home to 7 Eccles Street, make him
cocoa, and offer to introduce him to his wife, whom he
associates with melons and other fruit. The narrative
acknowledges this prophetic quality by identifying Bloom with
Haroun twice in Circe. As Bello is marting him to
buyers in the sex trade and some foreigner bids "Hoondert punt
sterlink," hushed voices say, "For the Caliph. Haroun
Al Raschid." Later in the chapter, when Bloom tells
Bella that he knows she has a son in Oxford, she says, "(Almost
speechless.) Who are. Incog!" Not long
after, incognito Bloom takes off into the street after
Stephen: "Zoe and Kitty still point right. Bloom,
parting them swiftly, draws his caliph's hood and poncho
and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog
Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and
hastens on by the railings."
Stephen cannot hear the narrative identifying Bloom with the
Caliph, but before he realizes that he has any particular
connection with Bloom, he feels that the events of the dream
are coming true: "It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine avenue
Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red
carpet spread?" His talk sounds wild, and Bloom
attempts to calm him down, but Stephen becomes even more
excited: "No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever
shall be. World without end. (He cries) Pater!
Free!" Answering the call to a Dedalean father, Simon
Dedalus appears as a flying companion: "He swoops
uncertainly through the air, wheeling, uttering cries of
heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings."
