Reflection

After a While, the Dream Changes Its Abode..!

Sixteen years ago, specifically on May 21, 2009, I wrote an article in Al-Riyadh newspaper titled 'City Dreams' (أضغاث مدينة). At that time, I was not writing about an existing city so much as a possible city, or perhaps one that inhabits a poet's dreams, a city carried by hope as it ventures into the future with no guide other than the belief that big dreams are not born in vain in the hearts of their owners. I remember saying in that article, dreamingly: 'Here, where a grand theater for celebrations and cultural events is built, with electronic cafes stretching along the elegant neighborhood sidewalks, emanating the scent of coffee, poems, and intergenerational dialogues; or there, beyond tomorrow, they build a large mosque that accommodates everyone, a cinema house, platforms for storytellers, a neighborhood TV channel, and a life newspaper—a single neighborhood, with no red lights, no suspicious alleys, no graffiti.' I was saying this as the kind laughter of some friends preceded comments. They thought the poet was going too far as usual, and that the city was too busy to listen to his dreams. Perhaps they were right given the realities of that time, but they did not know that real dreams do not wait for reality's approval; they only wait for someone with enough courage to bring them into existence. Today, as I contemplate the great transformations Riyadh is experiencing, I feel that I am walking through a poem that left the paper and walked on the ground. What the imagination glimpsed from afar has become part of the daily scene: theaters buzzing with life, cultural events hosting the world, seasons that have turned into a permanent celebration of humanity and its capacity for joy, and cafes that offer, in addition to all types of coffee in the world, poems, stories, ideas, and questions. The Riyadh Seasons have come to affirm that quality of life is not just an urban project but a project for rediscovering oneself. The city that grants its residents the right to joy, the right to art, the right to meet, and the right to dream will inevitably also build their souls. And the most beautiful thing is that this spirit has not remained confined to the capital. The idea of the literary partner that extended to the regions and governorates of the Kingdom appeared as a practical translation of the dream of culture leaving the center to its spacious national space. Every city now has its voice, every governorate its window, and every talent a chance to find its place in the big picture, as if the entire Kingdom has become a broad platform telling its new story in multiple languages but emanating from one spirit. As I contemplate these transformations, I see them not just as projects, numbers, or events, but as a triumph of a profound idea: that the future is first made in the imagination. Every great achievement was initially a dream, and every amazing reality was once just a possibility seen by few. Perhaps the most beautiful part of this story is that those dreams found someone who saw them further, clearer, and more comprehensive than even their owners saw them. Here lies the uniqueness of His Highness my master, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who treated the future as a present responsibility that must be started building now. Therefore, it was not just the poets' dreams that came true; it was the dreams of an entire nation waiting for a leader with the courage to shake hands with tomorrow before its arrival. So today I return to 'City Dreams' not to boast of a poet's prophecy, but to contemplate the ability of great nations to turn dreams into realities, imagination into scenes, and dreams into a way of life. How wonderful it is for a person, in the autumn of their life, to discover that some dreams they wrote one evening were never just fantasies, but were the features of a homeland coming to us from the future!