The Nightmare begins with Saidi pitting his protagonist, Ben Chadiza, against his antagonist, the sorcerer. A group of seven sorcerers, are described as surrounding Chadiza: “It was a macabre scene, which in other circumstances the sophisticated Mr. Benjamin Chadiza would have carelessly attributed to his rather extravagant imagination” (Saidi 421). The definitions of the specific words in this quote speak volumes about its underlying meaning. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary macabre means: “comprising or including a personalized representation of death”. Mr. Chadiza is described as sophisticated: “having a refined knowledge of the ways of the world cultivated primarily through extensive experience.” By using these words Saidi gives Chadiza the identity of worldly knowledge personified and foreshadows the character's courtship with death that continues through the story in the person of the sorcerer. Saidi further identifies Chadiza and his wife as the "children" in this allegory by saying that Chadiza had "cried like a little child" during his nightmare and upon awakening, was comforted by his wife in a manner reminiscent of a mother comforting her son: “His wife embraced him and pacified him with her warmth, pressing her breast against his chest and whispering comfort close to his ear” (422). The sorcerer also refers to Chadiza as “my son” in paragraph 39 (425). Towards the end of the story it is revealed that Chadiza's wife, Maria, is the biological granddaughter of the sorcerer and that her mother had abandoned the sorcerer "because of his witchcraft" (427). Mr. Chadiza and his wife are therefore identified as the children of this sorcerer figuratively and literally. But they are more than that. The... center of the card... moves from indifference to reverence and from apathy to pride. The sorcerer loses his fragile grip on the villagers' fears until he finally encounters "his Armageddon" (426). Saidi's choice of the word Armageddon to describe the sorcerer's death is indicative of his role as representative of the "dark age" of the people and marks the end of his reign: "The place or time of a final and conclusive battle between the forces of good and evil” (Merriam-Webster). When the village people point out that Chadiza was a “wonderful man,” they move away from the remains of the fire and talk about the birth (427). The daughter who turned her back on the mystical ways of her father began a change in the ways of her people. With the death of the mystic, a new era was born. People turn their backs on the dead and head towards them as a new day dawns.