When I was a child, my mother mentioned to me a few times that my father had had dreams that later came true. “He has dreams that tell what is going to happen,” she said.

Usually, these dreams foretold the death of some old person, so to me as a child and teenager they were unimpressive. Most of these people were so old that it seemed pretty evident to me that they had one foot in the grave and were about to fall in. “He dreams other things too, and they come true,” my mother said.