A Moroccan Journal
A luminous story of friendship, lost love, and finding home in the saffron fields and sand castles of Morocco
By Urszula Przezdzik Abolik
Now Available
What happens when a dying woman sends her best friend on a mission across Morocco, armed with nothing but sealed letters, a suitcase, and instructions to unlock a lifetime of secrets?
My Dreams Are Small: A Moroccan Journal is the newly published book by Urszula Przezdzik Abolik, a genre-defying narrative that reads like a love letter written in saffron ink. Part travel memoir, part novella, part sensory awakening, this book follows Nina as she journeys from the frenetic pulse of Jemaa El Fnaa to the hidden waterfalls of the Atlas Mountains and the windswept beaches of Essaouira, carrying out the final wishes of her terminally ill friend Alia.
But this is not a story about death. It is a story about what happens when you finally start living.
Alia, a Moroccan woman who left her mountain village at nineteen, pregnant and bound for New York, has one last act of love to orchestrate. Through a series of sealed letters, she guides Nina into the heart of her homeland, reuniting separated lovers, revealing hidden daughters, and weaving together a family scattered across oceans and decades. Along the way, Nina discovers something she did not expect: that her own dreams have grown beautifully, stubbornly small.
No more fantasies of French Riviera villas. Now she dreams of fresh mint tea in a sun-warmed courtyard. Of feeding stray cats in narrow alleys. Of a room that smells of saffron. Of love that arrives barefoot on a beach.
A Book That Moves Like Music
Abolik writes with the rhythm of a Gnawa melody and the patience of a saffron harvest. Her prose is spare and luminous, leaving deliberate space for the reader to step inside the story. NYU professor and PhD Barnaby Ruhe, who edited the book, describes the experience as one of “stunning reversals” where “the reader affects the improbable, rearranges clues, and enters the scenes with your own emotional content.”
The book moves from Morocco to New York, from the Atlas Mountains to Havana, tracing a map of human connection that crosses continents and generations. It is a story about the things we inherit without knowing it: a love of sand between our toes, a melody we hum without remembering where we learned it, a longing for a place we have never been.
Themes That Resonate
My Dreams Are Small explores friendship that transcends death, the immigrant experience of carrying two homelands in one heart, the discovery of roots and identity across cultures, the sensory world of Morocco (its saffron, its music, its labyrinthine medinas), love that waits decades to be spoken aloud, and the radical courage of wanting less in a world obsessed with more.
About the Author
Urszula Przezdzik Abolik is a pedagogist, artist, traveler, and entrepreneur. She is the owner of Amber Connection, a yoga and tango teacher, and the creator of the Natura: Naked In Nature calendar project. Like the characters in her book, she has lived between worlds, cultures, and creative disciplines. My Dreams Are Small is her 2nd book, born from her deep personal connection to Morocco and the people who became her family there.
The book is dedicated to her children, her family, and to life itself.
“Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.”
Wislawa Szymborska, as quoted in My Dreams Are Small
Availability
My Dreams Are Small: A Moroccan Journal by Urszula Przezdzik Abolik is now available. For review copies, author interviews, or media inquiries, please contact the author directly.
