This poem, like a few others in this anthology, really is about the love between parent and child. Given the context of the Uyghur genocide in China, the fear of falling asleep and waking up to an entirely different life is a very real one. The narrator dreams of his future and he is afraid, but his son wakes him like the rise of the sun, bringing light and hope to what was previously dark.
When Abraham slept at dusk
he dreamed two thousand years of exile
But I am not so mighty
I cannot dream a nation’s fate
When I sleep I see only my own future
My son wakes me from this dream like the dawn