In the early 1930s, young Ace Smart is eight years old when his father, a physician, is found hung in his office, and his mother, a writer in the Harlem Renaissnce, dies soon after. He grows up bitterly, marries, and raises two daughters. This is the story of the spiritual journey of one of his daughters. Evidence of the past and feelings of the famiy emerge as Mia is hospitlized in a mental hospital. Ace's secret affair with Vanav weaves suspense when Ace discovers that Vanav was his wife's best friend in childhood. Vanav has only known freedom and has kept the knowledge and science of her people from the island of Sokotra in the Indian Ocean. She is close to Mia and shared her knowledge with Mia's mother. Ace later finds that his father and grandparents were affiliated with people from that island who settled in Steelton, Pennsylvania, and worked with the underground railroad. Quakers, Muslims, and Jews were involved in the movement. Family ideas about the African American experience are an issue as is the remedy for Mia. The family has ties with the struggle for honor and with an ancient healing that comes from knowledge of the blood or red resin from the dragon tree of Sokotra. Unexpected events occur when Ace finally gets rid of his hostility and Mia fights for her mental and emotional freedom. This story is woven with poetry, in an out of time as its powerful messages leave an important imprint on the heart.
Cowards and Angels
By Aileen MuhammadTrafford Publishing
Copyright © 2012 Aileen Muhammad
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4669-5531-8Contents
1 Birth.......................................12 A Million in One............................23 1880 Island of Sokotra......................34 Mali........................................65 Fjelland....................................86 Steelton, Pennsylvania......................97 1969 Philadelphia...........................198 Ace.........................................229 Vanav and Ace...............................2510 Vanav......................................3011 Family Talk................................3512 Inside Mia's Head..........................3913 Ache.......................................5014 Sokotra Serande............................5415 Younger Days...............................5616 Turning Tide...............................6117 Search.....................................6718 The Patient................................7619 Visitors...................................8220 Time Up....................................9521 The House Where I Live.....................9822 Health.....................................10023 Joined.....................................10824 Group......................................11225 Ace's Dilemma..............................11526 In Sync....................................11727 Ace Meets Solomon..........................12028 Socotra, 2014..............................12429 Time.......................................129
Chapter One
Birth Out of the darkness
Passed through the light
The circle eternal
Forces the right
Bringing a word
The law of design
Carrying silence
The voice that's divine
Out of the shadow an eye that is time
Out of an organ a life and a sign
A Million in One All in an instant the harmony of one million
crickets at seven pm on Thursday in the middle of
a hot summer day, knowing their parts, in a musical
symphony began to chat with me. Listening to the
chiming decree, I knew the missing consonance,
An order for my distant love of Peace, a broken word
A piece of shadowed dark corrupted scales
A rhapsody was needed all at once.
There was I listening to their symphony
without the sounding crater broken forth
when the universe announced itself. That
cracking easing melody might be a song.
But this was a cheering for a decision I made.
That trouble in the heavens came down here
after me. It is a transmission that is not known.
There are ones that dance beside me.
Alive without delusion.
1880 Island of Sokotra
This morning there was an announcement. It was more than wind that blew up on that shore. When something new was coming, waves rocked the fishing boats, heads looked out to sea. Children looked at their fathers and back again at the sea waiting for the horizon to give a sign as the grey and white seagulls agreed this was the place to merge.
Children ran from the sea through the village and up the hills. They ran up to the plains where the groves of dragon trees provided shade in their peculiar thicket. Children copied their parents and carefully withdrew the red resin from those precious trees.
Amadea sat a quarter of a mile from the opening of the holy cave that was high enough to see patterns of mountain tops below her. Sitting far from the entrance, she could see the ocean the sky and a massive arch where light exploded into darkness. This cave spread under an arch of mountainous terrain. She sat where she always sat and waited to see a sign of his coming.
She sat where he sat and watched all she could see. The view from that place was the purple sky meeting a turquoise shimmering sea with every ripple under light.
Have you learned yet, Amadea, the power of those clouds? Have you seen yet, Amadea, the healing of the dragon blood?
She watched the flood of birds land on the sea and hover together. Amadea rose from that sitting, wanting Shaheed to appear. She let each step meet that solid ground and walked through the tunnels past the inscriptions on the wall in Aramaic and Hebrew, in Socotri and Arabic. There were clay tablets set on large rocks and carved wooden tables with the Vedas engraved in Sanskrit. She passed through to the other end of the cave that led to an opening on the plateau with thousands of dragon trees standing like massive mushrooms and their giant trunks loaded with medicine. Held at the base of the sprouting of green were branches that formed sacred knots and twisted symmetrically. On the right side of the cave were the trees of laughter, their roots dug into stone. Their trunks were wide and oval like the belly of a woman's body with small slivers of branches opening up to pale pink delicate blossoms overhead.
Shaheed and Amadea loved each other there, as children. And when they became old enough they reached into each other's souls and flesh and loved in the solace of that place. Shaheed showed her how to cut the trunk, allowing the red blood to come out, his pouch always ready to collect the red resin as he taught her the healing of that sap. Then he'd find the blue aloe and take it to his grandmother to cook, and then he would find the frankincense trees. She watched the milky white sap flow out and harden with the air, when he opened the trunk. He travelled with his father on a ship to Europe along the great incense route. He often returned with news, books, and lapis lazuli.
The world found that place when Thomas walked with Jesus and then decided to travel. Thomas shipwrecked there and found people who loved to hear him teach. And that's when the world found out they were there, those men and women who still hide in those mountains, in elaborate structures designed with intricate carvings of pictures and symbols, built high within the stone shields. Amadea was the young girl listening, the young girl watching, and in later years, the one they turned to for translations, and for explanations of the healing arts of Sokotra. Amadea and Shaheed under the dragon trees brought Vanav into the world. They brought her forth at a time when the crumbling empires scrambled for power, wealth and labor and when the angels came to guide those who kept peace in their hearts and who hid to protect their way and their lives.
Mali
In 1825 the local members of the Twelve gathered in the heart of Mali and exchanged the results of their investigations. Their light and searchers informed them of the next move. They must meet their brethren in the land of the west. They must meet the ones that had already gone and establish a city there with the ancient ones that were expelled from the east who lived in peace there in the west. They must hurry because the land would soon be invaded and rebuilt. Their own would be stolen and altered. The kingdoms had their way and these men lived by the sign of peace. They saw no barriers in land and by tradition had hidden their treasures, their wealth and their loved ones.
Their hiding places were beneath the earth. Their hiding places were above the earth. And their hiding places were beneath the ocean through the elaborate under water mountain regions and into the center where they met twice a year and exposed those who would attempt to take over the earth.
After meeting they returned to their sources and passed the gift to the kings. This rising was the way of the ones that Live. They did not know the word death and they joined with their own. They developed their instincts by nature and they taught each other the way of living and the way of healing and the great exchange of the medicine wheel. They educated themselves at the University of Sankore and when the slave traders came they planned a plan that was in accord with Life.
TheTwelve met as the leaders of the 5th Division of the beginning cycle of the 25,000 year cycle. They gathered their men and boarded the ship to sail to Sokotra and then to Europe with the destination the West Land. When they arrived after much labor, at that time the nations on the earth were stealing cargo, ships, wealth, men and women. But these men had neither. They sailed with 12 men from the Tribes of Life and they landed on the shores of the West Land, now called America.
They labored with the Moors to put every measure of their plans in place. They had knowledge of the common languages and the mystical languages. They knew the ways of the Hebrews and the Moors and the languages of the nations taken into captivity. They understood the organization of labor and they understood the demands of the great slave trade.
But their requirement was to live by a rule of their origin and that is to create peace when possible, restore the ancient healing methods and to free a captured slave.
This task was assumed to be an ordinary one. This task required "wearing the mask" an art of the ancients, hiding their identity. The Twelve were prepared for their mission and their resolve was the center of their Living.
Fjelland
By 1835, the Twelve had established the most flourishing plantation in the South. It had more than 1200 workers and continued in prosperity as they sold their harvest, traded with the buyers and educated their servants. The neighboring plantations viewed the Fjelland Plantation as a prosperous one but no one guessed that the family that ran it were members of a society engaged in teaching and educating the former slaves. They disguised their intentions and appeared as all other slave traders but they had a different mission. They were successful for many years and they taught the next generation the things they needed to know. The men from Mali spread the word, guided the new members and sent them on the mission to America. The men from the east were trained by the Twelve to buy the slaves from the auctions and bring them to the Fjelland Plantation on an island outside of Savannah, Georgia. This huge number of slaves plowed the land by day and studied the arts of ancient languages, reading the sacred texts from the Arabic, Hebrew, Christian, Vedas, and Buddhist scriptures. They studied mathematics, astronomy, medicine and the science of Rhetoric. They studied the healing arts from the island of Sokotra and they lived by an oath: To free a slave, to live in peace and to study the way of the ancients in silence.
Steelton, Pennsylvania
I synchronize my kindness jeweled in hope. The time is crowned in dedication sure The weaver woman knows she can endure I maintain love majestic in its scope Compassionate the magic chest evokes The morning breathes there and so I endure A man that's rare perceives the strident dawn Sufficient love decides what is its scope.
Steelton, Pennsylvania, 1930's
By the early 1900's, their alliances were in place. They were highly organized yet fragmented. Cobblestones rose and sank, hard on the soles of shoes. Spruce trees lined those old streets. There were three flights of high steps to the porch that wrapped around the house on the high hill on Adams Street, the house where Ace spent his childhood. Columbia sat in the rocking chair staring off braced as if the wind were speaking. Ace's father, Dr. Jabbar was blessed, having Columbia as his mother and Frank as his father. They were both born on the Fjelland plantation.
Columbia swallowed her anger in her younger days,and shuffled her fear as her husband, Frank led the Negroes on their secret mission to freedom. It was not a thing to compromise. It was passed down from his father and his father and the blood line before you could count. Columbia sat watching time as her son Reynard Jabbar continued in his father's footsteps. Circumstances changed. The frightened men with no backbone,character or honor lashed through the streets attempting to put fear in any one that would consider their rights. Those ones looked at color and without implicit design or knowledge made an assumption. They made an assumption that only the well-trained in the reduction process of submission were acceptable. The ones with brilliant minds and significance for living must be overcome.
Frank left, his chair still rocking, as he took slow steps into the house. Those rocking chairs outside were pleasantly positioned for guests and family. Plants adorned the sides of the steps and straw woven rugs lined the porch. The covers on the porch furniture were made by someone in the house as were the pillows that were thrown on the porch furniture. The front porch faced Adams Street and the back porch led to the large yard bordered with hyacinth, geraniums, roses, tulips and peonies. The evening had come and Dr. Reynard Jabbar's young son, Ace wanted to see his mother, Aloe.
Aloe would have stayed home but her genes offered her a gift. Her words captured the hearts and souls of those searching. Her stories placed the reader in the time she gave and gave the reader the gift she passed on. She deliberately moved into circles that refused to compromise the value of their living. Although she loved her husband and her child, she sacrificed for that movement rising, the Harlem Renaissance. She was at the center, traveling, planning, meeting and producing works of art, plays and books. She had been in Washington, D.C where her play was being produced and presented for the arrival of the League of Nations. She had been gone for two weeks.
He could see his father approaching, as the automobile turned the corner. The window on the side of his bedroom allowed him to see the side porch. Men in grey suits came up to the entrance. There were five black and tan colored men and a blonde women dressed in black. A tap on the door, and they were in. He could no longer see them. He ran around to the top of the stairs and sat on the landing. His nurse took their coats and they went into the study. He could see his father shutting the door. He hadn't seen him for a while, nor his mother. He wanted his mother now. The nurse was kind and always there and firm and always exact. But she couldn't take a story and make it breathe and tell him a bedtime tale that made people and life important. She couldn't hum a song that made it look like a thousand victories had come for some poor soul that needed only one. Cornelia Hankins is not my mom.
"Ace, you haven't practiced this evening."
"My father has company."
"Then tend to your composition."
"I already completed that, Miss Hankins."
"Come, child. Prepare for your reading. It is the trial of Job."
"And whose trial was that, Ms. Hankins?"
"That is for you to discover."
"Oh, but I have. It seems like the men around Job were the real ones on trial."
"Well. Your father wants you to write about your reading. So you better just take your time and think. He said to create an outline first and organize your thoughts."
Ace walked over to his desk and prepared to work until Ms. Hankins disappeared. Then he went down the back steps and sat by the study door to listen to the company. He could hear the men speaking clearly.
"We understand the danger."
"Listen, Doc, we need you. It's time for you to step back. My son is dying. He needs you. The other children need you. You've got to let this go. We'll manage things. You can't do everything."
"That's right. You hand over your contacts to Mr. Tower. Things are getting more dangerous."
Ace ran back up the stairs at the call of his nurse. She went down the opposite stairs, calling his name.
The door opened from the study.
"Problem, Ms. Hankins?"
"Your son has left his study again. I think he wants to talk with you.
"Tell him I will be there in 30 minutes."
"Certainly, Dr. Jabbar."
Nurse Hankins walked through the long hallway to the breakfast room. Ace ran down the hallway until he approached the back stairway. He situated himself over the high hallway between the banisters leading down to the kitchen from where he could see part of Ms. East and Nurse Hankins.
Ms. East, the blonde woman approached Ms. Hankins. Her countenance was challenging, yet anyone could clearly see a fighting angel. She spoke with an accent and her blonde hair was cut straight across at the level of her chin. She wore pearls and a black linen suit. She was pleasant to look at but with a secretive smile and a confident mask.
"May I make some tea, Ms. Hankins?"
"You may. But tell me, what makes you people take risks like this?"
"We live by an oath to God, Ms. Hankins. We believe men and women must be free and compensated for their labor. Did you think I can watch fellow men and women hung because they believe in freedom? Do you think we white people all feel the same? It reminds me of a few centuries ago in Spain, and England and France, when hundreds of thousands of people were killed because they did not believe in the same god. They were Quakers, Protestants, Jews and Moors, Ms. Hankins."
"Oh, Ms. East, these things I hear Dr. Jabbar speak of, but I just wondered, you being a white woman and all."
"And do you believe that all skin thinks the same, by a color-coded set of rules? Oh, Ms. Hankins, do you mind if I make some tea?"
Ms. Hankins gave her the freedom of the kitchen, after taking out the honey and tea to be brewed. She placed the finest china on a silver serving tray and left the room.
Ace Jabbar, age eight, did as his father requested. Then when he heard the company leave, and the door shut, he ran down the steps and into the green of the living room, the sadness of a room without a mother or father who stayed at home and who left him with green brocaded drapes, green covered sofas and chairs with large flowers on them, mixed flowers on pillows and soft hassocks with tucked leather cushions and places where he sat and places where his mother sat, when she came home and his father's chair which he only sat in when family visited in that living room. His grandparents had their own chairs, grand styled, with cushions they must have sat in for over forty years. And they left him the grand piano, the violin and books—lots and lots of books.
"Sit down, Son. You have questions."
"Well, Dad, I don't get to see you much, and Mom, I don't get to see her much. I am trying to remember the things you told me about growing up to be a strong man and a courageous man and I just want to know, Dad, is there something wrong?" Ace was trained into the subtleties of being a refined gentleman. Complaints and a display of emotion were not acceptable. Dr. Jabbar got up and walked over to a photograph of his wife, Aloe, on the wall.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Cowards and Angelsby Aileen Muhammad Copyright © 2012 by Aileen Muhammad. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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