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Even before I became Muslim what impressed me about Islam was, how this way of life and its accompanying rules support the nature of things.

I remember watching a group of people at the courtyard of a mosque in Damask, three men and a woman. The last Salaams of sun dawn prayer had faded and they obviously rejoiced. They looked like a couple of friends, maybe husband, wife, a brother, not necessarily of family tie as revealed itself by the easy courtesy shown to the woman. She, wrapped in her black cloth, was about the same height as the men and apparently not only physically. She seemed to take part in their ongoing exchange of words in a very equal way without betraying her gender. Light, graceful, noble in her bearing obviously uninhibited at the same time, not coy, the breeze playing easy waves in the black veil that covered her from head to ankle. Watching them fascinated from my outsider's isolation, she seemed to me like somebody very much in tune with herself. No extra pounds of lavishness, no coquettish frills lurking from under her cloak, a well-shaped heel, no torturing drumsticks under her feet, a ready embracing smile, she felt strong and sweet like the lovely breeze, which had risen shortly before Maghreb on that hot summer day. Her sight made me long to be a sister and her friend.

It came as surprise to the toughened shield of cool I carried, cruising the world. Free Woman, as I had had to learn the locals called that, set on a crusade, to find out what freedom of women in a best of all possible worlds could possibly be.

Free Woman, as a young lady on the plane had informed me in the casual intimacy of sitting at my side during a few hours ride, meant going to bars and discos by yourself and making your own choice, eventual consequences unconsidered. She introduced herself as Syrian, a teacher returning home from vacation in Budapest. I did not ask her whether she had been free there - a picture of beer-sodden barrooms flashing through my mind.

She did not like to return home, she said, it meaning to revert back into the supervising wings of her extended family. How she had managed to escape that kind of supervision at all, I did not ask. There was a hint in that she claimed to be her mother's only child, which did not tell me much. Coming from the West a father not mentioned, was lightly taken, easy understood. I had no idea about the concept of manners in an Islamic family. My familiarity generally sided with any desire to not submit.

In the course of the flight she established contact with a young man at the opposite side of the aisle and while she was slowly but surely shifting focus to attract his attention, I had amply time to watch her display of Free Woman in action. A display, which had as a starter all ingredients of that same despicable submissiveness we had agreed to hate just few minutes ago. Twitching and sleazing and belittling herself to fit in whatever the cache of that foreigner's desire would be. To what end? Make it under the passengers weary eyes to a frantic encounter in the tiny bathroom cabin in hungry greed? She was not that crude.

We landed at noontime, in mid days heat. It happened she and we, I was traveling in company of my twelve-year-old son, and the object of her obscure desire stayed close, as she was directing us through our first steps on foreign terrain, my son and me being her alibi in that maneuver. Together we took a shuttle bus to the center of the city. By then I was glad for any help, in whatever disguise it came by: I was flooded in blood by one of these unforeseeable moves of female nature. Coupled with the onslaught of Arabic language in word and writing, I felt defeat.

What a strange move of fate! I had come here to do some sophisticated research about the Arab Women, yet first thing on arrival, find myself swapped in something so equalizing and heavy symbolic! What was the message with this? Touching ground in midst of a culture preconceived as depriving women of their basic rights, I was to find myself overwhelmed by archaic common needs of my gender's weakness?

I did not linger on the meaning, being busy controlling the feeling of humiliation accompanying decomposition and decay which was rising. All I needed was a shower and change of clothes.

The Bus from the airport took us to the center of Damask. We dragged our luggage and ourselves in ongoing midday heat to the next couple of hotels. After the second try, our friend in her desperate last chance to be Free Woman and her flirt decided, to leave me and my son behind in the cool lobby of the next hotel, “while we try to find rooms”.

My son fell asleep, as soon as we settled; I did not dare to leave him by himself and did not have the energy to venture for a bathroom in what already appeared to be the hell of an unsuitable situation.

It was Ramadan.   An endless row of pilgrims soon spilled out from elevators and floors. Bearded, sinister looking men with turbans, their cloaked womenfolk in handholding flocks following behind, stocky bodies safely wrapped in black, stout legs clad in dark stockings eyes downcast, shuffling silently in much worn trotters. Not the least side-glance spared for that color patch of unveiled Free Woman lingering in the lounge they passed by to join fellow pilgrims outside in the blinding heat, walking in that same silent determination towards obvious one goal.

Our friends did not come back for what seemed hours. I had ample time to watch ongoing traffic in the air conditioned hotel lobby and outside under the blinding white midday light.

Only after the second call for prayer sounded from the minarets of the city, did this stream of pilgrims dribble and end, leaving the blinding heat outside to do what it had by itself. A little while later, the dribble first and then the stream came back, in reverse direction. The inhabitants of the hotel returned, in that same shuffle, passing by without a glance towards an unveiled Khuffar, me, by that time boldly sipping cold lemonade, which was all the kitchen would serve during a day of fast in the holy month of Ramadan.

I had come to like the hotel lobby, in its cool, air-conditioned plastic covered art deco style. The entrance door I was keeping my eyes on in anticipation of our friends return was decorated in genuinely cut glass facets reflecting an intricate pattern of light.

My friends Free Woman's freedom did have an end. A room had been found for the young man but not for us and in a relaxed move of compassion she took us along to her mothers' house. The plan being to give me a chance to make my necessary calls in peace.

Unknown to me, delay of public life on this day of Ramadan Fast would still last for a couple of hours. I trotted behind her overwhelmed by an unquestioned inner logic in an undecipherable outer environment soaked in my drastic overflow of gender. Hardly able to keep my son convinced that everything was a-okay while on top of the heat a truck sprayed toxic clouds of pesticides for insect termination.

When we finally arrived at our friends house the mama was by no means welcoming, obviously annoyed with whatever her daughter brought along from her self finding trip among alien unbelievers. Yet we where asked to sit in the cool darkness of the living room on chairs in plastic wrap. My son and I unwelcome witnesses to the hardly suppressed hissing of an upcoming interfamilial showdown. In a last push of despair I convinced the mother of the unifying truth of my need to see the bathroom without further delay.

The bathroom, equipped with all facilities a civilized human might expect, was a variation of the unwrapped show conveniences in the living room; it had no water coming out the faucets. It took me some time to decode the ongoing system of a brass bowl shining modestly on the floor and a faucet neither connected to tube nor basin but in obvious relation to a drain, where, oh subtlety oh glory! Water did come out! I gathered it in the shiny bowl and poured it over my body until I was back to clean and cool again.

Things had cooled down outside too, when I reappeared. The Mama had taken a liking to my son Yaqub and obviously developed sisterly feelings towards my emergency situation. We now were invited into the kitchen and treated to the incredible luxury of freshly processed blackberry juice.

“It will do you good” so much I understood of what she said.

Soon afterwards offices opened. I was able to do my calls, establish my connection and leave this hospitable house in due gratefulness and time.

To go for a filmed documentation of cultural habits presented the sum of my accomplishments in artistic crafts at that time. To Damask, as the people here called their town, I had come to do research about Palestinian Women.

My desire to travel Arabic countries had originally been limited by horror stories about the way women traveling by themselves were treated here. Where I come from we called Arabs sleezeballs. Encounters with Arab men in my hometowns coffee house and disco scene, who seemed to have more than semantic difficulties to take a woman's no for what it is, being the backdrop.

My ongoing project called itself The Best of All Possible Worlds. Feeling deeply unsatisfied with the ways we people in the so-called civilized West had ridded ourselves of social responsibilities. My vision was, to study communities all over the world and find out about culture transcending manners of the heart. It was inevitable to do research in Arabic countries too. And besides, I did cherish sympathy for the Sufi movement, which I understood as having strong roots in the near east.

So I picked the Palestine cause for its political relevance at the time and the predictability of it's being an item for headlines well into the future. I figured with this, doors would most likely open, which they did. Provided with a government grant to do research for a script I made all the necessary contacts with offices representing the Palestinian people.

The strategy was to focus my approach on Palestinian mothers who sent their sons to the first line of the warfront as fodder to the Israelis' guns. A shocking detail that had entered the media only recently I was not the only one wondering, how and why any mother could consent to such an atrocity of her inherent knowledge of life.

I found myself welcomed and pampered in Damask by several different organizations presenting the Palestinian cause. Sheltered by the UNWRA, a woman, white, to their eyes resembling a prominent movie star who had visited only recently, this people put obvious hope in me as another potential to voice their suffering.

My son Yaqub, whom I had taken on this journey in fulfillment of an old promise for adventure, turned out to be the very suitable company in this environment. He accompanied me on chauffeur-driven Mercedes rides to several offices, where chiefs held court among their tribes-men and bundles of machine guns polished harder than shoes were reflecting light. He happily drank all the Laban, a local Yogurt drink, offered, relished in being taken as a man, got bored when interviews took to long, enjoyed visiting military sights not so much schools, tolerated refuge camps, remembered to wash his hands after using the bathroom and to eat only with his right hand when we were invited to have meals with chosen families of martyrs and heroes. In the evenings he exhausted my suitors at the hotel winning endless games of chess. In silent agreement he did not give away his parents were divorced, when well minding people asked him for his father. “He stayed home to look after the farm” was, what we said in accord.

Up to this point of my life I had encountered martyrs only at convent school in the form of graphic illustrations on leaflets which gave off an undisguised erotic whiff: the sight of naked breasts overlapping the fact they were brutally severed. As for a hero, the picture was the one on his white horse, who somehow had left out on me yet.

Now I learned martyrs were men of the family, who had lost their life in a struggle for home and country, sons, husbands, fathers, brothers. Heroes, if I got that right, were alive, suffering imprisonment and severe physical and psychological damages in a quest for the cause.

Our interpreter and guide, patiently translating all my questions, who in suggestive sadness indicated my resemblance with the movie star that had been here before, revealed himself to be a hero. He had suffered prison since the age of fifteen, until two years ago, almost half of his life.

“Political, sure. – You know, after some time, its just becomes life. You make friends, play endless games of chess, read at random, get to know a lot of interesting things, there are always people with seasoned experience around eager to teach you…”

Martyrs by the way not only were promptly transported to paradise, I learned, they would now be over there in that eternal bliss praying for parents and kinsfolk, working to have them a place there granted too.

This, to a spiritual inclined agnostic like I prided myself to be was dumb folding. In my worldview death, if I cared to think of it was the end of all life – over and out. Yet with these women, who carried buckets of blood and suffering behind their men, the perspective of afterlife commanded respect.

Confronted with an almost delirious pride mothers, widows daughters and sisters of martyrs exposed over dead sons, husbands, fathers and brothers I hesitated to dig too deep into how any mother could provide her son for the first line of fire.

On top of it all I was stunned by the oft-repeated argument:

“The Israelis may have all the technical know how but ours is perseverance and manpower, because our women bear us children at random.”

Regardless of whether somebody like me - supposedly a human being in its right mind – was ready willing and able to believe in something eternal unproven like the other world, the fact here was an absolutely unwavering element of faith, encompassing every inch of individual suffering.

Many of the women I saw in camps and in the cities' central bazaar had tattooed tears on their cheeks, a traditional custom, obviously meant to indicate a generally desirable state. Somebody like me out in the West had trained herself early to show no tears, symbols and sign of female weakness. And death? Well death was bad enough to happen, better forget for the time being that it could happen to me too.

All indulgences of self-evolvement my friends and I practiced and all that alternative wisdom we worshipped in satiated First World manner were of no avail to these women, suffering right here and now more loss and deprivation than we back home could conceive. So much so, that I never pressed the subject of Sufism. It felt like sidetracking and in face of all that fierce reality not the appropriate thing to pursue.

These women obviously did not question sense and meaning of their existence. Whether to be or not, to them was no question at all. They were busy being whatever Allah, their creator, had planed them to be. That tearing river of life allowed no hesitance to question individual fate. Free choice meant to submit in best possible manner. Yet their faces, while they suffered were not drawn by lines of tension and frustration as to be seen in any gathering of ambitious femininity back home in what called itself First World, presuming first rate quality of being.

Not the Arab man but the politician of any provenience became my issue in this adventure. Residing in ever the same leather couched offices with identical manicured grandeur. In compromising diplomatic say disposing of their flock of lambs who as anonymous masses were doing the dirty work to their big time decisions - only the little flag on their offices coffee table varying in color.

After our tour of camps had finished, my son and I took a few days off at the seaside. One of the beach boys who beleaguered my white blond self in bikini, read my hand and told me, he sees me among many people dressed in white and these people were following me. In only to him obvious consequence he beseeched me to become Muslim right here and now. I laughed and blamed this joke on his broken English. Whatever this people dressed in white he was seeing might be after, I did not hope them to be kindred to the Bedouin in white thobe, who dragging his shocked and shivering little female object after him just had left the room which we were given at the Fish Hotel at our arrival, leaving behind wet blotches on the bed sheets. The hotel boys needed an extra invitation to change the sheets for us.

At this little strip of beach, not yet explored for western tourists I got glimpses of Free Woman's possibilities around local culture: The example an high school teacher of mathematics in her late thirties from my home town Vienna, heart of Europe, who did not resist the local chiefs' invitation to water-ski. She resented me although I declined the same, leaving her happy water-skiing self the sole inhabitant of the man's exotic harem department for the time being.

An Arabic lady invited me to race her husband in swimming laps and was very amused by watching him desperately trying to get hold of any part of my body at random while I struggled to win.

Men's eyes constantly sat like flies between my bikini parts and my son had to fend off indecent approaches on his way to the bathroom at night…

That following winter the kite carrying my vision stranded poorly. None of the GMs in business and media I approached to finance the project, saw themselves called to invest in the cause of the Palestinian women. One of the moguls in cashmere even had the guts to call it “a project of self realization” and suggested somebody my age “better accomplishes her self learning the use of a coffee machine in an average office situation”. News of his incarceration for fraudulent use of his company's money reached me after I had left rat race on this particular sinking ship happily behind. It was no consolation, by now things had become personal. My own motivation to choose the subject had, as mentioned above, been influenced by materialistic motives. After all that real suffering I had seen I did hesitate to harvest in such a manifold and delicate human situation.

Very soon, out of all possible financing sources the Israelis invited me - without having been approached for support - to come in for an interview “to do a project related to your work”. With pleasure and eloquence I sketched them my motherly indignation about “the big boys over there in their strategic sandboxes” waging business of war and destitution in the name of honor and patriotism. I took trouble to emphasize the fact that the Israelis themselves, apparently had taken histories' lesson badly, by implementing on their brothers of biblical times variations of what had been inflicted on them in their sad past by the West. He was a nice guy, the man who did the interview, polite and soft-spoken, compassionate. As I finished, no suggestions were made as to what the promised project could be.

What I did gain out of the producing situation as a whole was: small is beautiful. Small in the way, where responsibility for other peoples' wages was not involved. Next time around I would just organize me camera and sound machine in time and do the editing myself, under the pretext of art.

What really afflicted me concerning my stranded vision was the part that dealt with another project of mine running for some time, called Mutwork. The German word Mut stands for courage, and courage was, what I was trying to pass on to a couple of my daughters' schoolmates. They all were kids in their late teens, which had come to prefer the food in my kitchen and the teachings that came with it, to being out roaming the streets in pursuit of sex and drugs and alcohol.

“Who does not have courage to dream, will not fly” was the motive of my concept. I had stunned them out of their raw and confused minds in sincerely declaring my intention to fly, without technology, by my very own means.

“Like the ancients seeing the earth as a flat disc at which ends people will topple into a vast abyss, the law of gravity, and any law of science at large, is a superstition and will sooner or later be replaced (by another superstition).

“This does not indicate, that I intend to jump out of the window from the second floor to proof gravity does not exist. What I am trying to tell you is, that mankind, entangled in the idea of Homo erectus neglected other potentialities in reach. As far as I am concerned, I am training to fly. My life span may not be long enough for this, but I am set to insert this grain of sand into the process of evolution. Besides, in other thought systems around this world people do fly.”

They laughed and were with me all the way toppling laws and prejudices just to see what could be the potential behind it. It went beautiful up to the point were I found myself full-fledged in love with one of them. Love, like preferring, sorting out, setting everything and everybody else back against one singled out object of obscure desire.

Big strange bird

Of a Zen-drawing in ink

Stranded on my carpet  

Musician, artist, fabulous mind.

The other participants of MUTWORK saw what was going on and did not like to be sat back against him. My daughters did not like it. My mother did not like it. My friend, resident in Paris, France liked it. It was what ladies my age did there; they amused themselves with a young lover.

I myself was not happy at all with this infatuation. I suddenly felt old over an age gap of seventeen years. I could not envision myself carrying this into a fulfilling and above all lasting companionship, which was what I wanted and needed and ought have been looking for. So I went through pangs of separation, with Mut and Wut, courage and rage, deserted by my team, my daughters and the young man, who did not quite understand and care what was happening around his splendid performances.

Preoccupied as I was, I even was late to meet my son at the train-station, when he arrived for Christmas vacation from the countryside, where he lived with his father and his new wife. He did not wait for me to show up; he just went on and took the tram, carrying the Christmas tree that he himself had cut for us in his father's wood all the way on his shoulder.

It was a dream I had that time, about picking my son up for the holidays and bringing him to the train-station, when holidays were finished, with all the never tiring joy of reunion and all the never tiring heartbreak of good by, which kept me going. In that dream during one of those good bys I'd lost my Burberry and my bag. So I went to the lost and found place, and they did not have my things and sent me on to another office and this went on and on so many times, I even woke up from this dream. As soon as I fell back asleep I was running corridors, opening doors, again, talking to men in uniform in vain. I would not let go, because this coat and my purse, in the dream presented my whole existence, my social identity, which I just had to have back. So finally, after I had gone in and out offices and in and out the dream numerous times, a man in the station masters uniform came up to me and gave me the key “to it all” on a velvet pillow.

If there was a remedy at that time, that kept me from sinking into depth and darkness of depression, it was not books or fresh air and going to places where one would meet people, it was dreams like this.

Another dream before that, had inscribed itself deeply into my heart, and kept kindling my hope. In it I had insisted on sharing a drink of an ominous power drug with the men in the den. When they told me, the drink had been made out of the vitals of my son the pain turned me inside out. Awaking, I found myself on a green cloud in midst of a crowd of angelic people. They all had their heads covered. I wondered why people with such a pure aura, needed to cover themselves. Their leader, a man in green turban, addressed me: Welcome, this is your home, you are one of us and this is, where you always will return. I was showed my husband, who beautiful and most modest among all these modest beings, kept his eyes down. The leader told me, they had this problem with sending volunteers back to the other world, in order “to show our brothers and sisters there, longing for truth like you, the right door. To move back and forth between the worlds you will always have to undergo the process of being turned inside out. But remember, you are the one, whose return here is granted. Do you want to take this task upon yourself? And I, my dreaming self no less adventurous than awake, in spite of all the good waiting for me on my cloud ready for another nip of that potent poison life, volunteered. So I was turned inside out with all the pain again and woke up.

Over the years since longing lingered within me, kindling my hope, that one day my companions would call for me to return to my true home…

One day, when I was walking the streets I discovered a little shop that had ethnic material and jewelry in the window. I entered and looked around. Among other things, there were a couple of books wrapped up in brown paper, with no price tag or writing giving away their content. I took one out and liked the size, the weight in my hand. I bought it like that, without checking what was about. When I opened it later I found it was a book about Sufis. It said Sufis were people who dedicated their life to be close to the source. Such living in harmony with the essence, they kept the balance of good and evil in the world. They where ranged in ranks around a leader, called the pole. He was the one closest to the source and representing its laws. To be one of them, you had to be chosen and sooner or later after some testing their messengers would bring you in.

My boss at the esoteric bookstore, were I was earning bread-money, made my solar for the year and wrote, “All well” on it. So far I did not see how this would come by. Would I just succeed to persevere in patience?

One night shortly after my thirty-ninth oh so Aquarian birthday, I was lying in my bed in the dark, trying to sleep, yet tossing around on my pillow wide awake, raw agendas somersaulting in my mind. Trying to remember, what all those teachings of Aquarian age philosophy and promising behaviorism I had picked up on my road, did say about setting your mind on goals? The sum of it something like; if only you managed to focus on what you really wanted with heart and soul it will find you. But then, I argued with myself, the same people propagating this were the ones siding with modern science, where heart is a replaceable muscle and existence of soul doubtful, since it cannot be located in human texture. At this point I decided to take a stand for the unseen. Trying to sort out what my answer would be if Cosmic Consciousness - The Vast, The All-Embracing and Void, Source and Goal of everything in whatever shape and form choose to ask me, what my one and only wish would be:

A man? Not at the cost of having nothing else.

Fortune? What a tiresome drag, ending up in a vault guarded by barbwire fences and very difficult to share.

Fame?   - Unreliable and lonely.

I did not see myself in any of this. All of it would sooner or later again lead back to: Why? What for? Why should I take upon me all these tedious things that came with life and wrestle the shadow of scruples they'd cast? Not my children, who were right now taking their leave to make their own road into life. Not a man, ‘the other half', who would balance that ongoing lopsidedness which had me transgressing limits. Not fame nor fortune with its evaporating glory and glitter, not even my precious self were good enough reasons to submit when things got routine and asked for discipline and endurance.

The only thing I really needed was to know WHY.

Why on earth should I submit?

As soon as this wish was signed and delivered, I fell asleep.

The nights to come I repeatedly dreamed of a man of ebony color who held me save in compassionate embrace. My everyday reality was so far away from the beautiful feeling of this dream; it made me angry against its claim.

As the phone rang me out of my sleep another morning, I almost did not pick up. Who should it be? Another obscene call? My boss in the Esoteric Bookstore calling me in for some extra time?

It was sheer obedience that had me pick up the phone.

“Hallo, this is Heidi.”

Yeah, and who would that be?

But then I remembered. The thought of her being in town lightened up my day. “Look,” she said. “My husband and I arrived here yesterday and the hotel we are staying in, is not very pleasant. Do you know of any better place?”

Although my general mood was not exactly communicative those days I could not help but in invite them to come and stay in my house.

“My husband will want to check this out before we make any decisions. So maybe we can come by some time this day, for you all to meet?”

“I will be at work till the late afternoon, but my daughter is here and she will let you in and show you around, if this is okay with you.”

I was not enthusiastic about somebody's' husband inspecting my house either. For him to decide whether he would accept my invitation? me being not at all keen to serve anybody at this specific state of my life.

We decided they would come in the early afternoon to have a look at my place and later meet at our mutual Psychiatrist friends' office in the city.

I was looking forward to see Heidi and curious to meet her husband who, according to rumors was American, a drug dealing Black Panther and Jazz Musician, rare species in my hometown Vienna.

Heidi had been in my early womanhood the impersonation of what a free woman could be. My hunchbacked advisors then - a couple of aspiring Psychiatrists whom I turned my other cheek to – cited her as their case example of female hysteria. Her case was she had in all sincerity suggested to jump out of the window together right here and now, when her husband, the father of her two baby daughters stated he did not love her, and did not so because there was no love in his resume. Love, along his point of view being a typical product of inflamed female fantasy. An overheated illusion, that's all.

I loved her since the moment I heard this story because I had in my experience endured a couple of situations played in that tune. By the time I entered the scene she had left her children behind with their father - not so cool - and gone to Paris with a Jazz Musician – very cool indeed. How one would solve the situation better, here the little kids and there the Jazz Musician and Paris, I had no suggestions in mind. Bits and pieces of her fortune surfaced in time, attempted suicide going hand in hand with existentialism, the obligatory journey to Afghanistan – it was the sixties - and finally a Black Panther dealing in drugs, another Jazz Musician, with whom she emigrated to Saudi Arabia and obviously had hung out there within the forbidden city of Madinah up to this day.

In person I had met her once, a couple of hours, when she had touched down in Vienna to fix a passport situation. She was then traveling with her daughters, whom she, in spite of all the bad reputation had taken from their father as soon as she got her act straight. She impressed me as an accomplished well-seasoned lady of the world, who knew very well what she was talking about. A reason I had gone to meet her was to ask her about Sufism and the way she met my inquiry had impressed me again.

“Yes we live in Madinah, the Holy City.” She had said. “According Sufism I can tell you we are practicing Islam and following the laws of Shariah, in dealing with all details of life in the way Allah designed for His creation.”

“Do you veil?”

“Yes, I do.”

“How can you take it?”

“To me it's like constantly moving inside the walls of my house. No eyes invading the sanctum of my privacy.   No intruding conclusion pushing me off balance.”

“My thing would be to accomplish such peace of mind without the help of veils.”

“Sounds good to me, but you see, we women have to deal with interpretations independent from our will. It's easier to keep the curtain closed and shut out commotion. A clear signal, that's what the veil is.”

When we met this afternoon in the office of our mutual psychiatrist friend they were sitting under one of the palm trees he grew so abundantly. She coal eyed and elegant in black, “Hassan, my husband” in a dark brown Chinese silk jacket, jeans and crocodile skin boots, on first gaze looking more like an old nigger under a palm tree than a panther. As we exchanged introducing pleasantries Hassan's overpowering charm made me take caution.

They liked my house they liked the artistic atmosphere in it. They liked my charming and talented daughter, who had “most graciously served us tea showed us around and impressed us with the depth of her poems and livelihood of artwork.” They were “honored to accept my invitation” and had “taken the liberty to make an appointment with your gifted daughter to meet later.” Now we would wait a few minutes for our friend to close office and then “take out to roam the night scene of the city”. All this was fine with me.

Yet our mutual friend, the psychiatrist, left our company soon. Too much harmony made him tense. It was not fitting for his hungry wolf's habit of chasing women, to move in company of a black man like the one present, who drew attention constantly and talked with sweetness and ease to any stranger, regardless of sex.

When my daughter joined us it was decided, we needed something to eat and since our guests desired vegetarian food, we ended up in a new Sanyasin restaurant, seed of Baghwan's latest business expansions.

“With your obvious interest in spiritual matters, as one can tell by all those beautiful books you have in your house and pictures on the wall, why did you not join the Sanyasins?” – was how Hassan addressed me with arrival of the menu.

“Too much money involved, it does not feel right. And now, after all that noise about sensual evolution in a worldwide upcoming Aids situation his recommendation to use not only preservatives but rubber gloves too in intercourse – ridiculous, what kind of guidance to freedom and self-evolvement should that be? Plus - how come he did not see it coming? ”

We made our orders.

Next I had my turn to spread achievements, summing my latest ones up in: “What I am searching for with all these activities is something I call manners of the heart, common denominators for basic interaction that can not be but the right ones between human beings irregardless of place, time, sex, color and cultural habits.” Satisfied in having managed to impress our illustrious guests a little.

“And you, what about you? You are a Musician I hear?'

“Jazz Musician, that's how I started out yet nowadays I spend most of my time writing.”

“And may I ask, what are you writing about?”

“I am identifying The Principle Unity of Light, negation and affirmation as a whole. The unity of the universe as a whole, a whole which is nothing but a mirror image reflecting the light of the living presence of God.”

Wow. Quite a bite to chew. In my view gained in fieldwork and time, people of dark skin were experts in gut feeling, rhythm and soul was theirs, while science, especially philosophy was the realm of whites, lording over the brain.

“It is the principle that reflects The One and it is the complete saint that reflects the principle.”

As if having fed us with a bite too big to chew he now drew a line for our European Bildungswahn . He cited Arthur Rimbeaud, Schopenhauer, Mozart, Buddha, van Gogh, Einstein as witnesses to The Oneness of Being, in what became not a dialog but anticipation of inert questions. I scanned Heidi for signs of weariness that in circumstances I was familiar with would signal sisterly patience if not contempt when a man got into preaching mood like this. But, although he used her like a dictionary to confirm statements, finalize quotations or simply repeat in her own words what was said to benefit our better understanding; her composure did not leak the least disaccord with anything he said.

New to me was how he talked about all these things. For example evil, as a living being, not a myth, but a living energy which uses uncountable and unperceivable shapes and forms to invade a human beings' life, twisting it, tossing it around, seducing it in glorious manner only to let it down merciless without hesitation. “Me? I just called you, why did you follow me? Why did you not use your fabulous freedom to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong?”

Talking about the hour in everybody's life, when not only our tongue but also our senses, limbs and skin were going to testify our deeds.

“Evil can be powerful, like in Nazi Germany. Look at the Jews of those days'” he went on, “educated, sophisticated, powerful people. And jet, most of them not able to read the signs on the wall. At least, when not being able to fight their oncoming doom, sell what they had and leave in time. And likewise, nowadays people in the West do see the signs of a powerful evil. They analyze these signs and play their petty games, but are not able to draw consequences that would save themselves. History has taught them nothing. Millions of people were following the Nazis down a dead end road. Nowadays, as the consequences have been brought to daylight at random, they nurture the illusion it could never happen to them. But the evil's merciless harvest did not stop it just took another disguise, pleasing to the needs of our modern world.”

The evil he was talking about was obviously not just the opposite of good, but an intelligent force with powerful interests. A living energy that was to be fought in constant vigil.

“Look at the mountains of food which are destroyed by the self-proclaimed First World to balance economy. While at the same time in other parts of the world people are starving, they gorge themselves with three-star meals. People in the West believe they are the leaders and wardens of civilization. While at the same time the rest of the world is watching. They see the disease spreading and do not feel the slightest compassion to help, after all this self ordained First World has done to them in its conquering obsession.”

I did not feel like finishing the food before me on the table. I did not feel too comfortable in my white skin by that time. My family tree of ancestors with all its landowners and Jewish bankers and all its blue blood, suddenly felt brittle. I had heard rumors about the doom of the West before. I had read the books that graced my bookshelves. New Age Astrology Nostradamus from every direction sages were pointing towards the logical end of this specific period of time. But in this gleaming black panther's words the oncoming doom came alive life right here at the restaurant table.

“You, who you are and were you come from do not matter to me. I do not regard shape and form; all I am looking at is the heart. Because it is the heart that Allah wants.”

Well, I was glad, that somebody finally was interested in the heart. Not as the replaceable muscle but the organ of our soul which science could not yet locate in the human body. This thing inside me, that was awake while I was sleeping and commanded power to give me no rest until it felt satisfaction. And now this man was telling me the answer to all questions is with God, Allah in Arabic language. “The Eternal Living One, Creator and Bestower of all living things.”

  “Is he always like that?” I addressed Heidi, whom he called Aida, suspecting some kind of manipulative intentions behind his easy grace to reach out into the depth of my heart and bring to light what mattered.

“Milk and honey, Zuckerbrot und Peitsche in equal persistence.”

A gathering of people dining together in Vienna Middle Europe heart of the world, would have what is called a small conversation. A small conversation works like a game of table tennis. You small talk back and forth, give each other space, cut in now and again - make sure everybody gets his turn.

Not here.

“The heart,” said Hassan “our heart is The Living in its essence. It's the seed we need to guard. It is like a mirror reflecting all conscious and unconscious perceptions. We, we polish that mirror day in day out.”

No need to insist on asking who “we” were, I readily presumed this “we” included everybody in his right mind.

“Life of this world is like the stop at a bus station. We arrive and leave the terminal as soon as our connection is due. All we can do is to keep that nucleus, that ingenious microchip, the mastermind we call heart free from dust that is prone to gather on it in time.”

I was trying hard to come up with an intelligent argument for contribution only to realize, any ambition to speak for the sake of having said something too would add pollution to my own heart. As a habit to gain attention it would not serve any other purpose but grab worthless rank in dubious boasting.

“To be an outstanding Individual “, Hassan now addressed my daughter: “An outstanding Individual? The Creature in its purest state is part of the Universal Whole. Any Desire to be an outstanding individual is sickness, a disease and pollution of the heart. But for the capacity to keep the heart clean a human being has no cause to excel, and this specific capacity is bestowed by the mercy of God only.”

Hallo, what was going on here? Was this man reading my thoughts or what? His words cut right through to my most secret sacred hopes and fears. The green cloud of my dream and my recent despair about vastness of vanity, that had me turn towards The Ominous One for help pulsated in my mind. My heart trembled: Had the time come to ask like Parzifal in his quest the right question? The situation at hand was obviously not a matter of finding niches in an ongoing conversation; hope itself had awoken with a start and knock knock knocking in my heart demanded satisfaction. Should there really be an all-embracing Universal Mind, which cared and consciously conducted unconceivable ways to communicate its means? Could it be that this black man in his crocodile leather boots was sent to be my a guide to show me The Unseen? The mere thought made me tremble and still I did not see how to put my question.

“Myself, I am from Mars. ET, extra terrestrial”, was what he said, easing my unspoken question.

And he was an extraordinary being, from head to toe. His research obviously had cut deeper into life than that of any of my advisors before. His knowledge about the meaning of life was brought about with a light of selflessness, an easy elegance that did not seem to mask the pull of any self-centered interest. The thing he was praising was not his. He did not own it he did not sell it, he testified for what he loved. His love was for The One The Everlasting All-Embracing The Living itself, Center and Source of all possible worship and roads. More than his words in their precise perfection did his smile penetrate my doubts.

His smile was shedding light at my most intimate my most secretive desire, which in the cynical art-scene I was part of here I had to hide, like secretly listening to BBC in a World War Two situation. The mercy with which he looked on my dreams was more compassionate than my own.

I wondered; was it him I had seen in my dreams the nights before?

I had become cautious on the road. All those Gurus, Swamis and Yogis whose benefit of their teachings manifested in limousines and bank vaults.   All those self-appointed authorities on matters of life who crept into the esoteric bookstore were I was slaving the gold of this spring' days, doom written over their foreheads. All those subtle disguises of greed manipulating ignorance and fear into numbers on their bank account! Was I about to stumble into another one of these spider nets?

That fascinating creature sitting vis a vis at the restaurant table – not an old witch, who offered to read my hand, as I would have been able to picture the incorporation of truth in the cosmos of my mind, not a parchment-skinned slit-eyed ancient master either! But this - a good looking man in prime of life, almond eyed, two rows of perfect teeth gracing his panther smile, ebony skin, apparently a star in music's heaven, was to be my guide, my master?

What were the machinations here?

How to give such a delicate matter the elasticity not to backlash fatally, in case I erred?

I decided: “Are you my guide, my sheikh?” was to blunt a question and finally I consented with a simple “Who are you?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“Are you a magician?”

“I am nothing like that. I am here to remind you of what you have forgotten.”

“It's just that I would like to wear boots like yours. And actually I want to be able to fly. Can you teach me how to fly?”

“He can teach you this and many other things”. Was, what Aida threw in at this point of our conversation.

“Ask me no questions, I have come here for vacation, and for my wife's daughters to see their grandparents, for no other reason.”

It had become time to venture shaking calories-intake off in the disco downstairs.

Although it was a Viennese, Johann Strauss, who composed On the beautiful Blue Danube , the waltz with which people all over the world are gracing their New Years parties, Austrians are not exactly enthusiastic dancers. They prefer to watch and scavenge the feelings their fellow citizens expose on the dance-floor.

Hassan bribed the DJ into replacing the ongoing hammer-rave with soul; I went to the dance-floor and did my little thing. I could feel the change, when “He, who knows himself, knows all creation. In Essence all is one. As God, Allah is The One, every single living thing is this One, in uncountable ways and means expressing Itself” entered the dancing crowd. As if the ship had set sail, all the shivering and desperately posing souls embraced and united gliding along as one in the wake of this extraordinary man.

Later, walking arm in arm the night streets between Aida and me he declared:

“I came here to find myself another wife, this one is getting tired in her bones.”

I was taken a back. What was this supposed to mean? I looked at Aida. Nothing on her looked tired to me, she obviously too was not tired of comments in taste like that.

“A Muslim can be married to up to four wives at the same time.”

“I can not quite see how this should be.”

“That's only because you never were around real men.”

“Well, I have been married two times.”

“A real man knows to carry responsibility and understands to make his women happy. Here in the West it is a norm to abolish family. Man, by nature not monogamous sets himself up with mistresses in secret or simply has intercourse with whomever he desires.”

“Still; this does not necessarily ask for polygamy.”

“Allah decrees there should be no sexual pleasure that is not accompanied by the guarantee of social responsibility. Instead of driving the woman out for extra-marital pleasure, other women partners are integrated into an extended and economically unified family system, thus giving emotional and human security to everybody concerned. The men here with whom you are dealing do not know how to talk to a woman, not to mention how to treat her right. Look at them. They are using a woman like consumers good; they change them like shirts and throw them away, when they are finished with them. They have several affairs going and do not feel responsible for a single one of them. Is this the best of all possible worlds to you?'

I was stunned. Not only the directness of his speech, the things he said made sense. But still…

“How can we say everything in this civilization is well and fine only because it was dealt in the same manner by our fathers and forefathers? Don't we conceive how suppressed we are by a potent evil? People act as if it were a game, but it is no game, it is a disease of the heart, a sickness that over centuries has spread in the hearts of men. This did not happen from one day to the next, but now it is so widely spread, that everything sane is considered sick. Black, red, yellow people hate the whites for what they did to them, they see what is going on and don't tell. While the whites are diseasing, estranged from their true self.”

When we came back to my house in the early hours of the morning he asked me for a cassette recorder and inserted one of his tapes, while I fixed us hot chocolate for a night cup. I did not realize at first, that there were two people singing; Stevie Wonder “We can't conceive the beauty of it all” and the ebony man at my kitchen table, in sweetest voice, sending ripples over my skin and breaking into my heart in an irresistible royal wave. Blank of any studied pose, simply confirming a line only too true:

“You can't conceive the nucleus of all.”

The next morning, when I came to the kitchen after my habitual extensive bathroom ritual, I found Hassan already sitting there. In green longyi and white undershirt, prayerbeeds steady wandering between his fingers, his look fastened on an unconcealed reality.

Yes, he would drink a cup of tea.

The cup, proudly prepared along the laws of Zen and the art of tea making, he sat down after a first sip: “I like my tea hot, strong and sweet.”

Other than that vibrating a seclusiveness that had me handle pots and dishes careful to not disturb him with profane noise. I poured the delicate broth in a pot and let it boil.

“I like your house”, he finally spoke “as soon as I set eye on your paintings on the wall, the books in your bookshelves, I knew, I can accept your hospitality. They told me more about you than you can imagine.”

He had a book about the wisdom of Daoist masters in front of him where now and again he scribbled notes on the pages. When Aida joined us, I felt free to ask another one of my intelligent questions:

“Why do you fill this book with notes?”

“To make sure that my wife and other People who read it, get the true meaning.”

She did not look to me as somebody unable to read as well as to read between lines, and she certainly did not give the impression of somebody who needed instructions with every move she undertook. Nothing of what he was talking was new to me, “the owner of all these beautiful books where you can find it all - written in varying perspectives”. She, as his companion for sure was familiar with his philosophies, so why did he have to instruct everybody all the time?

“It is about selflessness. In order to tune in with The Essence we must purify our hearts of selfness; get rid of attributes like greed, pride arrogance, lying, disbelief and evil intentions, for these are not attribute of The Essence. It is attributes like belief, love, giving, patience, submission, humility, trust and good intentions that are found within The Essence. Remember, attributes, which are not part of The Essence are illusionary and do not exist. So we reject them, for this life is truly war against accumulated self.

“See this book? It' s all in here too, all the information, witnessed in a different light. Truth cannot be but one. The center and core of everything is one. It is the ways to approach this center, which differ.

“Look at the trees outside your window, the sky, earth, birds, all different forms of the same essence. Does this example not tell you anything? Are you not moved by the submission with which all those other living beings are? In day and night, darkness and light, sunshine wind or rain?”

Certainly my intelligence did not point in this direction. Submission in general was not an attribute I strived for. And besides, I considered the sky, a bird, a tree not of my kind. As far as I knew there were no dictionaries holding the language of birds? The language of birds – a minute ago I had asked Aida all hypocritical: “How do we recognize a person who has mastered these things?”

“In that he speaks the language of birds.”

“Truth is ever present,” Hassan continued “it is luminous and living, a transparent substance. Not inside or outside, but everywhere, light upon light. All religions and philosophies are ways, which lead to the essence, the nucleus of it. When we get towards the concentric circles close to the essence, there is only one possible attitude: submission, the Arabic word for submission being Al Islam.”

Ignoring my convulsive attitude by the mention of that name, he continued: “Self realization, true individuality is to know your self and be it. Free, to make own decisions and reform acts according to one's latest insight. The self to realize needs to be in accordance with truth. Personality, as cultivated in the West is an obstacle when dealing with truth and besides, another subject to decay. We strive for eternal reality, for light. All these concepts and dreams we nurture about our self are nothing but a handful of years in the vast river of time. Concerning other people, the so-called masses; I don't see myself on a market place, juggling words. Einstein, Um Khalsoum, Goethe, today they are nothing but dust in graveyards.”

“But what about love?” I managed to throw in.

“Free love is no substitute for truth. Right now history spells out in a four-letter word A-I-D-S to stop this. Independence is no answer too. Independent from what? People in the west consider it the sum of all freedom, not to believe in God. To be your own god is the word, while the waste of their ambitious experiments suffocates the world. People here think, they cannot afford to believe in an entity so infinite superior that it is not only able to create the sophisticated life of a scientist but the vastness of all conceivable science at the same time, a vastness, which a single human mind could never contain by itself.

“We always need to keep an eye on the whole. A creature in its pure state is part of the universe as a whole. Its essence is a mirror to the essence of the universe, breathing, creating and perfecting its attributes.”

It was a Saturday in April and day of the cityfair. In early afternoon we filed into the meandering stream of people. Soon we met up with my two daughters and their friends. News of the interesting guests had run ahead and contacts established without hesitation. The weather, typical for this time of the year acted crazy and summer promising sunshine soon was chased away by a snowstorm. Our guests out of the Arabian deserts were cold.

Stomping music gray masses of people pressing ahead, the smell of Burenwurst and stale beer drove us back to my house fast. The younger generation followed en suite. Hassan was pulling them along like an incarnation of that local hero from way back in time when Muslemans were beleaguering our precious hometown Wien. The myth was, this man offered the Viennese people to rid them from a plague of rats. He drew his flute and with a sound unheard of before ran all the rats into the river Danube. After he finished the job the citizens denied him his pay, affording instead the opinion, his thing with the flute and the tune was easy, on second thought they could have done it themselves. So he picked up his flute again and played another tune. Again unheard of before but now so sweet, it made all the children dance. He left the city behind and never was seen again, he and all the children dancing.

When we came back to the house, Hassan changed into a green robe and, a green velvet cap on his head opened the party. Stevie Wonder sang his song of the nucleus Hassan's voice emphasizing the lines and sharing how the nucleus of all had to be understood.

“Putting little green seeds into peoples hearts” was his explanation, when the young people, my Mutwork team, wanted to now what he was about.

He drew a flute and began to play an unknown but strangely familiar melody. He opened the piano and varied the tune. His music had a hypnotizing effect; it melted with the bird's song outside the window and merged into the sound of the house. A tune, so enchanting, even my mother downstairs in her flat, watching the house like a fire breathing dragon, was not annoyed by it.

Within the twinkling of an eye he had conquered the young peoples hearts. All tame and manner able they sipped tea and listened patiently in their provocative outfits and aggressive piercing.

I was in the kitchen making sure, the tea supply was flowing and Aida assisted me. There was no way to deny it; jealousy had grabbed hold of me.

These young people here, they were my team, and I was their Guru. Had I not gathered them from the streets of their adventures and motivated them to courage? Now this panther with his ebony form and ivory mind was harvesting my bounty! Not only preferred their company to mine but overshadowed with his splendid being my existence, my delicate territory! Submission substituting self sustains? With his rap about the heart ideally a blank mirror reflecting the truth behind it all!

“Know,” I heard him saying, “all material world, everything we can see with our eyes and perceive with our senses, as soon as we put our attention to it draws us in and works like a powerful drain which siphons our attention and darkens our self perception. “Do we not see hear and feel in our dreams?”

Did I get this right; was he talking about dreams now?

“Why then do we believe our self is fixed on the reality of our days and encaged in our body?”

But hallo, what other instrument of perception was at hand? I took the tea to the room.

He slapped his chest and twitched the skin at his ebony arm with disgust.

“All this is decay, dying material. Only our immortal soul, light, intelligent and penetrating, bestowed to us by Allah is alive. Me, I do not run after dead things, I am looking for the source of all being. Take a look in the mirror and look at your eyes; what is it, that is seeing you? Like Stevie Wonder who is blind, yet feels as if he was seeing, we actually perceive things not with our ears eyes and other senses, but with our heart”, he went on.  

Oh yes, this nucleus, this seed was there, it was familiar, I knew it, it was the light at the end of the tunnel I was stumbling along, the burn of consciousness, when I did something wrong, the blinding root of sleepless nights, this light, promising the best of all worlds. I watched two crows chasing each other in the tree in front the window and off into the sky, that had become blue again.

“Did you know,” he was asking the young people, “did you know that, when Allah created our world, he asked His creation, which of them wanted the attribute of mind. The mountains politely refrained, they were satisfied with their task to hold up the world and watch in quiet. The birds thanked no gracefully, they would not want to loose their ability to fly, even the jewels were afraid to loose their luster. Only the human being snatched for this attribute greedily and asked; is there more to come?”

I loved that part; especially the connection between mind and ability to fly… okay then, everything really is one? One seed in all shapes and forms of this world and only the human being, snatching for the mind so greedy, when attributes were distributed, only in our kind that nucleus is neglected and therefore withered?

Back in the kitchen I told Aida about my infatuation to fly and more about the Mutwork thing.

“See, I succeeded to gather them from the streets and engage them into creativity to strengthen their courage, because courage is all you need, if you want to get through the thicket and thorns of this world. The courage to face every day a-new, without subjecting it to yesterday's perceptions.”

“Yes, it takes courage to believe, but patience and perseverance too”, she confirmed.

And anyway, what type of courage did I display here clinging in self-pity to what I held to be highlights of my past.

I changed the subject: “What is it that you all are practicing? What kind of technique are you using?'

“There is no hocusing pocus in it. We are Muslims we hold on to Allah's' manual to His creation. We practice Islam, submission to His will.”

She assisted me in stretching the chicken curry I had planed for dinner into a meal for everybody present. Telling me anecdotes about countless meals she and the sisters had prepared in Madinah for fifty and more people, regular weekend feasts. The way she told about how they came together and shared the preparations made it easy for me to forget about the addition of water right now degrading my nouveau cuisine concept into a hefty soup.

“You know, looking at the so called sophisticated women of the West I am not surprised to see their tension,” she said, “to get up in the morning, fix an intelligent vitamin reach breakfast, kiss your husband before he is out the door in a way that lets him race back home after work, on the road to the job providing your children with an in-depth psychological outfit for the day, drop them at the school, perform inventive and dependable at the job, alert at the same time to advise the offspring via telecommunication at any given moment – I would be a neurotic wreck by eleven am. All we have achieved with our precious emancipation is to hold two major functions at the same time. We are doing our work as a woman and a man's work too and nobody would think of asking the men to perform in an equivalent way. Deep down in their gut fear for survival is terrorizing women, because in midst of all that merciless competition they can not figure out what life should be about and how to deal with it. They lack essential motivation because the good in this gigantic display of consummation is barred from their eyes. I remember this feeling very well, especially the panic that befell me thinking it was only I, my own insufficiency that made me think so. The more I learn about the true nature of life in this world, the gladder I am to know there is a God. All I desire is to loose my self as fast as possible and as complete as possible in this reality, you know?”

Yes I said, to not lag behind, but in reality my uncovered fears revolted by the mere thought to leave myself behind. I had no desire whatsoever to sacrifice my self, this precious and carefully styled instrument of recognition. Religion is an opiate for the people, Karl Marx said that, but I was not the people, I was something else, special. My self, I strived for knowledge and truth in order to distinguish myself from faceless masses. To give up the mediator of all possible cognition for a reality that was to be believed in, unproven, conceivable only by experience? Thanks a lot, but not me.

To not appear ignorant about the Islamic concept of Allah I dished her details of my Palestine experience; Like, how stunned I was about the women's submissiveness in all that suffering. And how superfluous all these problems had felt, that we women of the West twist on the boldness of existence.

“All this did tell you nothing about the foundation of these peoples culture?”

“It did, and I did inform myself about their religion.”

“So, did you like what you found?”

“I liked the hierarchy in matters of life. The ranks of love and responsibility fit my concepts. Like, for example, this thing with paradise located at the feet of ones mother. I mean, compared to our culture here, where nowadays you more or less are obliged to forget the mother thing in your CV all together.”

“Did this not make you reconsider?”

“There were these shrouded creatures at the sukhs in the cities who, like fearful ghost or strange birds fluttered the pavements. I am sorry, but I cannot associate myself with their existence. There is no space in their world for a self-sufficient woman like me. If I show up there in my glorious freedom, I have to face the prejudice of being a whore. There is no place to rest for me in this culture, no café, no restaurant, or park on the road where I can sit in peace.”

“Did in your research you ever find a religion or philosophy that appealed to you?”

“Islam? Okay, Buddhism, favored by so many of my friends I am kind of finished with, being over concerned to hurt a reborn soul in shape of a fly it leaves a cozy nest to irresponsibility between sexes. Shamanism, as I had the honor to encounter in Mexican mountains seams very respectful towards the nature of things to me, but it is not an easy remedy to bring down on European ground. We lack the constant reminder of trembling ground, so to speak. Drugs? I experimented. In fact I was looking for a key that would open the door of truth for me at any given time or place. Drugs, as we know, do open the doors of perception but this opening is not permanent and not reliable.

“Christianity? I went to convent school and by the way, later in my life studied theology for some time. Abstinence as a means of seeing the light does not make sense to me in a world where God created men and women. Plus I do not see any blessing in the cynic attitude that comes with it and the accompanying smell of undoffed clothes.

“Hinduism is somehow too colorful for my taste and I despise the cast system it promotes. I do like the Sufis, I very much sympathize with the concept of a brotherhood, who keeps the world in balance by perfecting to be good but they are obviously closely linked to Islam.”

Silence.

“I had this dream of my companions, The Brotherhood of Lovers, that engraved itself deeply in my soul. I was told in that dream, I am one of them, and I just simply can not give up hope that one day they are going to find me.”

More silence. I wondered if Aida sensed the turmoil going on behind my statement. I knew, once I followed my desire to let this black man, her husband, be my guide into a new dimension, I would have to accept Islam first, the religion of sleezeballs and terrorists, the really very last thing on my personal checklist. A religion, were on top of it I had zero chances of carrier advancement, as Hassan already had explained in detail, Muhammad being the seal of all prophets, there are no other prophets after him and there are no female sheikhs, because woman do not have what it takes to carry that kind of responsibility. In other words, there was no pair of crocodile leather boots in it for me. Under such circumstances instead of becoming part of the flock I preferred to stay my own subject.

Later that night we all went out again to roam the bars of Vienna's inner city. It was fascinating to watch Hassan involving people into dialogs. He did not address the drunkards but the lonely wolves that ventured into nightlife in quest of light. Side by side with Aida I followed his resumes about life and The Living, when I was not shaking off on the dance floor. I tried to decipher the pattern in which he was tenderly opening people and reading them like a book. Sometimes his objects sidetracked into courting us women and I admired Aida's dignity in taking a stand and bringing things back on track. Was it only two days ago, that she had moved wrapped in black veils from head to toe minding her own business? There was no trace of self-centeredness on her.

The next day was a Sunday by all means; spotless blue sky, hot and beaming in anticipation of happy events. Usually, on a day like this, we would climb the mountain first and this exactly was our plan. I saw it as the moment of truth proving the reality of all the big talk that had been showered upon us. Our guests had no idea what was expecting them. They were dealing with the Mutwork team in training - flying, running and flick flacking the small path in-between back yards up up and away towards the top of a hill called heaven. The girls with their sweet hearts now and again suggested: “would it not be better to stop and wait for our guests?”

“No,” I decreed, “lets see how they meet this challenge.”

Up the hill on heaven's meadow we settled down and waited for them. It did not take too long for them to catch up with us. Exhausted from the unusual exercise but unbroken in spirit they joined us. Aida in her dainty sandals and Hassan in his crocodile leather boots and Stetson. They sat down in our midst and shared pleasantries. One of our young friends took of all his clothes. The girls started a game of leapfrog, jumping over each others bend backs. In the background at the edge of the woods a couple was to be seen - human extensions involved in strange swastika-like entanglement. To get naked in public places and involve in related private behavior was not a regular Sunday pastime here, where on a day like this more likely even dachshunds were sporting Tyrolean suits. It felt, as if civilization had gathered to display its utmost updated evolution for the benefit of our guests. The girls tired of hopping over each others bent backs started a new game: “Who is afraid of the black man?” a game of innocent popularity amongst children here.

There is a monument on heaven's meadow erected by the municipality, an inscription on marble placed precarious on white unhewn stone in honor of Sigmund Freud. The inscription saying that here, on this spot the inherent meaning of dreams revealed itself to the founder of Psychoanalysis.

“Why do they not inscribe the inherent meaning of dreams on this marble plate for us, instead of glorifying the incident?” I shared my annoyance. “Why is the cult of person always put over common benefit? Why is it that good advice is never free?”

“Good advice is not expensive. Look at nature she is the lavish example. It's part of the sickness here to put cult of individual and form before the well being of people.”

Back in the house from our excursion I felt as if a wall of concrete was breaking off my heart. It inflated my highfaluting pride to see this man reclining exhausted in my kitchen armchair. What did I have to prove? That he was another human being? Why did I have to fight so frantic? What was the big thing in simply giving their way a try? Why not believe and see, what's going to happen? Why not give God another try and believe in an Absolute Living Reality creating and recreating its ingenious design?

What was so difficult here?

To serve? Why not serve an ultimate power, The One, which had the power to think out my adventurous life and the entire world in its luster on top of it? Potentials, which we earthlings in our pitiful minds hardly conceive in detail. Why not accept, that such an Omnipotent Creator has the freedom to give out a manual how to use His world, reaching out one final other time to help us move among His abundant power?

Why not contemplate the possibility of truth veiled by human self-righteousness and pride, a concept unlikely of earthlings making! The unveiling itself being to believe!

Should my green cloud dream, that had shown me my home and my people have surfaced into reality with the arrival of my guests? Hassan in his green robe and perennial message fitted exactly into the vision of the dream. Confronted by a luminous example of two real human beings I felt cornered with a powerful vassal of my self, who was fighting to survive: Free Woman, my precariously styled image.

Aida, having walked the ordeal in dainty sandals, now took off the crocodile-leather cowboy boots from her husband's feet and gave the limp black things a revitalizing massage.

“Papa Bear is tired.”

Why did I fend so ferocious? What was wrong with trying out their way? Why not submit to believe and see how its reality feels? Why not give God a try as the potential of an Absolute and Living Reason? What was my problem here?

To serve? Yes, I had had my share of serving. I served at the bookstore and served my beloved ones, I served the image I had of myself, served the electricity bill, my bank account, other peoples concepts, time. Why not serve for a change The Creator of it all in Whose hands all life in its overwhelming beauty originated? Why not accept, that an artisan like that, a sovereign of unconceivable dimensions created the world to serve His will?

In unbroken spirit my guests went through the day, obviously well balanced, no dark holes threatening to devour them lingering on their way. Living so closely together for three days proved, that a beauty like theirs was fostered by serious and solid motivation. To believe, all this was leading back to some electronically impulses in evoluted monkeys wearing suit and tie would be just another twisted move in that circus called life. Had people before not believed earth to be a flat disc at whose edges you would fall into a bottomless pitch only a few hundred years ago? Science was not a reliable lead. Even collective human consciousness was not free from error.

“To see is to know” was, what the black man back in the room just told the young people: “somebody coming back from Africa tells you about lions and elephants, hippopotamuses and exotic vegetation in flowering and fascinating language, jet only, if you see what this person is talking about with your own eyes will you know, how an encounter with such a being in reality feels.”

I felt terrible, I was so fed up with myself, I did not want to see anybody, and I just wanted to be left alone.

When the word was out for everybody, to get ready for another roam through the night city, I declined, I was going to stay home. Adding to my frustration, Aida stayed behind too to keep me company.

I dragged me an armchair in front of the TV in my room und immersed myself in to the ongoing program. Uninvited, Aida came and joined me. I was my most grumpy self, but she did not seem to mind.

Commenting the ongoing program in her crisp and funny style, she soon had me out of my personal dogs-house. Reopening cold blooded and fierce I declared to hate mass movements:

“Religious leaders who manipulate their teaching serving their egoistic ends are number one on my personal shitlist, plus I despise religious groups. Generally their ethics and morals might be okay; they all copy each other anyway. Any concept that apparently works they patch on to their own teaching. I despise hypocrisy, namely piety displayed for other peoples eyes and I especially despise when theory and praxis are not working hand in hand.”

I was not finished jet:

“I am for plurality in opinion and self-determination. Any kind of fanatism is repugnant to me. I checked all the New Age philosophies while working in the bookstore. I do not like the people gathering there. I despise the needy, investing their gains from rat race, the iciting reason for their sickness, into therapies, which pretend to heal them by blowing up their Egos. I believe humanity at this state needs a method, which helps us above all to be better human beings. My extended travels looking for such a method taught me, the remoter people live off Highways and central cities the better they fare. It is civilization, which makes us sick. To me it seems, that all these fashionable philosophies and psychodynamic movements only make us fit to cope with something that in it self is terrible wrong.”

Aida patiently endured my eruption.

“I do admit I was impressed by the Arab women. Not so much the frightened creatures, which like flustered birds moved in the bazaars. I loved the light drumbeat of their heals on the asphalt. The dignity and self esteem these women exposed made me jealous.”

“You never tried to find out the cosmetic secret of their beauty?”

“Such questions did not seem appropriate in circumstances then. All dialectics in Western Free Woman's manner felt shallow in front of heroes and martyrs mothers, women, sisters, and children. I enjoyed the Arab men. On location I found them very respectful. Not at all like the sleaze-balls you encounter here. I enjoyed being beautiful in their eyes, not just a piece of meat valued by expiring date like with these so-called civilized clowns here. I am a woman; I do not have ambitions to secure immortality for myself. I know about life's miracle, continuity in time manifested itself in my body. Life, a complete being grew nine month my womb. I gave birth three times. I am part of the endless living chain.”

“Did you ever meet a real man?”

“I should say so. May be my criterion for the real man is a little out there. My real man is capable to climb a coconut tree, fix a roof over the head in any given circumstances and can generate music in bringing to swing the sound of the day.”

She laughed. “I used to dream of somebody like the men of the bible.” Aida confessed. “Did you never ask yourself where that kind of men is gone? They must have been around once, how else could their deeds be told. Men, who had a vision, a goal that transcended given environments and served the tribe without submitting to egoistic desires, like Moses, Noah and Jacob, for example. Where are they? I asked myself, how a man would be who had the charisma, the power to not only unearth his family but a whole tribe and guide them into a new life.

“What I am saying is, capabilities as such can not be lost for manhood all together. Take the biblical age of men, a lifetime of eight hundred years, unimaginable today, even with the entire medical know how around. But I am asking myself is there a potential of such qualities in men or have they always been creations of human fantasy and hope.”

Animated, I added: “What about Napoleon, Hitler, Ghandi, JFK, Martin Luther King and all the Pop stars nowadays, they all obviously conduct charismatic powers, how else would they succeed to move masses?”

My cynics did not put her back, so I went one: “Anyway, greatness is measured by time. Look at Napoleon, he led in outrageous ambition hundreds and thousands of men into death but today, a little more than hundred years later he is celebrated as a genius.”

“These are not the kind of selfless men I am talking about. All of them, Hitler included, would have died of fear on the spot, if God had crumbled a mountain in front of their eyes or addressed them from a burning thorn bush.”

“Okay than, what about the theory that all these prophets with divine visions are either epileptics or schizophrenics, as modern science likes to claim?”              

“I deny modern science my trust.”

“Did you ever encounter such men?”

“Yes.”

“Is your husband one of them?”

“Maybe, but in fact I was thinking now of our sheikh in Madinah and the sheikh of our sheikh.”

“You have a sheikh? What is this? How is it? What is he doing with you?”

“He shows us the way to Allah and helps us to clean our heart.”

“How is he doing this? Is there a certain procedure you have to undergo?”

“It varies, depending on who you are. All we do is try to stay close to him and see him as much as possible. When we go to see him, we give him Salaams and sit with him while he talks to us. If we believe we have a problem that needs to be tended, we ask for his advise. If we have an outstanding dream, we tell him about it. But this is rare because usually he addresses things that are bothering us him self. He reads our hearts. Most of the problems we carry with us melt away, just by his presence. Most of the time you do not feel like asking him due to his overwhelming presence.”

“What does he charge?”

“Nothing. As soon as he accepts you as a student, you turn your live over into his hands. Its not within our power to pay back what he is doing, we hardly can conceive his work. What we can do is, to have sincere intentions and include him in our prayers.”

“How is this man?”

“He is amazing. His presence by itself is like a purging bath in an incredible sweet and vitalizing spring. In his outward form he is a more than hundred years old man with an extended family, who lives in a modest chamber on the roof of his house. I wish you could meet him, so that you know what I am talking about.”

“You think it would be possible for me to see him?”

“Why not. But he is living in Madinah and this city only Muslims can enter.”

I suddenly felt a burning longing to meet this man. Yet at the same time her words had stirred up my obstinate indignation. Again Islam, confession of oily sheikhs and bloody terrorists was blocking the way. Submission and dedication were not unknown to me. Loving obscure objects of my eruptive desire and calling it fate I had shed submission without hesitation and more or less practiced dedication at might. As an artist, I even had a serious work relationship with it. I knew how to serve a thing and submit to its given circumstances… me, who did not wish to enslave today for yesterdays achievements and in all her freedom had trouble to choose.

“To clean your heart, from what? Being selfless, I cannot see myself without a self. It is my self that perceives and enjoys.”

“We clean our hearts from all the attitudes we attached, because one time they proved to satisfy our needs. We call them the false self.”

“What about my survival intelligence than? Would I have to let go of that to?”

“Your survival intelligence is not identical with your false self. Survival intelligence springs from our true self, the ingenious microchip Allah has put in our heart with our entrance in the life of this world here. The self we need to get rid off, are all the habits we picked up on our way along the desire chain since we were babies. All these adaptations of our evolvement into a personality are hindering our true self, them we have to let go.”

Next morning the black man in his white undershirt and green lunghi again sat already at my kitchen table, when I came out of the shower. He ordered tea.

“I like my tea hot and sweet.”

A little later: “Do you ever contemplate The Living? There are things alive and things dead. Look at the leaves on the trees outside your window. A leave will tumble down to the floor and when it is dry, you can tell the thing in it which was alive, has left. The living we are seeing, when we look at ourselves in the mirror is awake, while our body is sleeping. It moves on the realm of our dreams. That is, how we know, that it is not bound to outward shape and form. There is no magic or witchcraft in this, its strictly business of The Living, according to manners of the heart. Who else but The Creator of that ingenious construction a human being is, could know the codes, the rules by which it works to its perfection.   Human science can not read the ultimate pattern of its own creation, who else but The Artisan of that miracle can give out a manual with instructions, how to serve it. Allah, The Living, The Self-Subsisting in His all-embracing compassion gave us the Sharia , the law, to teach us how to deal with His creation. Sharia is like the bouncing ropes of a boxing ring inside of which we are fighting. The fight is not against each other or any given adversary of other believes. The fight is against Satan and his devout vassal, the adapted self that we call Nafs . Freedom, the ability to tell the difference between good and bad is our weapon.

“My ambition in the life of this world is, to perfect my weapon. Insh'Allah, so God will, I will invest everything I am and all I have in this quest. I am, what Allah created and how He is sustaining me. Religions, names, have no meaning here. Nothing but submission counts in this dimension. You show me a technique for a submission more complete, I would adept to it without hesitation. For the time being, you better believe me, I encountered no technique superior to Islam.”

My thoughts were swaying longingly over a sunny beach at an azure-blue sea. Oh thousand lapses of my summer self! Would I have to pay in your currency?

“Life is not about hanging out on beaches'” his voice reached out for me “that's not what real life is about. Our Nafs , the greed of our Ego is a fat and lazy thing which, settled cozy on a couch at a conveniently dark corner of our heart indulges in devouring candy. With every beam of light disturbing its comfortable darkness it shrieks annoyed and fends its leisure.”

Oh Lord, should all this be Your answer to my prayer? I fled into another room, where I put up the ironing board with a lot of clanking and started to straighten the linen of the day.

After a while Aida joined me.

“You think I am a real friend?”

How could I say no: “Yes.”

“You believe I want your best?”

“Yes.”

“You are going to take an advice?”

“Okay.”

“Become Muslim.”

I put the iron down on the board. “How?”

She took me to the kitchen and put me in front of Hassan.

“I want to become a Muslim.”

The raging beast that for the past days had fought to prevent light from entering its darkness was gone. Hassan looked at me and sent Aida with me to the bathroom to help me make a ritual washing. When I came back, he took my right hand and told me the meaning of the words he was going to have me say:

“ Shahada is the Islamic declaration of faith. It says: I testify there is no god but God and I testify Muhammad is God's messenger.”

After this, in the doorway to my children's room he had me repeat the words three times in Arabic after him:

“ Ash-hadu an la illaha illallah; ash-hadu anna Muhammad-ar- Rasul-Ullah ”

Then I was to choose a name.

“Aisha Fatima Khadisha Mariam Amina Iman –“

“What is the meaning of Iman?”

“The meaning of Iman is belief.”

“I take it than. Iman. I will need a lot of remembrance to believe on this road.”

Free Woman is based on the first chapter of UNTERBLICH VERLIEBT (Deeply in Love) by Iman Dox first published in German  1995 by Donau Verlag ISBN 3-85228-006-00 and soon available in Iman's Web.de

Non fiction, it tells how a woman of this world came to love Islam.