“How did you come by your wealth?”
The engine throttled back as the plane began its approach.
“I’m a broker and a talent scout of sorts. I deal with art and antiquities. Art is my passion. Each of us has a passion; something that keeps us going on, life after life. It’s the perfect line for me, really. I buy the fresh works of an era and sit on them for as long as it takes. In the end, I have to discard about ninety percent of them, but the other ten percent are priceless. I’m actually getting much better at discerning between the Melkmans and the Monets. It’s probably around eighty-to-twenty now.”
“Melkmans?” I asked.
“That’s my point, no one’s ever heard of him. He was in the ninety percent.”
“Do you ever keep any for yourself?”
“Oh, of course. You always keep the best ones for yourself. I’ll show you later tonight.” Samas leaned close and pointed beyond the glass. “If you look along the coast as we land, you can see the coastal highway that leads to my home.”
I nodded and looked out the window until we landed.
a petite, middle-aged, dark-skinned woman ran toward Samas as we stepped out of the terminal into the hot, dry Moroccan air. She was engulfed in the embrace of his large arms, and he picked her up effortlessly.
“Mmmm, it’s good to see you,” he said, clutching her to him like a doll.
“I missed you, Habibi.” She nuzzled her head in the nape of his thick neck. She spoke English with a British accent.
“Zohra darling, this is Evan Michaels,” he said, placing her down and turning her toward me. She was beautiful. The brown skin of her face seemed to fade into her black hair and dark eyes. The few long, gray hairs sparsely intermingled with the raven black gave her a look of veneration usually reserved for men. She carried herself confidently, holding eye contact with me as she took my hand firmly.
“Samas told me about you on the phone. You are exactly as he described. My name is Zohra. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“Thank you for having me.”
“The car is over here. Shall we go?”
“Please,” said Samas.
“Are you hungry, Habibi?”
“I’m always hungry for your cooking.”
“I’ll take care of you,” she said, looking at him warmly.
she drove the white jeep down the narrow two-lane highway that bordered the craggy coast. I sat in the back seat looking at both of them. He was so different from Poppy that I wouldn’t have recognized them as being the same thing had I not known. Poppy lived in the self-imposed exile of her church, with the doors always bolted. Samas lived like a popular general, always in the field among his troops. I liked his life, even though I knew my own was currently closer to Poppy’s.
“There it is,” he said, pointing to a large house nestled down by a small, sandy beach. The white stucco glowed in the bright sun. It went out of view when Zohra turned off onto a gravel road that wound toward the coast. The scent of the ocean was strong in the air. Two Great Danes—one black, one white with black spots—scampered up the road toward us. Zohra shouted something to them in her native Arabic.
“I’ll get dinner started while you show Evan around,” she said, pulling up behind the two-story home.
Their home looked like a museum inside. Every few feet a white pedestal held up a piece of the past. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Chinese artifacts rested under square protective glass covers. Numerous framed charcoal sketches covered the walls. Traditional furnishings were sparse so that all my attention was drawn to the ubiquitous art and artifacts. Perhaps it was designed that way.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
“I had this place built thirteen years ago, around the same time I married Zohra.”
“Really? I would have thought you’d live in an older home.”
“I have older estates, but I came here a while back to close a deal with a client who was purchasing a mint condition thirteenth-dynasty Egyptian sarcophagus. When the man died, I bought the property, tore down the standing home, and built this one.”
“Why this place? Other than the beautiful location, obviously.”
“There are two reasons. Let me show you,” he said, smiling. He walked upstairs to the bedroom. The entire east wall of the bedroom was a series of sliding glass panel doors that opened to the Atlantic. It was an incredible view. He slid the doors all the way back until the room was completely open on that side. The breeze ruffled the mosquito net canopy above the bed. The sound of the ocean crept in slowly but steadily until every vestige of silence had been pushed back down the stairs.
“I’ve had a sleeping disorder in my last three lifetimes,” he said. “Come over here.” He pointed to a crescent of land that knifed out into the sea about a quarter mile up the coast. “That point,” he said, “and that group of rocks down the coast form an acoustic chamber of sorts. It amplifies the sound. The constant sound helps me sleep. I actually have a recording of this sound that I keep in Zurich.”
“This sleep disorder has followed you through three trips?”
“Followed is a good word to use. It only comes to me after I’ve started to remember my past. I never have the problem as a child.”
“Was there something, some event, that brought it on?”
“No. It just happened, but it brought me to this wonderful location,” he said, walking through the opening to the veranda.
“What was the other reason?”
“I was courting Zohra. Her family lives in Rabat, and I knew if I could keep her close to them, her decision about marriage would be easier.”
I nodded then walked out to the railing and panned slowly, taking in the whole horizon. The sounds of the ocean seemed to come in stereo. The most beautiful place in the world—he had a good argument for that.
“Come, let me show you your room,” Samas said, stepping back inside.
The guest room was downstairs facing the beach. The tan sand lay just beyond the single sliding glass door. A large mosquito net–canopied bed sat in the far corner.
“Do you have a problem with mosquitoes here?”
“Not them so much. We have biting flies this time of year.” I looked at him somewhat surprised. “This is Africa, my friend,” he said, laughing. “I’ll show you the best part of the house after we eat. Come on, let’s see how Zohra is doing.”
The dining room was open to the kitchen. Three place settings sat around the small, black-lacquered table. Samas cleared his throat to get Zohra’s attention. She was bent over, looking into an oven.
“Two minutes,” she said, still embroiled in her preparations. “Be seated, please.” The scent of roasting garlic and onions spiced the air. She brought it right from the oven to the table in a red clay tray.
“Zohra, you shouldn’t have,” Samas said when he saw the meal she had prepared.
“It smells delicious, what is it?” I asked.
“Roasted rabbits and guinea fowl with couscous. Samas’s favorite.”
“Indeed,” he bellowed. “But that’s enough talk. Let’s eat,” he said, starting on a rabbit. I imitated him and smiled at her. She brought out rice, unleavened bread, yogurt, and mint tea while we ate. Samas had finished the first rabbit and started on a guinea by the time she joined us. His vocalizations and gestures were as pronounced as they had been in Zurich.
“It’s delicious,” I said to her. Samas mumbled something to the same effect. I ate quietly, unsure of what to talk about, and about what I could say in front of her.
“Is this your first time in Morocco, Evan?” Zohra asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been in a Muslim nation before?”
“I lived in Istanbul.”
“Ah, I’ve played there.”
“Played?” I asked.
“Yes,
I’m a cellist. I was with the Calais Repertory Company then.”
“First chair too,” Samas chimed in between bites.
“Was your stay in Turkey in a previous life?” she asked. I was unprepared for her question, for her knowing. I looked at Samas who nodded subtly as he chewed.
“Yes, it was.”
“How long ago? If I might be so bold.”
I smiled. “In the 1950s and 1960s.”
“Where you a Muslim then?”
“No, I was not. Are you?”
“Yes, I am Sunni,” she answered with pride. “You can often hear the call to prayer from here if the windows are open.”
I took another rabbit and turned my attention to Samas. “What are your religious beliefs?”
He looked at me as if I’d said something in a language he didn’t understand. “You’re not serious? Religion is predicated on faith. You and I don’t have faith, we have knowledge and experience. We have proof. The rules and tenets of religion do not apply to us. We have philosophy instead, of which I’m an Epicure.”
“What’s that?”
“A follower of Epicurus’s teachings. In ancient Greece, he professed that life is to be lived, and that living for pleasure is the ultimate good.
“Do you remember anything between when you died both times and when you were born? They will ask you that at some point,” he said.
“No, nothing.”
“That’s right,” he said emphatically. “Nothing, nothing. More accurately, no divinity, just a return, right?”
I nodded.
“It’s the same for all of us, no divinity. This, here and now, is all we have. This meal, this conversation, the friends and lovers you have, and the ideas you hold dear are all your world consist of. They are all that you have, they are all that any of us have. You and I are blessed, or cursed, depending on how you look at it, in that we know that these things are the makeup and extent of our world, of ourselves as individuals. We should therefore relish our time and move to enrich our lives as much as possible because in so doing, we enrich all that our world will ever be. I believe this is truer for normal people than it is for us because their time is much shorter than ours, in a practical sense. We have a consciousness that transcends death. We survive it as individuals, the same individuals or consciousnesses if you will. Normal people obviously don’t do that or don’t know they do that—either way, the outcome is the same. For those people, Epicurus’s lessons should be all the more poignant.”
“Do you buy that?” I asked Zohra.
“I don’t have to buy that, I have faith,” she said laconically, to which Samas burst out in uproarious laughter.
“Now you see why I love her,” he said, still laughing.
“Poppy told me something similar, only her take on the whole thing was much . . . angrier.”
“Poppy?” asked Zohra.
Samas pointed to his tattoo. “You’ve never met her. She’s the one who found Evan.” He turned toward me. “Let me guess. She damns all of them for their ignorance of what we know is fact. Is that pretty close?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, that’s pretty close. You must have known her for a long time.”
“Since the beginning. What she doesn’t realize is that you can only be responsible for yourself and your own happiness. Take her, for example,” he said, pointing to Zohra. “She believes that if she lives by the code set forth in the Koran, she will ascend to heaven after she dies. If it makes her happy, it makes me happy. And who’s to say she isn’t right? Just because it doesn’t happen to us doesn’t mean it can’t happen to them, perhaps that’s why she won’t come back. That’s the point. We cannot know, and that’s why we should live in the here and now and bask in what it has to offer us. And that’s why you should eat your fill of this fine meal, Evan.”
I sat there, amazed by Samas. If Poppy was like me, then he was better than both of us. He was happy, content. I could see it in his eyes, the way they brightened and sparkled when he spoke of the surviving individual coming back. You could just tell he couldn’t wait to come back. He loved it.
“Have you eaten your fill?” he asked.
“Yes, I have,” I said, turning to Zohra. “It was wonderful. Thank you.”
Samas stood up and walked into the kitchen where he grabbed a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Let’s adjourn to my private gallery. I have a few things I’d like to show you. We can discuss the Ascension as well.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Thank you, dear. That was delicious, as usual.” He bent down to kiss her. “It’s over here,” he said to me, leading the way.
He punched a code into the electronic keypad of the security system next to the white door, making sure I couldn’t see. The door was thicker than I thought it should have been and made a distinctive whoosh as it opened, as though the darkened room inside had a controlled atmosphere. Samas turned on the lights, and the room exploded with colors and shapes. The walls were completely covered with a plethora of multicolored canvases hanging frame-to-frame. The differently sized, interlocking frames formed a giant jigsaw puzzle that continued around the four walls. The lighting inside was completely diffused and seemed to radiate from the sterile white ceiling and floor. The room had the feel of a medical laboratory. Two wooden chairs and a small white table waited in the center of the room.
“Come in, quickly,” Samas said. I stepped in, and he closed the door behind me. “The sea air is horrible for them,” he said, looking around. “It’s very corrosive, it can dull colors in a matter of decades, but I think wine actually helps to restore their color. It does if you drink enough of it, anyway,” he said, prying out the cork.
I examined several of the pieces as Samas poured. Each one had a small brass nameplate set into the bottom of the frame giving the title, artist, and date.
“This is the collection. We are standing in my favorite place in all the world.” Samas held out a wine glass to me. “This is the best of the best. Centuries of culture and art. Dozens of lives, some tortured, some satisfied, but all fulfilled and all right here in this room with us.”
I wandered about as he spoke, looking at the paintings and their tags: Cézanne, Bassano, Gauguin, Caravaggio, David, Van Dyck, and Manet were only some of the names I saw. “How much is this collection worth?”
“Whew. There’s no way to know without putting it up for sale, but I’d guess any of these pieces would sell at auction for several hundred million pounds. I’ve had most of these pieces so long that most art historians consider them lost. That in itself would make them even more valuable. To my knowledge, this is the only privately owned collection of its kind in the world.”
“Which piece is your favorite?”
He pointed over my shoulder to a two-by-three-foot bare spot on the wall. “The one I can’t have, of course.”
“Is there a piece that fits there?”
“Yes, but that’s another story altogether,” Samas said, offering me a glass of wine. “Let’s talk about you.”
“All right.”
“I’ll be frank. I can see a potential problem with your Ascension.”
“Yes,” I said, moving forward in my chair.
“You only have two trips’ worth of information, one and a half really, when you think about it. That’s where the trouble lies. The facts from your first incarnation are in Bulgaria. There are many places in the world where information flows freely, but your old homeland is not one of them. What records that do survive will be hard to get. But the real dilemma is with your second trip. The United States is the place in the world where information flows freest, but all the records could have theoretically been available to you beforehand.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m just playing the part of the devil’s advocate. This is how they think. I know, I’ve sat on the panel, a
nd this is how I thought. What I’m getting at is that all the information you’ve given is suspect in their eyes. With that in mind, I think your cause is helped greatly if you give them something that can’t be refuted.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“They can’t refute or invalidate emotions, specifically, your emotions on what this life is like for you. They can’t argue with the way you feel, hence, they must accept it, and in doing so, accept you. It may seem like a small point, but I think it could make a difference in how they look at you.”
I contemplated his idea as I let my eyes wander over the many millions of dollars on these walls. Any one of them would provide enough wealth to last several lifetimes. His idea made sense and more importantly, made me realize how far I had yet to go.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he continued. “I think your situation is good, especially with how you’ve handled yourself. I’m just trying to come up with ways to improve it even further.”
“You know, this is exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned how Poppy was handling this. She never would have suggested something like that. I’m not sure she would have even thought of it.”
“Well, she is a little different. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, she’s just different. This type of life obviously means different things to different individuals.”
“I agree,” I said, refilling our glasses. “This is a good wine. Where do you get it?”
“I buy it in Zurich, oddly enough. You can only buy wine in Morocco in special shops for foreigners that are ill stocked. It’s Islamic law. I love this vintage, but I have to be careful with it around my wife. She is very devout. She won’t even sit in the same room with me if I drink. It’s barely tolerated in the house.”
“You two seem an odd couple,” I said, laughing. “How did you meet?”
“I was living in Rome at the time, that’s a great place to be in the art business. She was touring with the London Philharmonic. I went to the symphonic hall with some Japanese clients in hopes of closing a six-piece deal. I saw her on stage in the string section and was captivated immediately. I arranged to be introduced to her at the reception afterward. She was cool at first, then went cold when she realized I knew nothing about music. But by the end of the night, I had gotten her to agree to a tour of some of the city’s most exclusive galleries the next day.”
The Reincarnationist Papers Page 23
