Nothing Is Predictable

by Adalina Mae

“Good morning, Miss, Namu Amida Butsu,” she greeted me. Namu Amida Butsu is a greeting or a blessing to express anything from your heart.

  “Good morning, Namu Amida Butsu, it’s so peaceful here, isn’t it,” I replied.

  “Indeed it is, am I interrupting your meditation?”

  “Not at all, I would love your company and your wisdom, please join me.” I welcomed her to sit with me to embrace the beauty surrounding us.

  “Miss, I feel you need to talk to someone here. I am happy to help you if you would allow me,” she offered kindly.

  “There is nothing more I desire than the wisdom of your guidance. I would like to discuss something that has debilitated me for years, I hope that’s okay with you?” I asked her humbly.

  I wanted to discuss the nightmares of my father and the inability of dealing with my childhood molestation, so I could put it all behind me. I was embarrassed to talk about that part, but I forced myself to surrender and ask for help for the first time in my life.

  “I have all day, please go ahead,” she replied.

  “Well, there are two major traumas in my life that I struggle with. I feel they are holding me back from developing healthy relationships and being able to love freely. I was repeatedly molested by an old man who lived in the same building I was living in when I was seven years old. At the same time, I was dealing with my father who was a violent alcoholic, which resulted in his demise. I grew up in an unpleasant environment…umm…you know what? This is too much for an early Sunday morning. Maybe I shouldn’t burden you with this,” I said reluctantly.

  “Please, do not feel that way. Proceed, talk about it, the more you talk about this the better you will feel. Please go ahead,” she replied.

  “Thank you, I feel lost, with too much bitterness in my heart. I need to let it go but I don’t know how. It doesn’t help that my father keeps on coming to me in nightmares. This has been happening all my life and I cannot handle them anymore.”

  “Mmm, my dear, I need you to accept the experiences you have endured, and I am not minimizing the pain you have experienced with your molestation. You need to pray for his soul to be forgiven, he was the perpetrator, not you, so there is no need to hold onto pain and guilt. It was his action. You are still alive and breathing and for that, you should be grateful. Regarding your father, how long have the nightmares been happening?” she asked.

  “All my life, since he passed away twenty-eight years ago. I was eight years old.”

  “Mmm, all your life, that’s interesting. How did he die, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Accidental shooting, in the head, he was drunk of course. Can you be more foolish than that? Frickin’ hell, seriously. Oops! Sorry for my inappropriate words.”

  “No problem, that is a lot to take and particularly at the young age you lost him. Tell me, how do you feel about your father?”

  “Feel? Feel? I would rather have no meaning to the word when it comes to him. I hate the way he was, I hate the life he showed me at that age. I didn’t need to experience violence and insecurity and fear at such a young age and you’re asking me how I feel about him? What do you think?” I asked her bitterly.

  “There is your answer, my dear. That is why he keeps coming to you in your dreams and that is why your heart is blocked against love. Have you considered the possibility that he needed help and he was lost? Perhaps he didn’t know how, and the only way was through drinking. Why don’t you try to forgive his actions, and understand that he needed guidance, that he couldn’t find it from anyone around him. Forgiveness is your answer. You need to drop that anger and hatred just like you drop a sack of potatoes. Please try and I promise that you will feel better, believe me. Now, I am going to leave you alone, and go back to the pavilion. I want you to meditate and think of forgiveness and release the anger in your heart. Please, try your best, then when you are ready, come to the pavilion and find me. This discussion is not over. I need you to do this first, okay?” She stood up, nodded humbly, and started walking down the hill.

  “Don’t forget, drop it like a sack of potatoes, and focus on your breathing!” she called back politely.

  She wanted me to grasp the moment, and to focus on cultivating the art of a controlled mind, to increase wisdom and mental awareness. In return, that should give me the ability to focus on my childhood years with controlled thoughts that would no longer affect my emotions, if I learnt to have empathy and to forgive.

  “Oh God, how on earth am I going to forgive? Okay, let’s try,” I mumbled to myself.

  “Drop it like a sack of potatoes, drop it like a sack of potatoes, sack of potatoes, potatoes. Oh my God, I feel like French fries.” Clearly, meditating about the sack of potatoes wasn’t helping. I tried again, closed my eyes and began to focus on my breathing. Then I took myself back to my childhood years to try to find a way to forgive all that had happened to me. I failed endlessly with that task; a minute of silence seemed like an hour. I kept getting distracted, thinking about French fries and what bills I’d forgotten to pay.

  “Oh damn it, forget it, just go see her,” I said to myself angrily. I stood up, shook the grass off my clothes, and headed down the hill to the pavilion. All of that happened in only five minutes, and it felt like an hour.

  I arrived at the pavilion where Kuya was waiting for me.

  “Mmm, I see you failed that task,” she said to me, yet she still smiled.

  “How do you know I failed? Maybe I didn’t,” I smirked.

  “You wouldn’t be here so soon if you hadn’t failed.”

  “Ahhhhh, you’re right! I struggled and failed.” Dejected, I sighed and sat next to her on the bench.

  “Don’t force it, but persist. Consistency will break that wall eventually. Keep meditating, and let it come to you naturally. You need to forgive your father, and you need to forgive anyone in your life who has done wrong by you. Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgiveness. No point in carrying a heavy load on your shoulders. What did I say before?” She looked at me humbly.

  “Drop it like a sack of potatoes,” I replied quietly.

  She stood up, nodded again, and walked toward the art room. Then as if remembering something, she stopped, turned around, and said to me, “Along with forgiveness, perhaps he is trying to tell you something you don’t know.” She smiled and walked into the room.

  “Trying to tell me something? Yeah, right,” I mumbled to myself as I walked to the pond.

  For months, using meditation, I tried many times to forgive my father and the man who had molested me. Strangely enough, I found it easier to forgive the perpetrator of my molestation than my father. At that, I kept failing.

  After three months living at the temple, I needed to go home. I missed my mother.

  Chapter 34

  The Gypsy

  USA 2008

  Months passed without the nightmares, and I thought perhaps the meditation had helped, until they started up again and continued all the way through to July 2008. I decided then to pursue other avenues, such as a psychic, to see if one could throw any light on the nightmares. I couldn’t live with it anymore, I needed some supernatural power to give me answers.

  I searched the internet tirelessly until I found a gypsy who caught my attention. She didn’t know me, my family, or anyone connected to me. I made an appointment to test her.

  I arrived at her house, which was in an area I didn’t know even existed, and saw a hut at the end of a driveway. I sat outside on a wooden bench and waited anxiously for my name to be called. I couldn’t keep still and there was a whole swarm of butterflies fluttering about in my stomach. After about ten minutes, she called me into the hut. She was quite a large woman. She sat on a chair at a small dining table in the middle of the room. The hut was filled with crystals and statues of various deities. A true gypsy. I reveled in it.

  I introduced myself and sat down at the table across from her. As she greeted me, she was staring at my right shoulder. I turned to my right to see what she was s
taring at. She oscillated between staring into my eyes and looking over my right shoulder. Then she would go silent and focus on channeling her intuition to read the spiritual messages she was receiving. I sat still and kept quiet, mainly because I was a little scared about why she was constantly staring at my right shoulder with a dubious look on her face. I felt as if she was going to say something at any moment.

  “Who is Yousif? They call him Yousif, who is this man to you?”

  Immediately, tears began to flow down my cheeks.

  “Don’t cry, sweetie, who is Yousif? ’cos he’s right there beside you.”

  The moment she said that, I jumped to the other side of the chair, shaking with fear and truly freaking out.

  “No need to be afraid, he’s not going to hurt you, he loves you very much. Is he your father, Zara?” she asked.

  “Yes, he is my father. Oh my God, this is freaking me out! How is this possible? I feel sick,” I said.

  “Oh sweetie, he loves you so much, and he is sorry for everything that happened, he is so sorry.” All the time she was speaking to me, she kept staring at my right shoulder. She seemed confused with what she was transmitting. Then she froze, her eyes opened wide, she took deep gasping breaths, and put her hands on her head.

  “Oh, I sense fire, gunshots, was he shot?”

  How on earth could she know that? How could she know what had happened twenty-eight years ago? What a spiritually gifted woman she was.

  “Um…yes…he was shot…actually it was an accident…he accidentally shot himself in the head while fooling around with his friend. Look, the reason I’m here…”

  She interrupted me. “Oh no, it was no accident, my dear.” She closed her eyes and held her hand against her chest, feeling the spiritual energy that surrounded us. I felt as if there was a mountain pressed on my chest, and sensed energy floating around that hut. At that moment, I knew, and felt, she was the real deal.

  “No accident? Not an accident? That’s what he’s telling me, it was no accident. But he is saying, let it go, otherwise your life is in danger. He is begging me to let you and your mother know to let it go, but it was no accident.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her, I didn’t know how to respond. I wanted to ask her a thousand questions, but I was too afraid of the answers. I finally built up the courage and asked, “Okay, can you ask him who did it then? Who was it if it wasn’t an accident? And please ask him why he has been haunting me with nightmares all these years. Why? He torments me constantly about his last night. Please ask him why, and ask him to stop.”

  She went silent for a while with her eyes closed and seemed to be talking to someone in her head.

  “He doesn’t want you to know who. He is afraid for your life if you and your family find out.”

  “Okay, then ask him is it the man who confessed to Mom? Was it him? Did he deliberately shoot him if he says it was no accident?”

  “Does his name begin with a ‘T?’” she asked. “I’m seeing that letter. There were a few people involved, he doesn’t want you to know who, he just needs you to know it was no accident. Some of those involved were close to your family, but they are not blood relatives. Who is the man whose name begins with the letter T? Do you know of this man? He knows everything, he was not alone in this.”

  “Oh my God, I know who it is!” I said with my hand over my mouth.

  “Your dad says he comes to you in your dreams to reach out for your forgiveness. He wants you to know it was no accident, so you know he didn’t abandon you. He knows you resent him for abandoning you, but it wasn’t his plan, it was no accident, Zara. He is so sorry for what he did and what he put you and your family through. Your dad has been with you all your life, he has given you signs to help you get out of the troubles you got yourself into. He is guarding you, you’re his little princess. He cannot rest until you forgive him. You must be very angry with him, yes?”

  My tears were flowing from my bottled-up emotions and at the same time, I was so confused I was seriously freaking out.

  “Yes, very angry, I hate him for what he did to Mom and all of us, he ruined our family. I’m very angry at him for leaving us and not being there for us. I needed my father growing up, but he was so irresponsible not to do the right thing by his family so of course I’m angry with him. He put on me the responsibility for being the man of the house since I was very young. I’m not a man, I’m a woman! It was his responsibility, not mine. I didn’t ask to be born into this world, and I’m exhausted with all the drama and chaos in my life. I’m Goddamn tired.”

  She reached out and held my hands to comfort me.

  “Zara, I understand how you feel. He is so very sorry for what happened, he is truly sorry, please forgive him. He needs to pass on and rest, and he won’t go until you forgive him.”

  “Well, I need to work on that,” I snapped back. “It’s not going to happen that easily. How can I possibly forgive him when he keeps coming to me in dreams and reminding me of that last horrific night? Can you please tell him to stop with the nightmares? Really, I can’t handle them anymore, that’s why I’m here today, to get help with the nightmares, not to find out it was not an accident that killed him. Now I’m really fucked up. Sorry for swearing.”

  “Don’t worry, I will work on that for you and say some prayers to help those dreams stop. But my prayers alone won’t work, I need your help as well. You need to forgive him. Can you at least try?”

  “If there is any hope at all I’ll definitely try.” I nodded but cried from the shock of what I’d heard.

  She said some silent prayers and wished me luck when my session ended. As I walked out, I turned around to bid her farewell and to thank her again for her help. She had an empathetic look on her face and she smiled at me and repeated, “You’re a good person…Zahra, you think you don’t know love, you are all love. Forgive him, that will solve everything.” She called me Zahra. Only Dad called me by that name. She truly freaked me out.

  I sat in my car, put my head on the steering wheel, and cried for half an hour. Both Kuya and the gypsy had said to forgive him. It must be that then. As I drove home, I contemplated what she had told me. No accident. A few involved. The letter ‘T’. Not blood relatives. I knew Terry was involved. My mind overflowed with a thousand thoughts. I had to ring Mom and tell her I needed to see her. I had to share this with her, I couldn’t deal with it on my own. I was going crazy and she needed to know what I had heard.

  I disclosed all that Kuya and the gypsy had said to me, and Mother began to cry. Why did Terry confess if it was not accidental? If there was more to it, why would he take the blame for an incident if others were involved? Who was he protecting? We tried to solve the mystery by coming up with the missing links.

  Mom had heard rumors about that night, that Dad was murdered by a close family member, that it was not an accidental shooting. She had never been able to prove it and had thought they were rumors created by villagers with nothing to do but gossip and make up stories.

  Unfortunately, if there was more to it, there was nothing we could do about it twenty-eight years later. We couldn’t prove anything. There was no evidence other than what the gypsy had said. I couldn’t imagine going to the police to report a murder that had happened in a different country twenty-eight years before because a gypsy had said so. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her, but that wouldn’t suffice to convince the police or our other family members.

  Mom had left it up to God. Nothing was going to bring Dad back anyway. Believe me, I didn’t want him back in the state he had been in anyway.

  Mom had always said Dad would die from his own reckless use of his weapons. I agreed with her and frankly I couldn’t care less what had happened so many years ago. The way he’d carried on he had it coming to him. I just wanted the nightmares to stop. They were severely affecting my life and sanity

  I decided to go back to Lebanon to visit Dad’s grave for the first time in my life. Knowing this possibility now, and I s
ay again, possibility, that he hadn’t abandoned me due to his reckless acts after all as I had grown up thinking, but that he’d been murdered... Holy shit, this changed everything.

  Chapter 35

  On a pilgrimage

  Lebanon 2008

  I seem to have a love–hate relationship with Lebanon. Despite its chaos and disorder, it was always somehow blissful to be there. I was on a mission, a pilgrimage to the mountains to walk the tracks of the holy land and visit the famous church where my father had been buried for twenty-eight years.

  I hired a chauffeur for the day to take me to the mountains. The ride took two and half hours. As we reached the valley, there was a point where the car couldn’t go any further and I had to continue on foot. I walked for an hour to get there.

  I arrived at the church that Dad had voluntarily restored, and the cemetery he had built close to the church for the villagers. Ironically, he was the first to be buried there. Dad had always done charity work for his village. It is a World Heritage listed village and proclaimed as holy land. It holds a very special place for the Lebanese, and has thousands of years of history, attracting tourists from around the globe. International archaeologists discovered ancient treasures hidden in the caves from the times when Christian monks hid from the Turks during the invasion of the Ottoman Empire. The church itself was excavated by archaeologists, and they found rooms built behind walls containing priceless artefacts.

  There was an amazing energy around that church, and I felt at peace the same way I had felt at the Buddhist temple. I sat on the fence and looked over the valley at the beautiful scenery. I wasn’t alone. There were many tourists along with monks, priests, and nuns walking around. One of the sisters came up to me and asked if I needed help. I was staring at the church bell, which my father had repaired so many years before.

  “Hello, young lady, God be with you. Are you enjoying your time visiting the church?” the sister asked.