Three Days in Phoenix

by Vincent Gray

Pentecostal Church of Africa,” he said.

  “Go away, tell him he must go away,” she said as loud as her feeble voice would allow.

  “Please madam let me come in and pray for you, God has sent me, do not reject his mercy and compassion, he told me in a vision that I must come to your house and pray for you,” he said with a kind but insistent tone in his voice.

  “Who sent you?” she asked.

  “I said God has sent me,” he answered.

  “Please go away,” she insisted.

  “I have to obey God,” he said, as he slipped past Faeeza into the small dimly lit lounge.

  Towering above the frail shrunken woman he laid his hands on her veil covered head.

  “In the name of Jesus, be healed of this affliction, affliction I command you to release this woman at once, be gone with you, depart from this woman,” he prayed out loudly in a deep bass voice which also resonated deeply in the room, and everything at once began to shudder, move and rattle around in the whole house, they could hear the loud explosive smashing sounds of breaking crockery coming from the kitchen, cups started falling from the cupboard, crashing to the kitchen floor, smashing into a hundred of small pieces on the hard tiles, and then immediately the scattered shards of the cups re-assembled themselves back into the original cups, and the cups flew back intact onto their perches in the cupboard, and also while all the crashing, smashing, rattling and shuddering was going on, a mighty wind swept through the open lounge windows and the curtain billowed wildly, like dancing angels with huge white feathered wings.

  The disease afflicted woman rose slowly from the padded armchair as if she were levitating. She began to shout loudly in Tat, the language spoken in parts of Azerbaijan. Faeeza also felt herself been raised up off her feet by a mighty invisible force. She lost control of her tongue and began to speak Dongwang Tibetan, the language spoken by Tibetan people living in the eastern part of Shangri-La County along the Dongwang River.

  When Ahmad Abdullah Suleiman came home later that afternoon he found his wife in the kitchen speaking in Tat to Faeeza and Faeeza was answering her mother in Dongwang Tibetan. His wife’s face was beaming with a holy glow while she was making his favour dish for supper.

  “What is going on with both of you?” a startled Ahmad shouted, as he took in the spectacle of his wife who just that morning had been a terminally ill invalid, but was now fully mobile, busy stirring her pots on the stove.

  As a result of all of this Ahmad Abdullah Suleiman read the King James Bible from beginning to end and Faeeza eventually was able to stop speaking in Dongwang Tibetan and regained her English tongue. The diminutive Mrs Suleiman, who after regaining her own English tongue, made the surprising discovery that she had become mysteriously endowed with the most beautiful soprano singing voice. The three joined the mainly black Free Pentecostal Church of Africa which held it services in the huge marquee in the veld every night of the week. Mrs Suleiman sang in the church choir. Ahmad left his job as the maître d' in a plush Durban restaurant that was extremely popular among whites, and become a roving evangelist, preaching the Gospel wherever he went in the surrounding locations, healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead.

  IV

  Faeeza Suleiman noticed the flicker of uncertainty in Trevor’s face.

  “I’m one of the drivers for the wedding guests from Lenasia and I was told that I would be staying at this address,” Trevor explained.

  “I am Faeeza Suleiman, please to meet you,” she said stretching out her hand.

  “I am Trevor Guzmán,” he said as he shook her hand.

  “Guzmán? That is an unusual sounding surname, if you don’t mind me saying so,” she replied looking perplexed.

  “It is a Spanish surname. The original Guzmán name goes back to the 12th century to Rodrigo Muñoz de Guzmán who was the founder of a noble family that went by this name,” he explained

  “So you are Spanish?” She asked as she stared at him, taking in the dark olive Mediterranean tone of his skin, his dark brown eyes, and thick mop of dark hair. Sizing him up, he gave her the impression of someone who was completely unpretentious and naturally honest in all matters. She immediately felt strongly attracted to the stranger who was plainly a person with no guile, a person who was naturally sincere and incapable of deceit. She remembered the Bible verse from the Gospel of John and felt it applied to Trevor: Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” Her female intuition told her that God had answered her prayers and had sent her a husband, someone who was kind, gentle and would take good care of her. A man in whom there was no guile.

  “No I am South African, according to our family tradition we are descendants of the Guzmáns who ran a slave-trading business in Luanda in Angola after the Portuguese colonized Angola in the 14th century. My ancestors were slave traders who later became farmers in the Angolan highlands. My grandfather came to the South Africa in the 1940s. They bought a farm in the Natal midlands,” he explained.

  “You could pass for an Indian if you don’t mind me saying so, I initially thought you were actually Indian, and even said to myself, you are indeed a strange looking Indian, but an Indian nevertheless,” she said with a wholesome smile on her face, and with eyes filled with playful humour.

  “Are you Catholic, if you don’t mind me asking you?” she asked.

  “Yes, but I am not a practising Catholic, I am not very religious, I have not been to Mass since I was confirmed,” he said.

  “Well we are also not very religious in a manner of speaking I suppose. I am Pentecostal now, but Pentecostalism is not a religion, it a way of life, a life filled with the power, joy and love of God. Religion is an obstacle that the devil puts in the way of true belief,” she said.

  “True belief is based on the certainty of knowledge, if you know what I mean, philosophy is one of my subjects and social anthropology is my other major, I am a student in the humanities at the University of Durban -Westville,” she informed her perplexed looking visitor.

  “Anyway, I am talking too much again and I suppose we cannot spend the whole afternoon standing here, talking at the front door, come in, I will show you to your room where you can put your suitcase down, and then I will open the gate and you can park the Kombi in front of the garage.”

  “You must be the one who is going to be our chauffeur,” Faeeza said, with a smile followed by an amused chuckle.

  “You will be driving me, my mother and all the aunties around Phoenix for the wedding preparations,” she informed Trevor.

  She stood still for a moment, seemingly undecided about something.

  “On second thoughts, put your case down, I will unlock the gate, it would be better to park inside in the driveway. If we don’t keep the Kombi safe and secure behind the chained gate it will be stolen that’s for sure,” she said.

  “So tell me how did you get mixed up with a bunch of crazy Indians from Lens?” She asked.

  “Well, I only met them for the first time yesterday afternoon, and they asked me if I would drive one of the Kombis, they were short of a driver,” he said.

  “So as a complete stranger you simply agreed to help when they asked you to drive a Kombi full of Indians to Phoenix?”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Well if you don’t mind me saying so, that is completely amazing. How did you get to meet the Abrahams? ” She asked looking with wide eyes at Trevor as she became more and more convinced that the man standing before had been sent by God to be her husband. The only miracle that God had to perform now was to transform him into an Indian and then she would have her husband to have and hold.

  V

  Trevor had already driven many times past the massive white marquee, and now tonight he entered the hot cavernous interior for the Friday evening service. Following the Suleiman family they walked down the aisle until they found four vacant white plastic chairs in row close to the front where a pulpit stoo
d elevated on a wooden stage. The tent was packed to capacity with an excited crowd of dancing and singing worshippers, who were mainly black African. Scattered and conspicuous among the black worshippers were many Indian and Coloured families.

  After half an hour the singing subsided as two men in rumpled black suits stepped onto the podium. They had been sitting all the time in the front row bowed over in prayer. One was a tall black man and the other was a short white man whose ruddy face gleamed with perspiration because of the heat inside the tent.

  The white man blew into the microphone mounted on the pulpit to test if the public address system was working.

  He began to speak in a deep southern American accent. The tone of his message was in stark contrast to the buoyant mood of the exuberant crowd that filled the tent.

  “Like Jonah I never signed up for this. To be honest, in the presence of the God of the Universe, I confess before you that tonight I feel very weary; I feel tired, run down and burnt out, I want to be honest with you tonight and also with God. I have prayed constantly to God, day and night, to be released from my duties as an evangelist of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have prayed constantly to God pleading with him to please let me go, even if it means I have to give up my life and die right now. It has not been easy for me to follow Jesus. I have lost my wife, she has left me, I have also lost my beautiful