The Last Day (29 page)

After each of her comments, the hall was abuzz with low-volume conversation, which quickly and respectfully abated with the next question asked.

“Jeza?” A black male student in a colorfully embroidered robe was recognized by the class professor. “Your teachings would seem to follow Christian philosophy in that you have proclaimed yourself the Sister of Jesus Christ and the Daughter of God. Are you then God, and should you be worshiped?”

“None should be worshiped but God the Father,” she responded.

“Are you superior to Jesus?” he questioned.

“Is ice superior to water?” she answered matter-of-factly, without the slightest edge to her voice. “Both are the same elements in different form, for different seasons.”

The class professor now posed a question of his own. “Jeza,” he asked, “are you proclaiming a new religion, or are you an adherent of a current theology?”

“I bring you insight into the will of God,” she responded. “The New Light is the culmination of all religions. It is the natural goal to which all religions must aspire.”

“Then to what religion should we belong?” a young man in a bright yellow turban asked.

“The Lord will not judge you by your religion,” she answered. “Nor does He favor one religion over another, nor one person over the next. Each man, woman, child will be judged only by how far that individual advances toward the fulfillment of personal perfection in the New Light.”

A leather-skinned, angry-looking man in Arabic garb sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing with emotion. “But if you are the sister of Jesus, you are a Jew. Are you then not partial to the Jew over the Arab? What have you to say to the freedom fighter who has lost his homeland to the Jews!”

“I say this to you,” she responded solemnly, her face growing dark. “The embittered divisions between Arab and Jew are an abiding source of anguish to God! As I am the Almighty's daughter, so also am I sister to Muhammad. Know you not that both Arab and Jew arise from the same root? That you share the same heritage in the patriarch, Abraham? The same deity whose name is both Allah and Yahweh? You are brothers in the eyes of God unlike no other peoples on the face of the earth, yet you hate and you shed one another's blood as mortal enemies!

“To you who pursue violence to regain your homeland, know this: your issues are worthy, but you yourselves are not! The acts of terrorism that you bring are abhorrent in the eyes of God. I say to you, let the persecution of the Jews—and of the Palestinians, and of all religions and peoples—let it all end now, forevermore. Until you forswear such actions of violence, God will turn His face from you. Until you and your brother Jews can come together with love and a true desire for reconciliation and unity, neither will know a peaceful homeland!”

The hall was stock-still. Taken aback, the befuddled Arab slowly resumed his seat.

After a period of profound silence, a young female student tentatively raised her hand. “Lady Messiah, are you here to found a new religion?”

“The New Light is not a religion, nor is it a list of rituals. The New Light is the understanding by which each may strive toward God's will for mankind.”

The professor then asked, “What is God's will for mankind? And what exactly is the New Light?”

“All is being revealed according to God's plan,” she replied. “You must watch and you must listen.”

A young black man, raising his hand animatedly from far back in the audience, was called on and created a stir when he pleaded, “Messiah, my mother is very ill. I beg you, please cure her!”

The professor immediately rushed to the center of the stage and warned, pointedly, that any further attempts to seek interventions or personal favors from the Messiah would result in the removal of that individual from the auditorium. He then promptly called on another questioner. However, in an unsubstantiated report issued a few days later, a Cairo paper claimed that the young man's mother recovered that same hour, completely and inexplicably, from a purported terminal illness.

Another female student posed a question which brought about a rift of laughter. “Messiah, is God male or female?”

Jeza showed no undue reaction. “God is both male and female,” she said straightforwardly. “And mankind is separated from God by its sexes.”

The same student followed up her question. “You refer to. God as ‘He’ and to hunanity as ‘man,’ or ‘mankind.’ Isn't that preferential and sexist? Particularly since you yourself are female?”

There were a few whistles and catcalls in the audience. But the professor stood with a stern face and the auditorium fell immediately silent.

Jeza did not hesitate with her response. “It may be more correct to identify God as ‘It,’ and mankind as simply ‘humanity.’ But this is not the custom, and to depart from the traditional so late in the hour is more academic than purposeful. For you to dwell on these terms as divisive is to distract yourself from your purpose, which is unity. Nevertheless, if you wish to understand scripture as God intended it, it is wise to go back and remove the inequity, as I will make clearer to you in days to come.”

“You say ‘late in the hour,’ Messiah,” the professor noted with a catch in his voice. “Are you foretelling the end of the world?”

There was a palpable suspension of breath in the audience.

Jeza herself grew solemn and pensive. “A great change is coming,” she slowly answered “It will mark both the end and the beginning. You must be vigilant and you will come to understand God's plan.”

This caused quite a stir in the assembly and the professor had to stand again to restore order. He selected another individual.

“By what rules shall we live?” the student asked. “By the Ten Commandments? The Talmud? The secular laws of our nation?”

“All of these and none of these,” she responded enigmatically. “I say to you that through the ages, God's word has been revealed many times to man. It is the same word, spoken by many tongues, written by many hands. To some it is the Bible. To others, the Koran. To still others, the Torah. And there exist many more forms.

“As the banks of your Nile are changed each spring by the recurring floods, so also does the full meaning of the Word change with each iteration and translation and interpretation. To know the way of the Lord, you must hear more than words.”

“But Messiah,” another clergyman protested, looking upset and confused. “I have devoted my entire life to studying scripture and the great theologians. Are you saying that all my work has been in vain?”

“There is much to be learned from the scriptures,” the Messiah answered him, “even if the translations be poor. But there is little that you will gain from the writings of the theologians, even if you understand them perfectly. For there are as many interpretations of the Word of God as there are religions upon the face of the earth. And none can tell you the separate truth that lies only within your soul.”

The clergyman persisted. “Surely the great and learned religious scholars have better insight and understanding of the complex scriptures than the common man!”

Jeza did not seem offput by the man's tenacity. She turned to the general audience and, in a slightly elevated voice, imparted to them a metaphor that would later come to be known as:

THE PARABLE OF THE CHEF AND THE APPRENTICES

“Behold there was a chef who was master of a kitchen. One day he called to his apprentice cooks and gathered them about him saying: ‘For this evening's meal, I shall prepare a special banquet. Go to the well and collect a measure of water.’

“Now the youngest of the apprentices hastened to the well and soon returned with a large pail filled with clean, clear water, which he placed before the elder apprentices.

“Upon seeing the pail of water, one of the elders said to the youngest apprentice, ‘This pail is not large enough. We will need more water to prepare such a banquet. You must return again to the well!’

“Another said, ‘The water from the stream is fresher, and will improve the flavor of the foods. You should draw the water from the stream!’

“And yet another said, ‘You have spilled water upon the floor and we cannot prepare the meal until you remove it.’

“At this time the master chef returned to the kitchen, and hearing this, he took the pail of water and poured it out upon the floor, saying: ‘Before a banquet can be prepared the kitchen must first be cleaned.’ And to the youngest apprentice he said, ‘Come while they do this work and I will share with you the arrangements for the feast.’

“Amen, Amen I say to you: go forth and fill your pail knowing that the Lord God cares not about the volume nor the content, but will judge you by your intent. And none may judge but the Father Himself. “ (Apotheosis 23:4–11)

Concluding her discourse, the Messiah blessed her audience and stepped back from the podium, accepting the outstretched hand of the professor as a fusillade of flashbulbs and applause erupted. The audience pressed toward the stage, and Jeza was quickly ushered out a back way, disappearing from view.

58

Na-Juli apartments, Cairo, Egypt 1:30
A.M
., Tuesday, February 15, 2000

F
eldman was jolted awake by a slamming palm against his apartment door. He grabbed up his alarm clock, noted the very late hour, retrieved his glasses from the night-stand and stumbled down the hallway, slipping his arms into his robe.

Peering through the peephole, Feldman spied a disheveled Hunter leaning his head against a porch post, his face buried in his wadded-up jacket, his arms akimbo.

“Breck!” Feldman unlatched the door and swung it open. “Where have you been all day? I've been trying to reach you!”

“I've been on a binge, ol’ buddy,” he drawled, peeping out from his jacket with a dull grin on his face. “Am I intruding?”

Feldman squinted beneath the porch light, scratched his cheek and stepped aside for his friend to enter.

“I guess I'm a shithead, huh?” Hunter presumed.

“Well hell, Breck, you didn't exactly handle things, now did you?”

“No sir, I did not!” he admitted as he ambled in and flopped in a chair. “Have you seen Ms. Cissy? Is she okay?’

“Good of you to ask. Yeah. I called her tonight and she's all right now. She's coming into work tomorrow. Are you?”

“Uh, yeah, but I may be a
tad
late.”

Feldman sighed.

“I feel real bad about things, Jon,” Hunter confessed, dropping his flippant veneer. “I didn't mean to hurt Ciss. Honest.”

“I know you didn't, Breck, And quite frankly, I don't really blame you for what's happened.”

Hunter arched his brows at the unexpected absolution. “You don't?”

“Okay, you used to flirt with Cissy a lot. But it's not like you don't flirt with most of the women at the office. You never really took it very far with any of them, at least that I know of.”

Hunter was nodding his head encouragingly.

“But then you and Cissy started spending more and more time together, and people just naturally began seeing you two as a couple. I guess Cissy started seeing it that way, too. And then the night of the earthquake was just such an emotional experience, I think that's what sealed it for Cissy. You took care of her, watched over her. You know—”

“Jon, I did
not
spend the night with her then, or
ever!
For chrissakes, I mean
nothin’ ever happened!”

“Not physically, maybe. But she's in
love
with you, Breck.”

“Hell, I love her, too, Jon, it's just that my libido is like, temporarily occupied, you know? Dammit, I don't
owe
Cissy my affection.”

“It's more than that” Feldman debated whether or not to launch into this now, but given Hunter's condition, maybe the timing
was
right.

“You know Cissy and Erin don't get along. It's a double slight to Cissy that you're seeing someone she doesn't like. And it's all happening right in her face, every day.”

“Catty female jealousies.” Hunter passed this off with a wry grin.

Feldman wasn't letting him off that easy. “Breck, there are certain little, uh,
idiosyncrasies
about Erin that really gripe Cissy. Erin is, well, you know,
different” He
touched on this gingerly. “The way she dresses. The way she flaunts herself, so to speak.”

Hunter wrestled with this observation for a minute, avoiding Feldman's accusatory stare. “You don't understand, man,” he finally answered. The glaze left his eyes and he chewed on his lower lip as if uncertain about proceeding. “I don't know all the particulars, Jon, ‘cause she doesn't like to talk about it much, but Erin had a lot of problems growin’ up. A lot of shit that wasn't her fault, you know?”

Feldman screwed up his face, not certain he wanted to hear this.

“She was an only child. Product of a broken home. Her mom remarried when Erin was six. Some rich scumbag. Used to mistreat Erin
real bad
when her mom wasn't around. To make up to Erin and keep her quiet, he'd buy her all these fancy little outfits and jewelry—princess costumes, ballerina tutus, glamorous gowns, crap like that. That's how she'd forget her problems. She'd dress up in pretty clothes and escape to some fantasy world where things were all better.”

Feldman knitted his brow in sympathy. “You'd think she'd hate the clothes horse routine now, that she'd associate it with the bad experiences she had.”

“Just the opposite.” Hunter shrugged. “She's got a clothes fetish. I mean,
big time!
You wouldn't believe all the shit she has. Roomsful. She picks stuff out of catalogues like a binger at a smorgasbord. Has it shipped to her from all over the world. Bills it all to her stepfather,
carte blanche.
You oughta go shoppin’ with her sometime, man. She's a kid in a candy store. Like she doesn't know who she wants to be today, so she just keeps trying on somebody else. Hell, she even bought herself one of those damned Jeza costumes all the street vendors are hawking now, complete with luminescent paint. Couldn't resist it.”

Feldman nodded with a better than average degree of understanding. Everyone had a special mechanism for coping with their dark problems. For Feldman, it was to erect interpersonal walls. For Erin, it would appear that she was perpetually seeking to escape herself. It was a sad awareness that would make it easier for Feldman to accept her eccentricities.