My dear friend:
I am back in the moonlit garden with Dysher at the other Pentagon. A bird tweets happily on a thorny rose near the wall that surrounds the garden. I look past Azi Khan and his parents and see…the Archangel Gabriel sitting there glowing in a pale purple light. My heart skips a beat. This is where Gabriel brought him…to this garden of roses…to his parents. I am overwhelmed.
“There is no need for forgiveness,” Khan Sadar says to his son, and my attention is brought back to the scene before me. I feel Dysher take hold of my hand. He is just as moved as I am.
Azi looks up at his father with wet eyes, “But I have done…terrible things…there is blood on my hands.” Khan Sadar’s eyes glisten with tears. He knows the price Azi has paid for the path he chose. Love and kindness radiates from both his parents.
“There is nothing that you have done that cannot be undone, my son,” Khan Sadar says. Azi is shocked, “How can I undo murder?” Khan looks at his wife, Haleh, and she touches Azi’s shoulder. “There is a false perception in the shadow world that we die.” She indicates her body and her husbands, as if saying see? We are very much alive. Azi looks at his father in disbelief. “Murder with malice, father! I had hate in my heart!” His father’s voice is soft, “The correction lies with your intent.”
Then, I hear Khan Sadar’s lilting voice: “Light, from the rendering moon traced the features of his face; Scent, from the Talisman Rose in the gardens of the King lightened his step; Sound, from a bird’s mellifluous twittering song quickened his heart, And the gates of the young prince’s soul were flung open…Sure he was that the Talisman’s charms would protect him, he sojourned at ease in the land of the Fertile Crescent. The young prince knew not of the veiled world where pure spirits dwell, for he breathed and walked in a shadow world, under the arc of Heaven. Couched in the upper reaches of its deep, his mind was lulled to sleep by all the beauty there.”
I watch how the poem effects Azi. He allows more tears to fall as he stands up, unsure, and looks at his father. “Your last poem…” his voice quivers.
“It was meant to guide you,” Khan Sadar says simply, and both his parents hug him. His surrender to them is total.
How do you feel?
Love,
Tennessee
Wonderful!