The Matriarch Messiah

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

O my Lord, the stars glitter

and the eyes of men are closed.

Kings have locked their doors

and each lover is alone with his love.

Here, I am alone with you.

—Rabi'a al-Adawiyya,

eighth-century Persian philosopher and mystic

Skyline Boulevard above Silicon Valley, California

7:15 a.m. GMT-8, January 2, 2023

She never realized it would be this long. She never, never thought she would be holding his, his…his thing. Yes, she has seen one before. But it enchanted her. It called to her, as it seemed to purr in her two hands.

This moment is exactly what he has been waiting for since they first touched. And finally, here she is with him. Outdoors in his redwood forests, amidst his mountains. He referred to a game children play. I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

Zara squeezes his dearest thing gently so and says, "Like a ripe banana with a brownish tinge and little reddish spots."

As the two gaze down at the seven-inch-long banana slug wiggling in Zara's hands, wisps of drifting white fluffy fog float by, swarming the majestic redwood giants in the grove they have found by this mountain crest drive overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

Peter had been such a dear. Zara had mentioned how much she missed the mountains of her childhood in Duhok Province in Iraq. And so, he suggested they spend time in the mountains of his childhood. It was time for her to know what drove his fondness for these yellow creatures.

As Peter draws his fingers lightly across his beloved banana slug, they land upon Zara's fingers. And her finger purrs as much as the slug does.

Six months ago, she was about to leave Peter at his grandfather Nikolas's grave. She had completed the mission her "Sasha" Murometz had coerced her into—the search for the black object of the ancient matriarch. As she was leaving the cemetery, Peter surprised her as he went back to pray at his grandfather Pappy's grave.

The man-boy, who'd believed in aliens over God when she had met him, found solace in praying. Not because his mother told him to do so. Not because she would have wanted him to do so. But because he had an inner calling. At that moment, she had thought maybe, just maybe, he would be different from any other man who had sought her love.

As Peter touches her banana slug earrings, Zara responds by rubbing her scarred cheek against his hand, wondering if he truly is the one her late great-grandmother said he was. A drop of dew from the giant redwood above them lands on her nose. She puts her nose upon his to wipe the drop, followed by a light, affectionate peck on his lips.

"This means so much to me," whispers Peter in her ear. "You being here with me so early in the morning—the most likely time to catch banana slugs slithering out to bathe in the mists. Most women wouldn't dream of doing this."

Another dewdrop forms on the brow of Zara's dark plum headscarf from the dampness of the passing fog drifts. She passes the wiggling object of Peter's second fascination back to him so she can brush the dew off her headscarf before it lands in the eye of Peter's first fascination. Her.

"So, am I to assume an outing into the cold damp woods before sunrise is not your typical first date?" muses Zara.

"First date, huh? We are so far beyond first date, aren't we? Only the women who count in my life come here," asserts Peter as he puts his treasured yellow friend back onto the forest floor matted with fern leaves and redwood twigs and needles.

"My father took my mother, my sister, and me up here on family outings," says Peter. "I fell in love with these denizens of the Pacific coastal forests. They are so peaceful. They hurt no one."

Glancing toward the road, Peter looked at the broad trunks of the surrounding redwoods. "Except if someone hits them as they cross the road. No one would be driving so fast out here at this time of morning."

But her eyes do not gaze upon that road. They do not disrupt the deepest mutual intimacy he has shared—his beloved banana slugs in his most sacred place on Earth. In this regard, she realizes he is like her, as she has a sacred place on her mountain back at her childhood home. A flattop rock next to the twisting trail where her beloved father would take her hiking. The place where she found her greatest peace. That is, until she met Peter.

Her grandmother Roza said peace comes from tolerance. The root of tolerance is mutual understanding. His communing in these woods with his yellow mollusk friends is his source of deep mysticism. No different from her Roza's father's Sufi twirling dance. Both ways to understand Xwedê's world and be closer to Her.

Hence why she made the long journey from the Anatolian Kurdish State to California many times since his pappy's funeral—the culmination of their two-month mission together searching for the mythical black object of his family's legends. There is more to this man than his odd demeanor would portray. His composure, his placid eyes gazing in unity with nature remind her so much of her father on her mountain back home. Perhaps he really is a man seeking the Divine. Like her. Like what her mother had with her father. We shall see, she thinks.

Her serene moment is interrupted as Peter challenges, "So, I showed you mine." He brushes a dewdrop from her nose as they make eye contact again. "Time for you to show me yours."

Having grown up on the other side of the world, both geographically as well as culturally, from this man who now asks her to show him something most intimate of her inner being, Zara purses her lips, unsure what he is truly seeking in her. Their several-month relationship has already transcended the physical, the emotional, the limits of what she has had with previous boyfriends. What could he have not already seen in her given their ancient ability to spiritually bond?

She tugs on her headscarf more tightly to her head. Shelter from the cold fog? Shielding her most intimate thoughts from this man? Or simply an instinctive subconscious action?

She turns her back to him, facing the redwoods. The negative-ion-charged Pacific air passes so quietly as it flows through these monolithic beings. Ones who have seen a millennium pass. Ones whose family has seen the passage of time since the ancients. Seen the mysteries of the ancients. Like the mystery she and Peter saw because of their genetic descendancy from the ancient matriarch Nanshe's family. Through their solving the mystery of Nanshe's words passed from generation to generation.

The words that Peter's pappy, Nikolas, had made him memorize. The words that her Sasha knew would lead to an ancient monolith, the black object. Known to the rest of the world as Alexander Murometz, her malevolent Sasha had built the world's most powerful and politically invasive private enterprise so he would have access to the resources needed to find this object. The black object that spawned Zara's prophecies; this stone could destroy the world. And this silly man in front of her outfoxed, outargued, outwitted the most politically manipulative man in the world, her Sasha, to prevent Turkey, the US, China, and Russia from starting a world war.

Another dewdrop hits her nose. But this time, she does not wipe it off as it mingles with the drops from her eyes while she searches inside for the strength to remember that which remains unresolved in her life, with her family, with her destiny. Is he really the one? Should she reveal what should only be revealed to the one man who will bring her to her destiny?

A purse of her lips and she finally says, "Sara, my great-grandmother, she was our link to the wisdom of generations of spiritually inspired women before her."

Still facing away from Peter, she says, "Sara liked you. She saw something in you when she first met you at that first dinner at her ancestral house when we were staging for our mission to retrieve the object."

Turning back to him, she says, "Sara said to my grandmother Roza, her daughter, that you harbor the same light her husband, a Sufi imam, my great-grandfather, had within him when they first met."

She points to his eyes. Blue ones which naturally go with his once-blond and now-sandy-brown hair. Sara said the light is blue. The light we should seek is blue. The world thinks the light is white. But the one we seek, we yearn for, we die for, is blue. She so feared dying before she could find the blue light. For in the blue light, we shall return, she said.

Peter, who knows so much trivia because he is an editor of all sorts of topics, papers, and books, is speechless until he finally mutters, "Blue? Where did that come from? I'm not getting the connection to the mystery of the ancient matriarch we solved."

"As you had with your grandfather, your pappy, who entrusted you with an ancient family oral tradition, passed from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation, as far back in time as that temple, the world's oldest temple, which our follies led to be destroyed, so there is a line of similar wisdom passed down in my family line. But through the women. Mother to daughter and to granddaughter."

She sucks in her cheeks, then continues. "I had always thought the wisdom originally came from Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, the saintly woman whose beliefs inspired the Sufi faith. A woman who dedicated her life to the love of God, of Xwedê. The woman who, since I stopped working as Sasha's mercenary, I have strived to emulate. But after meeting you, meeting Jean-Paul, whose research says these oral traditions come from an age twelve thousand ago, I can only wonder if I should tell you of the other side of the story that they missed."

Eyes cast aside for a moment, she says, "That ancient pendant hanging from Jean-Paul's neck next to his crucifix, portraying a woman praying to God who had a worm next to her, is thousands of years old. When Jean-Paul stated that worm was in fact an image of your beloved banana slug, he shook my spiritual paradigms. The ancient text next to the carving said in proto-Greek, 'And she hears the voice of God.' This ancient woman with two halves of an apple standing next to a spotted banana slug became my clear sign from Xwedê to unite with my other half so I could speak with God."

Alone in this ancient grove, she pecks his lips and says, "Who would have thought that a pendant would foretell a five-thousand-year-old prophecy of our relationship?"

A peck on her forehead back, and Peter says, "Imagine if you hadn't realized our meeting had been prophesized? You wouldn't have bonded with me in the ways of the ancient matriarch. We wouldn't have found the black object, which gave you the ability to hear the voice. Her. Who you believe is Xwedê. All because of an image of my friends here. My banana slugs."

Her eyes close as she thanks the voice for guiding her openness to ultimately allow the spiritual intimacies with him she would never otherwise have permitted. Intimacies that conflicted with her traditions of modesty. Same as she chose to wear a headscarf out of respect for her family's traditions, her modesty, she chose celibacy as her path forward. That is, before meeting Peter.

She exhales long and deeply and turns to face her other half now. She unbuttons the top of her jacket and then the top of her shirt, spying Peter's eyes glued to her shirt top as she pipes back, "Showing you 'mine' does not mean that."

With a light scoff, he smiles and retorts, "That coming from a woman who sleeps with me every night we have been together. For the months since we found that our bonding accessed the powers of that black object that empowered you to talk with Her."

He runs his finger lightly along her long earlobe and adds, "And how many men do you know who could go through the intimacies of the night next to you, under the bedsheets with you, and not look or touch?"

She moves closer to him. Pecks his lips lightly. "You do look, you do touch the nakedness of my bared soul, as I do yours. This intimacy, far more revealing than physical intimacy, is our gift for touching the object and from the genetics that the ancient matriarch left for us."

Head canted slightly down, she gives him a playful, lascivious smile. "If you must see my chest, you can look now."

Out from under her shirt, she pulls out a slim gold chain with a pendant. An ancient stone emblem. A circle atop a crescent. "My mother thought you the man the prophecies spoke of, and she first entrusted this family heirloom to you. A secret they had not even shared with me. And to my surprise, you fulfilled their expectations. And mine, by giving this back to me."

She rubs the pendant, kisses it, then puts it up to his lips. "After the blast that destroyed the object and knocked you out, I left you in that hospital in Rome only because my great-grandmother Sara was near death. I made it back only hours before she left us. She could no longer speak. In her hands, she held a parchment I was to have, or so she told my mother. Mama said her last words before she lost the ability to speak were that I must carry on with what this parchment said. I took her hands in mine and cried and cried."

Turning away from him again, she adds, "I do not know why I keep coming back. We are so different. Night and day. Dogs and cats. Goats and sheep."

With a quick flip back toward the impetuous Peter, she adds, "But I have no one else to turn to. I do not understand what my great-grandmother has asked me to do. From the visions we had when we touched in that special way near the object, you and I are like the reincarnations of the ancient matriarch and her husband. Sasha, Mei, and Jean-Paul all said we are the two people on Earth who have DNA most closely resembling the ancient matriarch and her husband. In that, you are like my husband. The one my Sara said I should turn to. The one whose dreams, whose visions could shed light on what I need to do."

He makes a fist and lightly taps her chest below her neck. "That is more of a tease than pretending to strip off your shirt. But I'll take it. I'm your ancient husband who will wait at your side, will support you, and will be there when you are ready for someone more than a husband-like brother."

Tapping the tip of her nose again, he then reaches for their gear on the ground and pulls out her prayer mat.

Tucking her family's pendant safely under her shirt, she glances at her MoxWrap around her wrist, the never-needs-charging, nearly-cost-free device that provides 12G data from anywhere in the world where a satellite connection can be made. It's the omni device that propelled MoxWorld Holdings into the dominant global digital platform company.

Zara says, "I almost forgot. Sunrise. You know I appreciate your respect for my traditions, my faith." She pulls her headscarf again around her neck and loosens her jacket so she can supplicate in prayer.

Handing her a gallon jug of spring water, Peter says, "For your purification."

Following her faith's wudu ritual, she washes three times each her hands, then mouth, nostrils, face, lower arms, head, ears, and feet in that specific order.

After she finishes reciting the du'as, a specific invocation, Peter points across to the road. "That way is Mecca, no?" He kneels, clearing a place among the redwood twigs and fern leaves matting the forest floor to place her prayer mat.

She watches as his hands gently move along his beloved slug friends who dine on the forest flora. She now feels it, understands it. His serenity in his grove. His deep meditation here. Not on the mollusks, but his deep connection to something more transcendent. She was right at the cemetery. He is a man of prayer. But a prayer of his own derivation. He does not wear his faith on the outside.

Zara loosens her jacket a bit to bend in prayer. "Peter, you do not have to pray with me to show your respect for me." She glances around at the banana slugs moving through the leaves. "I see in here your place of worship. You pray in your own way. And I respect that."

Patting the place on the mat next to him, Peter replies, "I do so because I want to. You said to me that you wanted to follow the path of Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, the saintly woman whose beliefs inspired the Sufi faith. What she is to you, I hope you will be to me. The saintly woman who helps me come closer to submission to God. To Xwedê. Only you can hear Her voice. And I will follow what you hear Her say."

With one eyebrow dipping down, she asks, "And you do this because She is an alien? When we met, you believed that aliens created all religions."

His head down in submission, he meekly replies, "By definition, She is not from this earthly domain. But since you and I have joined spiritually, I know now that She is not ET or Spock or other media manifestations of aliens."

And with that attestation, they pray together. Man and woman as the prophecy of the ancient originators had foretold.