Part 4: ESCAPING ATLANTIS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part 4: ESCAPING ATLANTIS

 

 

MIRACLES ON 34th STREET

 

One evening sometime in 1983, in New York City, Doctor Dahesh, who had been working for a while at his desk in the bedroom, asked me to bring him the large—and I do mean large—block of Bulgarian Feta Cheese we had in the refrigerator, along with one authentic Lebanese-style pita bread loaf, out of the whole stack of fresh loaves that had been brought back from one of the Middle-Eastern bakeries in Queens, New York.

 

So, overlooking the fact the block of feta cheese weighed around two pounds, he simply wanted to enjoy a light snack, with none of the usual accompaniments, namely onion, and sometimes olives and baby dill pickles. Besides, with the large stack of newspapers he had wedged between the table lamp and the wall on the one hand (and by the way, he read and annotated 13 newspapers every day), and on the other hand, the princess phone (which was the ideal size for such limited desktop real estate), his diary, notes, and what have you, there was barely room for the food!

 

Speaking of which, I remember once in 1979, Doctor Dahesh was sitting at the kitchen table in Beirut, and two Daheshists were having a lively discussion about diet and health. I was making my way up the stairs that led to the shower enclosure located atop the Hneine Palace, home of the Daheshist Mission, and I could hear one of the Daheshists, a medical doctor, espousing strong views about eating eggs. Doctor Dahesh, whom I could spy from above, quietly interjected something that almost went unnoticed; he said in Arabic, “واحد ياكل كل شي,” which translates into, “One should eat everything.” And as I interpreted it, and based on what I’d personally witnessed Doctor Dahesh eat, which—believe it or not—included, on extremely rare occasions, Big Macs and Whoppers— one should maintain a balanced diet. In fact, Here’s an audio excerpt in which we hear Doctor Dahesh himself recounting what he had said to Sammy Rosca—whom you might remember from episode three—when the latter invited him over for a meal, at the hotel where he was staying.

 

 

 

 

(Audio Clip)

Doctor Dahesh

I went... to his place. I told him, but what I like to eat... Here's what I like to eat... Vegetables—for example, raw eggplant, tomatoes, barbecued  meat...

 

 

 

“You got it!”

 

Sammy Rosca says to Doctor Dahesh.

 

 

(Audio Clip)

Doctor Dahesh

I told him, "sounds great." So, he brought the meat and what have you... Where is he going to prepare all that stuff? He can't invite me to a restaurant... that way, it'll be cheaper for him... So. we ended up on the rooftop of the hotel... on top.

 

 

And I’ll stop the story here, otherwise we’ll really get sidetracked; and after all, this is a Sammy Rosca story.

 

In any case, and fast-forward back to the apartment on 34th street, I watched him slice off a bite-size piece of Feta cheese with a knife, cradle it in a small wedge he tore off  from the loaf of pita bread, put it in his mouth and savor it.

 

He thanked me and I went back to my drafting table to continue my work. At the time, I was still a student at the Pratt Institute where I was majoring in Architecture.

After a short while, he called me again asking for more bread.

 

I must admit I was surprised that he was able to consume so much bread in so little time. Again, and to the uninitiated, we are not talking about the americanized version of the pita loaf. Back in the day I remember the only kind of pita bread we could buy was called Joseph’s Pita bread. It wasn’t bad. But let’s face it, industrially-produced pita bread is a far cry from its authentic, I-can-now-die-happy, bakery-fresh counterpart. And these loaves are anywhere between 10 to 12 inches in diameter. And they’re very filling.

 

So you can imagine my surprise as Doctor Dahesh kept requesting and consuming one loaf after another, while—so glad you asked—the block of cheese was fast disappearing!

 

The whole thing began to feel as though it were a put-up job, almost bordering on the comical.

 

Eventually he would consume eleven loaves of bread and the entire block of feta cheese!

 

I even remember thinking to myself, “What’s gotten into him? I’ve never seen me eat this much!”

 

Then it occurred to me that what I had just witnessed might have been another miracle, though on the surface there might not be anything particularly miraculous about eating eleven large loaves of bread and a massive block of feta cheese with enough salt and fat content to kill a horse, let alone a mere mortal—in one sitting!

 

Besides, pie and hot-dog eating contests testify to the fact human beings are capable of amazing feats.

 

Then again, given his state of  health, and physical stature, the Doctor Dahesh I knew should have keeled over!

 

Something wasn’t adding up.

 

Anyway, I went back to the kitchen to get the tray so that I can clear his desk from the empty plates and utensils, and headed straight back to the bedroom where…

 

What?

 

Are you kidding me?!

 

As I live and breathe!

 

All eleven loaves and the massive block of Cheese had been restored?!

 

It was as though he had never eaten them!

 

I was agape!

 

Once I realized what had happened, I kept on walking, shaking my head in both belief and disbelief, while he, yet again was doing his best not to act like the cat who just swallowed the canary.

 

But then I remembered hearing stories of him consuming an inordinate amount of food to feed those in need. In other words, whatever he would consume, would materialize in the bellies of a select few hungry people.

 

But up until that point, I was never clear on whether that was some made-up urban legend.

This miraculous incident was—to me—the clincher that lent credence to this story.

 

Then, and this is when things really got interesting, he surprised me with the mother of all non sequiturs, if ever there was one, and asked, “Do you think President Reagan would give us a piece of land so that we might build our city on it?”

 

Here, I felt that Doctor Dahesh was more than likely testing me to see if I would be naïve enough to believe that Ronald Reagan, who was the president of the United States at the time, would or could ever just up and bestow such a gift upon the Daheshists.

 

 

(Audio Clip)

 

In this short exchange between Doctor Dahesh and my eldest brother Chucri, Chucri first says:

Chucri

The Americans, for sure, Doctor, are smart; they weren't born yesterday...

 

 

Doctor Dahesh

They are formidable!

 

Doctor Dahesh replies.

 

Doctor Dahesh

The Americans? They are the most formidable. Period!

The Americans are formidable in every sense of the word.

 

 

 

And so, back to this hypothetical scenario in which Reagan would just up and give the Daheshists land upon which to build a city, and though I truly believed in Miracles—in fact I’d just finished witnessing one, just a minute ago—I thought to myself, “Y...yeah, nah, I don’t think so!” “That will never happen in a million years…” but I didn’t say anything.

 

And with that, Doctor Dahesh went back to work while I cleared his desk from the miraculously-restored block of cheese and eleven loaves of bread.

 

As I was about to exit the room and step into the hallway, a resolute Doctor Dahesh suddenly, but softly, made a proclamation that threw me for a loop and stopped me dead in my tracks for a brief moment, which felt like an eternity as I froze in the doorway before coming to, as it were, and resuming my short trip back to the kitchen, his words forever etched in my mind, a divine prophecy that I have no doubt will come true one day.

 

I will reveal to you in moments what he told me, but for now I just want to emphasize that he had clearly read my thoughts!

 

 

AGAIN!

 

...Like that one time I was reading a passage in a book, in Arabic, and came across a word, “Bulbul,” or nightingale, which is a songbird species.

 

I had one growing up, which I’d raised from a chick, and who was absolutely loyal to me. We were inseparable. His cage was never closed. He would open his wings and begin to sing every time I returned from school. For years, everything was grand until the day the rhesus monkey showed up. Don’t ask. This was Beirut. I even remember my father coming in with a Chimpanzee one day. But he didn’t last long, on account of the damage he caused, starting with flinging the huge, oblong flower pot that was sitting on the balcony ledge overboard—luckily no one was killed. But the thing that really irked my dad was the fact the Chimp broke his expensive Zeiss binoculars. Again, we lived in the entertainment district of Beirut. We had hotels, bars, and nightclubs galore. And in fact, the only real live seals I had ever seen were parked in a trailer that was parked in our neighborhood. And the building next door housed all the employees and visiting stage acts, including one charismatic foreign animal trainer who lived—wait for it—with a big Chimpanzee.

 

Now, and just to prove to you that Hollywood doesn’t just make stuff up, and in a tale reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, one evening, this bad boy decided to go out for vertical stroll, and he scaled the building and landed a few floors above, where two women—nightclub performers—also foreign (you could tell because they screamed and swore in English), had locked themselves up in their bathroom for safety and began to call for help through the bathroom window.

 

For hours, all of us watched in horror (actually, not really), as his handler kept calling him, beseeching him to come back down.

 

Finally, he did, and the women escaped unscathed.

 

Oh, let me assure you our rhesus monkey pulled a similar stunt and terrorized the whole neighborhood—sorry, you’ll have to wait for the movie. In the meantime, I’ll say this much: growing up where I did, you never needed to run away to join the circus as it was practically parked in our backyard!

 

And back to my story with the nightingale: he had become morose, and detached.

 

One morning, I woke up, and Oscar—that was his name—was not in his case. He was nowhere to be found. He had flown away and left a hole in my heart. 

And so bulbuls, as they are known in Arabic, were very special to me, and I wanted to know what the French equivalent was.

 

Doctor Dahesh was sitting in the farthest corner of the living room at the New York City apartment, and there were a couple of Daheshists visiting at the time. And so it occurred to me to ask if any of them knew how to say Bulbul in French. I had barely uttered the words, “How do you say…” when Doctor Dahesh, gently, but with lightning speed, intercepted my speech and said, “rossignol.”

 

He, of course, rolled his “r.”

 

“Thank you! ”  I said, as a knee-jerk reaction.

 

When my mind, a fraction of a second later, finally caught up to what had just happened, I found myself staring blankly into his eyes, which, in turn, were playfully fixated on me.

 

And I couldn’t help but imagine the Lofty Spirit that temporarily took over his body, saying to me, “Mario, I can see every one of your thoughts.”

 

And, as wondrously fascinating this fleeting moment was, there were times when this ability that Doctor Dahesh had—courtesy of the lofty spirit I will shortly be telling you about—to read my mind, would rattle me to the core, haunt me forever, and—arguably—shape my destiny.

 

For example, one time, following some distressing news we had received from Lebanon, he called me from Greenwich, Connecticut to talk about it. And he became very upset as he was reliving the nightmare of the abduction and brutal torture of three Daheshists, two of whom were the late Marie Hadad’s grandsons.

 

For the record, Doctor Dahesh had never once mentioned to me what had happened to him at the hand of Bechara El Khoury’s henchmen, and whose grim details I would learn about after Doctor Dahesh passed away.

 

But this horrific incident involved three Daheshists.

 

He was outraged.

 

I got so mad myself that in a fleeting instant of uncontrollable rage, in my mind’s eye, I could see the monstrous warlord who had issued the order to kidnap and torture the three Daheshists as though he had exploded from the inside, like a supernova.

 

I imagined his atomic particles hurtling out into space, in slow motion… then, suddenly, Doctor Dahesh stopped his lament, changed his tone, became composed, and said very deliberately, “مثل ما عمتفتكر راح يصير,” which translates into, “As you are thinking, it shall be.”

 

There was a pregnant pause, during which I thought to myself, “what just happened?”

 

And just like that, he bade me farewell and ended the call.

 

Now, for the record, I never told Doctor Dahesh what I was thinking, nor did he ever ask me about it.

 

Not long after that strange exchange, Doctor Dahesh graced me with a visit at the New York City apartment. After a couple of days, he asked me to drive him to Queens, and so I called the parking garage located in our building and asked the attendant to ready the car. As we were about to leave, I reached and grabbed the remote control to turn off the TV. No sooner had I grabbed the remote, than CNN broke the news of a major explosion that had occurred in a building, thousands of miles away from New York City.

 

The warlord who had ordered the capture and torture of the three Daheshists with impunity, was the focus of that breaking news.

 

He apparently had been the target of an assassination attempt.

 

A shiver ran down my spine.

 

Doctor Dahesh asked me, “what happened ?”

 

I translated the gist of what the newscaster was reporting.

 

Doctor Dahesh didn’t say anything more about the matter, nor did I.

 

Much later, however, I would learn that what I had imagined in a brief moment of unbridled rage did come to pass.

 

 

 

Wheresoever you may be, Death Will Overtake You Even if You Are in Fortresses Built-Up Strong and High!

 

The year was 1979 and Lebanon had been in the throes of a bloody multifaceted civil war for four years and counting. Against this backdrop, Doctor Dahesh would undertake the monumental task of publishing the first two volumes of his epic book series: Strange Tales and Wondrous Legends.

 

This treasure trove of gripping short stories illustrated how Spiritual Fluids—those imperceptible rays and sentient building blocks—repeatedly take on assigned roles and coalesce into every shape and form: from nebulae and stars, to conscious living beings or inanimate, seemingly lifeless objects—down to compounds and elements, and beyond.

 

Therefore, transcending time and space, and endowed with free will, they weave unfathomably complex, nonlinear causal matrices where preordained, inescapable fates mingle with future, potential destinies—all under the auspices of a flawless and Divine system of justice.

 

And so with each short story he penned, Doctor Dahesh would assert his faith in Heavenly justice and that despite the uncertainty that bears down on us when necessity—representing the laws of nature—interacts with contingency—representing probability distributions and the apparent, unpredictable tyranny inflicted on us by pure chance—nothing is ever truly random.

 

It just seems that way.

 

What’s more, Doctor Dahesh would bring into the limelight a worldview built around reincarnation and metempsychosis—both anathema to the three major Abrahamic religions. And so, using excerpts from scripture he would advance the argument that this unilateral condemnation is unwarranted—and I will address that in due time.

 

Leading up to the publication of Strange Tales and Wondrous Legends, volumes one and two, Doctor Dahesh and a handful of dedicated Daheshist brothers and sisters would find themselves caught in the crossfire of many a military battle involving, among others, withering barrages of mortar-shell fire such as the one that occurred on the morning of Monday, December 15, 1975, and which critically wounded the Daheshist Ali Omargi.

 

According to firsthand witness accounts, thinking that the bombing had ceased, Ali would lead the mad rush down the many flights of stairs in order to come to the aid of a Daheshist brother, whom he spied from above, and who happened to be on his way back to the Mission House when the onslaught was made on the neighborhood.

 

No sooner had Ali crossed the main door and set foot in the street, than another mortar shell fell and exploded at close range.

 

The shockwave from that blast knocked back Doctor Dahesh who had just leaned out of one of the monumental windows located about 7 meters right above to see if anyone below was hurt, while the sound nearly ruptured his eardrums, sending him shrieking from the intense pain.

 

Ali, on the other hand, fell silent.

 

According to the fellow Daheshist who was right behind him, and who filled me in on the details during a meeting he and I had at the New York City Hilton Hotel, Ali was struck in the head by a small piece of shrapnel that lodged in his brain and rendered him unconscious.

 

Once the dust settled, mayhem ensued.

 

The Daheshists rushed to his aid, among them Dr. Farid Abu Suleiman, a board-certified dermatologist whom I’d known since childhood.

 

Doctor Dahesh, who used to be able run up and down those same seemingly interminable flights of stairs by skipping steps effortlessly according to what the late Zeina Hadad, daughter of Marie Hadad once told me, and who now had difficulty walking on account of  the  series of crippling accidents he had suffered in the United States and in Lebanon, could only look on with a somber, but stoic expression belying what had transpired the night before.

 

Based on what Dr. Farid would later tell me in Greenwich, Connecticut, Doctor Dahesh tasked him to reveal to Ali the spine-chilling message that had appeared in a spiritual letter, which concerned him, and which he, Ali, had to keep secret from everyone, including his own wife.

 

And as anyone close to Doctor Dahesh would tell you, and certainly based on my personal experience, spiritual letters — and whether they contained conditional prophecies, warnings, or mandates — were treated with the utmost respect for the invisible, spiritual force, responsible for their materialization, and which is an extension of the Divine.

 

That is why it is deeply troubling that many, for whatever reason, have either made light of something solemn, or are  unwittingly or stubbornly acting as echo chambers, oblivious to the ramifications.

 

For example, I have watched, heard, and read many fake stories such as the one involving Doctor Dahesh and the barbershop. In this instance, Doctor Dahesh, who couldn’t wait until the barber was done cutting another customer’s hair, allegedly pulled his own head off and placed it on the barbershop counter. That way, a headless Doctor Dahesh, who apparently didn’t have the presence of mind to just snap his fingers and miraculously cut his own hair, would not miss his appointment due to a conflict in schedules.

 

And as far as those alleged Doctor Dahesh sightings, following his death, which occurred on April 9, 1984, at 6:00 pm:

 

There are those who claim that Doctor Dahesh appeared to them, not in dreams or thought, but in reality. For the record, I am one of the 20 Daheshists who were present at Doctor Dahesh's funeral, and one of the 3 Daheshists who assisted the funeral director and his assistant, in embalming Doctor Dahesh's body, at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

 

During the wake, we took turns reading passages written by Doctor Dahesh that he had requested be read at his funeral.

 

Leading up to that point, every one present at that solemn and somber occasion was praying to see Doctor Dahesh again in our lifetime, hoping he would just appear miraculously before us… But alas, as we stood before the open casket and took turns reading his prose poetry aloud, we would eventually come across  two verses that would summarily shatter our hopes of ever seeing him in the flesh again:

 

The first one is from the prose poem called "Remember me, and Forget me Not,” and the other “When I leave you.” In both of them he makes it unequivocally clear that he will neither return, nor shall we ever see again in this lifetime.

 

Now, for all we know, the 20th Spiritual Fluid has already reincarnated in some entity.

 

If that is the case, there is no way for to know who, or what that is. Period!

 

And anyone who claims otherwise, is either delusional, a pathological liar, in it for the money, or all of the above.

 

I mean, think about it: if anyone should be promoting fake Doctor Dahesh sightings and stories, it should those who knew him personally.

 

But, and as history has already shown, some of the closest people to him have, so far, either publicly disavowed any knowledge of his being a prophet, or stayed silent in the face of the onslaught of misinformation and proliferation of books presenting a blatant distortion of Dahesh and Daheshism.

 

 

 

“What’s he afraid of? A Daheshist will always die with dignity!”

 

A befuddled Doctor Dahesh once declared before me in disbelief at my New York City apartment, following a telephone conversation he had just finished having with someone very close to him, and who had expressed serious trepidations about driving from the city of Jounieh to Beirut, and help relieve some of the Daheshists standing watch at the Mission House.

 

On December 31, 1944, in Beirut, shortly following his harrowing escape from Aleppo, Doctor Dahesh penned his essay called, “Goodbye to the Year 1944,” in which he recognized, and lauded the fearless dedication of some of the Daheshists, the likes of Marie Hadad, or “Nana Marie” as those of us fortunate enough to have known her would call her, and whom Doctor Dahesh described as being “great in her faith, great in her approach, and great in her hopes,” and Dr. Khabsa, whom he referred to as his spiritual brother. But in that aforementioned essay, he lamented the fact that other Daheshists would choose this, “despicable, mortal matter over eternal, everlasting spirit.”

 

For what it’s worth, it might interest you to know that Doctor Dahesh, himself, was incapable of performing miracles or prophesying.

 

Although Doctor Dahesh—as I told you in Part 3—was powered, as it were, by the Main or Vital Spiritual Fluid that had emanated from our Heavenly Father, The Christ, which to Daheshist is referred to as the 20th Spiritual Fluid, and which also functioned as the Main Spiritual Fluid of Jesus Christ, he, Doctor Dahesh, could never perform Miracles or prophesy.

 

Oh, would that it were so, for that would have made him naturally invincible and immune to the pain and suffering he endured.

 

You know, one of my favorite lines that captures the reality of being with Doctor Dahesh is from the 1982 Stephen Spielberg movie E.T., THE EXTRA-TERRESTIAL.

 

If you’ve never seen it—and aside from the obvious “why not?”—spoiler alert!

 

For the rest of you, it’s from the famous escape scene, when E.T. is revealed to the boys.

 

Elliot says, “Okay, he's a man from outer space and we're taking him to his spaceship,” “Well… can’t he just beam up?" asks one of the befuddled kids, to which Elliott responds, “This is REALITY, Greg!”

 

This is exactly how things felt to those of us who knew Doctor Dahesh.

 

In any case, and as regards his, “supernatural powers,” they were the work of an Angelic Spirit that had accompanied, as it were, the 20th Spiritual Fluid on its mission to help the inhabitants of planet Earth, and perform the Miracles and convey Revelations, advice, and prophecies through the person of Doctor Dahesh.

 

Historically, that Angelic Spirit, and at the time of Prophet Mohammed, was the source of the lofty and Main Spiritual Fluid that incarnated in the body of Ali Ibn Abi Taleb. And Daheshists always referred to Angelic Spirit as “Brother Ali.”

 

Daheshists also believe that this Angelic Spirit is responsible for Earth.

 

In fact, every planet is ruled by such an Angel.

 

And so, the Angelic Spirit known as “Brother Ali” would descend from its sublime dimension and perform miracles through Doctor Dahesh, as well as provide him and others with spiritual guidance. And, yes, beyond witnessing the Miracles, I have had the amazing privilege of interacting with Brother Ali. In one instance, even, he made me a promise which he had always kept, year after year, and of which I strive to remain worthy.

 

Another important detail I should share with you regarding “Brother Ali,” it that Doctor Dahesh was never aware of the fact he had temporarily taken over his body. In fact, we would always have to tell Doctor Dahesh what had just happened.

For example, one time Doctor Dahesh — who was practically incapacitated from the pain due to his injuries, which we knew he would ask to receive as a trade-off in order that others might be spared — suddenly, and before our eyes, jumped up from the box he was sitting on in the warehouse, where a bunch of us were dismantling boxes containing artifacts destined for the Daheshist Museum, and sprinted across the space, leaving us all dumbfounded, as he was laughing!

 

We knew, then and there, it was no longer Doctor Dahesh.

 

When he came to, he looked at us, annoyed, and in pain, wondering why we were laughing hysterically.

 

We of course had to tell him that “Brother Ali” had temporarily taken over his body and made him run across the warehouse.

 

And aside from that, the story gets a little bit more involved being that—according to Daheshism—God is not this anthropomorphic entity.

 

As I said in Part 2, The Mechanics of Existence, we have no idea what God is. Plus, there seems to be an unfathomable hierarchy at work to keep the engine of existence running.

 

Sometimes, I heard “Brother Ali” use the singular pronoun “I,” for example when he told a small group of us how he intervened, and took over the body of Doctor Dahesh while the car he was driving down a mountain road lost its brakes, and down-shifted the car to safety. And in another instance, Brother Ali implied there was a group effort behind an event. In this case, one intervention that would involve yours truly:

 

In the winter of 1975, I was about 14 years old and counting, as class president, I lobbied for, and organized a school outing to a popular ski resort in Lebanon.

 

I was so excited.

 

But, wouldn’t you know it, on the Friday before the big day, I would begin to develop — to my horror — a mild sore throat.

 

But I was determined to go on that Ski trip if it was the last thing I did!

 

But the more determined I was to go, the sicker I got.

And I still remember to this day the classmate, and fellow class committee member whom I had appointed as treasurer for the school trip saying to me, “Uh, just so you know, if you can’t come with us on this trip, you’re not gettin’ a refund!”

 

I don’t remember the treasurer’s name, but I do remember that his aunt Hilda lived in the building across from ours. I also remember that, in class, he sat next to the kid nicknamed “Teddy.” And I was really looking forward to hanging out with the two of them on Saturday.

 

 

OH, BUT ALAS!

 

By the time I schlepped myself back home, I had the worst case of the flu I had ever experienced in my life. I was burning up with a 40-degree-fever and I could barely speak or swallow due to my monstrous sore throat!

 

And I was like, “This is not happening to me!”

It was as though the universe was conspiring to punish me!

 

I mean, first, the original College De La Salle which was, literally right next door, closes down, just as I acquired my first, and last, control-line model aircraft.

 

I have to tell you: Back in the day, for those of us who loved airplanes, owning and flying a tethered model airplane was a major goal in life. And at the old College De La Salle, which I attended, there was a control-line flying club, whose members would get together and fly their models around in circles.

 

Laugh all you want, but control-line flying, unlike remote-control flying, gave one a sense of being intimately connected to the airplane, just like flying a kite… plus, it was cheaper.

 

And the only place I knew of, in the tightly woven urban fabric that was Beirut, that would afford you enough open space to engage in such a hobby was the huge parking lot situated atop the massive concrete behemoth of a building that was part of the College De La Salle. It loomed over us during recess, like a giant alien mothership, and there was a lot of crosswinds up there! And though filled with trepidation, I couldn’t wait to fly my brand new Stuka Dive bomber!

 

And granted it was propeller-driven, and not like the Mirage fighter that my older neighbor, Jean-Jaques owned, which was—get this—jet-powered.

 

I still remember watching him one night going as he flew his Mirage around. I loved that jet engine sound. Anyway, once the school closed—as in, “it got sold;” as in, “I could never fly my plane!”—just about the only thing I could do was fuel up my plane, connect the battery, and ignite the propeller engine, open the throttle, and just hold on tightly to the fuselage, else the plane would fly off our balcony and severely injure someone. And in hindsight, I have to admit, those small gas driven propellers, and aside from their sound that would probably wake up the dead, are pretty dangerous if you ask me!

 

Anyway, first my gas-powered airplane would be grounded without getting the opportunity to fly once. And now, this?

 

And to top it all off, that trip would have been the first time ever that I would have seen, and touched snow up-close, as opposed to admiring it, longingly from our London Street balcony, which had a great view of the Mediterranean a block away, and the gleaming, snow-capped mountains, where I had always dreamed of being able to visit one day. And so you can imagine how crushed I was when I missed what at the time felt like the opportunity of a lifetime. Plus, I might as well come clean and admit that the only reason I got involved in student government, and lobbied for the creation of a student council, for which I then campaigned to get elected president, is so that I can wield all this newly acquired political power to organize such a trip! How’s that for irony?

 

Anyway...

 

Having often heard my much older brothers discuss the finer points of Daheshism, and to console myself I said to my brother Chucri, “Perhaps I was prevented from going because I would have been hurt.”

 

“Perhaps so,”  he said.

 

And the truly bizarre aspect of this whole experience was how fast I recovered from the extremely severe case of the flu, which should have me confined to my bed for at least a week, if not more—and I speak from experience.

 

And now that I think about it, I wasn’t even contagious!

 

In any case, despite having been seriously ill with the flu by the end of Friday, which meant I could barely function on Saturday morning—let alone hop on a bus trip from Beirut to some snow-capped mountain—by Sunday morning, all my symptoms had all but disappeared!

 

Really?

 

And so I called Teddy, whom as I mentioned earlier was my classmate.

 

He was able to go on the trip, along with the treasurer.

 

And had I been able to go too, I would have certainly hung out with them during the trip—as I mentioned.

 

The thing was, though, Teddy sounded tired and not too forthcoming with information about the trip, thus making it sound as exciting as watching the grass grow! And we left it at that.

 

Monday comes, and I am now well-enough to be in school, and here I am debriefing Teddy: he told me that he didn’t want his parents to know that he, and the treasurer, got separated from the rest of the class and went missing for hours, before they were finally rescued, on the brink of freezing to death.

 

Now, at first I thought Teddy was pulling my leg.

 

But then, I talked to the other students who corroborated the story.

 

Okay... wow!

 

A few days later, my oldest brother Chucri was at the Doctor’s house, and as they were sitting around discussing the latest news, Doctor Dahesh mentioned an article, he had read, on some recent deaths due to a blizzard that had hit the ski resorts. That’s when Chucri mentioned my trip that never happened, and the fact that 2 of my classmates nearly froze to death.

 

At that moment, Doctor Dahesh asked Chucri to follow him to his study. There, Doctor Dahesh had his legendary, albeit modest-looking, chest of drawers.

I swear, just like the wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, that piece of furniture was like a portal into the other dimension!

 

I still remember when on July 25, 1979, I’d just got back from the US Consulate, Doctor Dahesh said, “come with me” … he opened the top drawer.

 

In it, were strewn folded yellow sheets of papers—or symbols, as they are known in Daheshism.

“Pick one,” he said.

 

“Open it.”

 

I complied.

 

“Open it and read it”… on it was written that, not only the Consulate would grant me a student visa, free of charge, the spiritual message also noted the exact details of the visa Stamp, including the visa number!

 

And... speaking of which, I would like to thank Dr. William Stanton, the distinguished diplomat who at the time, and in his capacity of consular officer, granted me the visa.

 

Anyway, Doctor Dahesh asked Chucri to open the top drawer and to pick one of the many folded Daheshist Spiritual Symbols and to read what it said.

 

Chucri complied, and it turned out that what was written on that sheet, of now unfolded yellow paper, was a spiritual Letter from Brother Ali pertaining to me.

 

In that letter, Brother Ali writes that, had I gone on that trip, which ironically I had organized, I would have passed away.

 

And so, in order to extend my life on Earth, Brother Ali wrote, “And so, we made him ill.”

 

And therefore, by writing “we made him ill,” Brother Ali was intimating that there was a group effort, hence my alluding to a hierarchy at work.

 

And while I will never know who the “we” pronoun represents, I’ll just mention briefly the Personalities of Doctor Dahesh—because they, too, performed Miracles.

 

In a nutshell, Dahesh and Jesus have hundreds of Spiritual Fluids in the Worlds of Paradise. Through Daheshist Revelation we knew that when Jesus lived on Earth, only one of his Paradisaical Spiritual Fluids was allowed to incarnate on Earth as a Personality; in other word, an entity that was Jesus Christ’s perfect double—in every aspect except being human.  It was that Personality that was resurrected. In other words, it was the Personality of Jesus Christ that was crucified and resurrected. And it was able do so because, quite simply, the physical laws of Earth—or rather the physical laws of our dimension, which as you is governed by four forces that physicists are trying to unify into one grand-unification theory—do not apply to it. That is why, during the 20th Spiritual Fluid’s tenure on Earth as Jesus Christ,  it was his Personality that walked on water, and appeared after the Resurrection, to the Disciples and then to the Apostle Paul.

 

Now, I’m afraid I’ll have to table the question of the Personality of Jesus swapped places him when it came to be crucified for a later episode.

As for Dahesh: Six of his Paradisaical Spiritual Fluids we allowed to incarnate sometimes together, at other times in different clothes, whether concurrently or non-synchronously, in different regions or countries or even in the same place. On that front, I personally knew one Daheshist sister who once told me she went into a room, in the Mission House, and she found herself surrounded by all six personalities—at the same time!

 

In my case, a couple of people and I, once at the Mission House, had interacted with one Personality, thinking it was Doctor Dahesh who, apparently and unbeknownst to us, was fast asleep in his bedroom.

 

At one point, this Personality of Doctor Dahesh’s, stood up and went into the kitchen, while we remained seated right outside. However, shortly after, the real—as in, human—Doctor Dahesh emerges from the hallway, dressed in his pajamas, and scarf, looks at us, probably wondering why we just rushed to the now-empty kitchen, whose entryway was right smack in front of us, which meant there was no way for the “other” Doctor Dahesh to sneak out, and undergo a costume change—this fast, and assuming of course he could have made it past us, who were sitting right outside the kitchen, which I assure you had no secret  passage way back to the bedroom (located way on the other side of the floor plan)!

 

Also, the main, or vital Spiritual Fluid that incarnated in Siddhārtha Gautama, or the Buddha, is actually one of the six Personalities of Doctor Dahesh.

 

Daheshists therefore believe that The Buddha, Jesus, and Dahesh—and when you round off the math, as it were—emanated from and dwell in the same Paradisaical realm. And as I said in part 3, the 20th Spiritual Fluid volunteered to descend from the 150th level of Paradise, and materialize on Earth, which is situated on the threshold of Hell.

 

Hence...

 

 

THE ILLUSION OF BLISS

 

A couple of years prior to my originally-fated demise, two young men, who were siblings, paid us a visit during which I learned that the younger of the two had been engaged to a French woman.

 

Not too long after they got married, the couple perished in an avalanche while on their honeymoon in the Alps.

 

I remember his older, stoic but grieving brother visiting us after this tragic loss and saying something to the effect of, “As tragic as it is to lose my brother and his wife, they both could have avoided the outcome. But they were stubborn and wouldn’t listen.”

 

After he left, I asked my eldest brother Chucri, who was twenty years my senior, what that was all about, and he told me that Doctor Dahesh had received a prophecy regarding the deceased couple, warning that they should break off their relationship due to an incompatibility inherent within their Spiritual Fluids that would surely prove fatal to the both of them should they ignore it.

 

And before I continue, I need to make the following clear: the doomed couple, and for all intents and purposes, had been apparently compatible.

 

And yet, according to the Divine revelation about the real, hidden truth concerning the potentially fatal outcome should they remain together, which in hindsight they were very fortunate to have been privy to, their stubbornness proved deadly.

 

How can that be?

 

Well, first, we have to remember that anything that exists in a material sense, is an amalgam of Spiritual Fluids that conflate to materialize into each particular situation, based on many interacting factors, not the least of which are thoughts and deeds, or a lack thereof!

 

And as we have learned in a preceding episode, the Soul is the blending of a distinct entity’s Spiritual Fluids.

 

Once a soul materializes and the Vital Spiritual Fluid breathes life, or rather, consciousness into it, it does so within a preordained context that will have determined everything from one’s social status down to the genetic code; from inescapable predestined events to others that could be altered based on—among others—disposition, thoughts, and behavior where applicable.

 

And if all that were not enough, there is still the matter of the myriad ensuing factors along the way—not the least of which is the interaction with other Spiritual Fluids in this plane of existence, as well as those thriving, or suffering in other dimensions; thus forming a virtual tug-of-war network.

 

And, as I intimated in the preceding chapter, it is our own Spiritual Fluids that orchestrate our perdition and ultimately punish us—or, reward us of course.

 

Furthermore, everything is accounted for.

 

That includes context, intent, and extenuating circumstances.

 

And every Spiritual Fluid will be judged accordingly.

 

But the one thing that will surely end in disaster is willfully ignoring a conditional Divine Prophecy whose mere existence is a testament to God’s mercy.

 

One such Conditional Prophecy exists, and it concerns Lebanon, and I’ll get to it in moments.

 

In the meantime, remember that every person is host to sundry spiritual fluids.

 

Furthermore, Spiritual Fluids from different hosts can—for better or for worse—potentially affect one another through interaction, may it be direct or otherwise, and ultimately lead to a systemic propagation of impending fortune or calamity.

 

For that reason, it is important to remember that whatever sickness, tragedy, or misery we endure today is the resultant of our aggregate behavior in this life incarnation, and/or concurrent (meaning happening in another dimension at the same time), and/or former one—or ones. Also, please keep in mind that time and space — especially the arrow of time — is an illusion. Given that we are bound to this dimension, we cannot—in our current state—transcend three-dimensional space, or the arrow of time.

 

And, no, drugs won’t help!

 

Even marijuana—according to what Doctor Dahesh told me—is harmful to the brain cells.

 

Lastly, and this is truly tragic news, you should know that a relatively small group of spiritual fluids can, in a combinatorial nightmare, propagate and reincarnate into a whole nation of citizens that will ultimately pay for their sins.

 

 

“HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?”

 

...Protested the Lebanese Jesuit Priest, Antoine Youhanna Lattoof, in a November 30, 2010 article published by the Annahar Newspaper, titled, “Doctor Dahesh the False Prophet,” and which was subsequently published on a website linked to “the Party of the New Lebanese” (where, it would appear, both self-professed, devout Christians and Muslims—bless their hearts—had banded together against Doctor Dahesh).

 

When I first saw this article written by Father Lattoof, I published a rebuttal on Daheshville dot com, on March 22, 2011.

 

My message to Father Lattoof, began with my recounting a story told to me by Doctor Dahesh in New York City.

 

One time, a man whose son was on his way to becoming a hoodlum, who didn’t believe in anything, let alone God Almighty, asked Doctor Dahesh if there was anything he could do to prove to him that there is a Divine Power. The son would witness several Spiritual Manifestations and would turn his life around. Not only did he gain faith, and clean up, he cleaned up nice! His transformation even surprised his former Jesuit priest, who had given up on him—originally—and who was, now, eager to ask him what it was that convinced him to change his ways.

 

When the young man told him that he had met with, and witnessed the Miracles of Doctor Dahesh, the priest balked at the news and warned him not to believe in anything Dahesh says or does because it's all a sham. The young man believed the priest, suffered an emotional setback, and relapsed into delinquency.

 

Then Doctor Dahesh said, “Instead on focusing on the fact that the young man was now a believer in God, the Jesuit priest simply had to attack me with no consideration of the consequences.”

 

And on the subject of “consequences,” Father Antoine Youhanna Lattoof, who ushered in a new era of gratuitous smear campaigns against Doctor Dahesh, mockingly asks (when mentioning Doctor Dahesh's 1948 prophecy about the Lebanese Civil War), “and how is it possible that a whole country would be destroyed and a people killed because one man, back then — Bechara El Khoury — stripped him of him citizenship?”

 

And so, on Daheshville, I pointed out to Father Lattoof, that first of all, Bechara El Khoury did more that merely strip him of his citizenship. He orchestrated a plot that ultimately got him executed by a firing squad in Azerbaijan.

 

“But, wait! Didn’t Doctor Dahesh make it secretly back to Beirut from Aleppo... so... while he was being executed in Azerbaijan he was actually alive in Beirut, how...?”

 

OK, that’s for later!

 

I’ll tell you all about it in a future episode, which hopefully will provide you with the bigger context.

 

In the meantime, remember what I just said about Personalities.

 

And while I’m at it, I might as well add that there is a parallel between the Personality of Jesus Christ being crucified, and that of Doctor Dahesh being executed.

 

An event, I might add, that was reported in the news: newspapers even published the before- and-after pictures of the execution.

 

And putting aside the heinous nature of the act in and of itself, Doctor Dahesh would never see the inside of a courtroom, and thus he would never be allowed to exercise his right to such things as legal representation, and a fair trial.

 

Add to that, the physical torture he endured and what some of the other Daheshists went through: such as Mrs. Marie Hadad, and her daughter, Magda Hadad, who took her own life in protest of the crime.

 

For sure, I will be telling you more about how horrible things got for some of the Daheshists who were brave enough to stick up for their Beloved Guiding Prophet.

 

And until then, just know this: When Doctor Dahesh realized that Magda was secretly planning on assassinating President Bechara El Khoury, who was married to her aunt, Lore Khoury—chief architect of the plot to eradicate Doctor Dahesh—he sent word to her, forbidding her to kill the president!

 

In her desperation, she turned the gun on herself.

 

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that except for one brave journalist called Gibran Massouh, who resided in Brazil, and who would defend Dahesh, Daheshism, and the Daheshists through a series of articles that exposed Bechara El Khoury’s crimes, and which were published by “Al Mokhtasar,” a free and independent Buenos -Aires-based magazine, no one, in Lebanon, rose a finger to help Doctor Dahesh, or to protest.

 

That’s how thunderously loud the silence was in Lebanon!

 

Not one newspaper, or magazine wrote anything but the kind of defamatory remarks Lattoof published about Doctor Dahesh.

 

In any case, this is what it all boils down to: all those Spiritual Fluids who either directly or indirectly participated in usurping the rights of an innocent man, propagating lies about him, capturing, jailing, and torturing him— you get the idea—had a debt to pay.

 

And all the Spiritual Fluids who knew what was going on and looked the other way, were therefore complicit.

 

They too, had a debt to pay.

 

And for all I know, one or more of my spiritual fluids could have been complicit as well. Which is probably why I ended up becoming a displaced refugee during the Lebanese Civil War. Again, who knows? And if that were true, what matters is what I am doing now.

 

And let’s put aside, for a moment, the claim that Doctor Dahesh was host to the Vital or Main Spiritual Fluid— as I explained in part 3— that belonged to The Christ, whence all the Divine prophets, including many pillars of civilization, emanated.

 

OK, so let’s put aside the spiritual pedigree, as it were, of Doctor Dahesh.

 

Well, guess what?

 

Many other crimes against many other innocent people were also committed in Lebanon.

 

Hence, punishment was meted out in their memory as well.

 

 

 

FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED

In my 2011 response to Lattoof I wrote, “Putting aside our Daheshist Theory of Reincarnation, which would provide an explanation regarding how bad things can happen to ‘good people,’ you should also think of these Spiritual Fluids as being capable of influencing them to the extent that their fate would be sealed by a mere simple act of blindly following one man.

 

You obviously have power and you certainly have influenced many with your article, and that is worrisome because Doctor Dahesh published another prophecy, which just like the one in 1948 was conditional and it concerned Lebanon. And actions such as yours do no help matters.”

 

And in closing, I wrote the following to Father Antoine Youhanna Lattoof:

 

“The fate of their Spiritual Fluids is now potentially in your hands and do not be surprised what the future holds…”

 

Again, and to be clear, Doctor Dahesh himself would be the first to tell you he was not the only innocent person to have suffered at the hands of a tyrant.

 

But considering his status as a Divine messenger, and given all the events that had transpired in his previous reincarnations involving all the spiritual fluids that emanated from Adam and Eve following what is known as the Second Fall—all of which ultimately making the issues germane to the Dahesh affair harken back to what transpired at the time of Jesus Christ—the persecution of Doctor Dahesh was the last straw.

 

And for what it’s worth, Doctor Dahesh never put on airs.

 

One time in Beirut, Lebanon, in the early 1970s, I remember watching Doctor Dahesh welcome a family consisting of a distinguished older gentleman, his spouse, and their son, who must have been in his early twenties. Doctor Dahesh shook hands with the mother and father, and when he extended his hand to the young man, the latter bowed in order to kiss it, which prompted Doctor Dahesh to immediately pull his hand away, while letting out, in Arabic “Istakhfara allah!,” whose literal translation is, “Forgive me, my Lord!” In other words, “Out of the question!”

 

And, let’s face it…  the body religious is full of tyranny and corruption.

 

Here, let me share with you a stanza comprising 6 lines, titled “Wolves,” which Doctor Dahesh had written and published In his book “Words."

 

It reads…

 

“O Clergymen, and charlatans since time immemorial

You, who wrap dishonesty with the coat of absolute justice

You paint truth with deceitful trickery

You had strayed too far away from the righteous path, and became lost

You have followed your dark hearts’ whims, and you have misled

You hypocrites… The flames of hell are almost upon you.”

 

You know what?

 

Based on my personal, indelible, and privileged access to Doctor Dahesh as one of his personal aides and confidants, and given how, over the years, I have seen Daheshism contorted and distorted with impunity — perhaps necessitating the return of the Beloved Guiding prophet, yet again in order to set the record straight — I sometimes wonder if his ultimate goal wasn’t to free us from religion, all the while reminding us what it stood for.

 

In any case, and back to Father Lattoof, you would be hard-pressed to find a tale featuring this unprecedented degree of relentless mobilization and orchestration in terms of effort and resources expended by the government of Lebanon—whom I heard Doctor Dahesh dub, “a criminal gang”—all for the sake of getting rid of just one man!

 

And until I tell you more about it in a future episode, and as someone who not only lived through the civil war, but was a displaced refugee, how I wish the people of Lebanon had heeded the warning back when, in 1948, Haleem Dammoos published a conditional prophecy in one of the Lebanese newspapers.

 

He did so on behalf of Doctor Dahesh, who, despite the Lebanese authorities thinking he was as good as dead, was able to return to Beirut and secretly mount and conduct a public awareness campaign targeting President Bechara El Khoury, who would eventually be removed from office.

 

And so...

 

I take no pleasure in confirming that the prophecy did in fact warn of a destructive war that would ravage Lebanon—my country of birth, and cradle of my childhood memories— unless each one who had ever published fabricated lies about the founder of Daheshism come clean and confess.

But no one paid any heed to the Conditional Prophecy, which incidentally is reprinted in Strange Tales and Wondrous Legends, Part 3.

 

It is devastatingly graphic in its details, which evoke the lamentations of Jeremiah.

 

But, as I said, it did offer a way out: come clean, admit your lies, or suffer dire consequences.

 

And, unfortunately, that’s not all, and again I am loath to share the following with you, but I believe I must at the risk of becoming a pariah.

 

 

 

A PRAYER FOR LEBANON

 

Based on what I read in Strange Tales and Wondrous Legends, Part 3, namely, the epilogue of story called “A Conversation Between the Winds of America and the Winds of Beirut,” which  Doctor Dahesh penned in New York City on October 10, 1976, the narrator explains that God had given the people of Lebanon twenty-eight years to repent, which they didn’t, and that is why God brought down his just punishment upon them.

 

Then, in the story, comes the question of whether or not the people of Lebanon had learned their lesson.

 

And, the text clearly states that if they repeat their behavior, the “Divine thunderbolts” shall descend upon them again and wipe them out.

 

All right, let me stop here for a moment, as I need to clarify a point:

 

To be clear, I am not talking about honest and fair critiques, or the free exchange of ideas.

 

For example, in his book, WORDS, Doctor Dahesh republished an emotionally-charged opinion piece that a young woman who went by Samihat, and who was a student at the American School for Girls in Beirut, had originally submitted to the Magazine called “Al Amaali,” and which the latter published in 1939.

 

It was a scathing rebuke of what Doctor Dahesh had expressed in his chapter called “Woman.”

 

Despite that, Doctor Dahesh, who clearly didn't expect everybody to agree with him, republished her opinion piece word-for-word, without editing, whitewashing, or commenting—and right at the beginning of the book.

 

Incidentally, and for the cherry-pickers, and until such time I address this particular topic, you should know that—based on my personal experience—Doctor Dahesh tended to put women in charge, and in fact, after he passed away, the affairs pertaining to Daheshism were managed by a matriarchy.

 

Anyway, it appears that there was, yet again, an orchestrated barrage of made-up, despicable slanderous and libelous lies that invaded the Lebanese media sphere, following the end of the Civil war, once again infecting the minds of their viewers, listeners, and readers, weaponizing their innate sense of decency and turning it into unabashed,  indiscriminate condemnation of a man who was jailed, tortured, and exiled without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom.

 

Now, why is that?

 

Now, obviously, I’m not a mind reader. But I’m willing to bet you that this is because he was effective at rallying Lebanese people of all faiths: may they be Christian, Muslim, Druze, Jewish... they all came together. Oh, and lest I forget: atheists, showing in the process that it was possible to rid Lebanon of the cancer of sectarianism, which is still claiming the lives of many a brave soul whose only crime is that they dared to speak truth to corrupt power.

 

Therefore, not only speaking truth to corrupt power, but shaking it to its core.

 

In the 1940s, practically no one in Lebanon understood that they had been gaslit by their leaders to condemn a man whose message could have been, and may still be their salvation!

 

Then, we get people like Father Antoine Youhanna Lattoof smearing Doctor Dahesh in the Annahar Magazine, on November 30, 2010, which as I’ve explained I addressed publicly—as soon as I got wind of it.

 

If Doctor Dahesh was indeed a Divine Prophet—and keeping in mind the combinatorial aspect of Spiritual Fluids, as I explained earlier—and again, I am loath to have to say the following—but I must:

 

 I have a sinking feeling that the massive August 4, 2020 explosion that devastated Beirut may be the harbinger of far more worse things that may come, unless—once and for all—Lebanon wakes up.

 

And that scares me. For I remember that around two years prior to the onset of the 1975 civil war, few believed would ever happen, in of all places Lebanon, especially that Beirut was known as “Paris of The East,” Doctor Dahesh announced to his most trusted friends that the Daheshist Mission was to immigrate to the United States.

 

Almost overnight the Mission House located on the upper floor of the Hneine Palace was abuzz with men and women working around the clock carefully packing crates, boxes and everything Doctor Dahesh had collected over the years, from works of art destined to be housed in a museum he would always refer to as the Daheshist Museum, and the over half-a-million books of the Daheshist Library, and everything else in-between.

 

You see, as I explained in Part 3, The Dynamics of Life, it was not just about the physical belongings. It all had to do with the Spiritual Fluids contained within these inanimate objects.

 

But when in October of 1975 the Lebanese war that had originally broken out in April would suddenly metastasize into a full-blown military conflict in Minet El Hosn, the picturesque seaside Hotel district of downtown Beirut, residents of that area, such as Doctor Dahesh, and my family, would find themselves in the middle of a maelstrom of carnage.

 

It was brutal. It was loud. I should know, for I had a taste of it as well.

 

In fact, the proverbial starting gun of that battle was in the form of a rocket-propelled grenade aimed at a group of militiamen who had come knocking on our second-floor apartment in the building facing the Holiday inn and Phoenicia Hotel towers.

 

I distinctly remember being ushered into the next-door neighbor’s apartment, in compliance with the soldiers’ request.

 

My mother, father, and I were invited by our neighbor and his wife to come in and wait in the newly-refurbished living room, which, just like our apartment, featured large glazed steel doors that led to the balcony overlooking London Street.

 

The building was built with reinforced concrete, and the floors were all terrazzo.

 

All solid construction and just as well.

 

I mean, you have no idea!

 

Now, because we weren’t—technically-speaking— guests, in the real sense of the word, we dispensed with the pomp and circumstance of  holding court in what felt more like a furniture showroom, than a living room. I mean, really, the only missing were the price tags! Plus, if you’ve grown up in a culture where good china and silverware are reserved for when guests drop in—unannounced— you can certainly understand why it would have been really bad form for us not to insist on sitting in the adjacent dining space. And so we sat around the dining table, as the soldiers outside, armed with AK 47s, were canvassing the building, making sure no enemy combatants were lying in wait for them.

 

To help pass the time, Turkish coffee was made and served.

 

I loved Turkish coffee, and I dare say at the ripe old age of fourteen I had become somewhat of an expert in making it, thanks to my brother Chucri.

 

His method of teaching me how to make it was pretty straightforward: once, after taking one sip from the watery concoction I had made for him, and following a disapproving shake of the head and the obligatory raising of the eyebrows, he kept sending me back to the kitchen to make it, over, and over, and over again for him—in one sitting mind you— until, finally, he took a sip, put down the demitasse, and said, “it’s good.”

 

Somehow, I had managed to heap the right amount of ground coffee per teaspoon, with the right amount of sugar and water, and use the right combination of heat, stirring, and with controlled boiling, repeated two more times, and the right amount of waiting before pouring the liquid along with the right amount of foam.

 

So, definitely, I never missed an opportunity to sample others’ coffee to see how mine fared, and this time was no exception.

 

Except that I never got the chance to get a taste of this particular cup.

 

I will never forget that eerie sensation I felt as I held the saucer and demitasse cup in hand. A feeling that seemed to last forever though it was a mere split second. And I must have been holding on to the saucer pretty tightly because neither the impact of the rocket-propelled grenade that exploded right outside the adjacent living room where we had decided not to sit, nor the shockwave, nor the sound—which incidentally would forever ruin war movies for me on account of a lack or realism—managed to make me spill one drop of that black brew.

 

And right before the hapless soldiers, who were obviously the target of this surprise attack, began unleashing bullets out of their automatic weapons, I remember we all looked at one another and began laughing hysterically.

 

After all, we had just not died!

 

What followed was, by my count, thirteen days of bombings and military assaults and counter assaults.

 

But as bad as the Battle of the Hotels was for us, it was even worse for Doctor Dahesh who had already been the target of multiple assassination attempts. His enemies, who were heavily militarized, and who would take every opportunity they had to destroy the building that housed the Daheshist Mission—by any means possible—would piggyback their nefarious plans onto whatever armed conflict was unfolding at time.

 

For example, towards the end of 1958, a year that saw a political crisis that included a U.S. military intervention, Doctor Dahesh, by then the Founder of Daheshism, would narrowly escape death after a car loaded with explosives was detonated right outside the Mission House.

 

In 1976, two electronically-guided missiles would narrowly miss the Mission House.

 

And on the 1st of May, 1979, Doctor Dahesh narrowly escaped what was later estimated to be a 50-Kilogram Dynamite charge that was placed on the street, right under where he would normally sleep.

 

 

SLEEP

 

...What a precious and rare commodity during such horrendous, earth-shattering times.

 

Ali Ombargi, who the night before, and according to a Daheshist who had camped out on the floor of the dining room right next to him, sighed deeply and said, “Life is strange; one minute you’re here, and another you’re not.”

 

And apparently prior to that, and according to another eyewitness, Ali went up to his wife who had been sitting nearby, and said to her, “Come, give me a hug” to which she said, “Please, not now… I’m not in the mood.”

 

And so Ali Ombargi never got to hug his wife on the eve of his death, which occurred at 6 pm., Beirut local time.

 

Nor could he reveal to her that Dr. Farid Abu Suleiman had sworn him to secrecy, right after telling him that, very soon, he would depart from this world.

 

Not long after, and according to the spiritual letter that appeared to Ali’s brother, Salim Onbargi, the specifics of which you can read about in his book, “Born Again with Doctor Dahesh,” Ali’s time on Earth had to come to an end. In other words, no matter where he was, no matter what he was doing, he was going to depart this Earth for another world.

 

However, owing to his good deeds, he was made to die a hero, so that history would forever remember him as a Daheshist Martyr who gave his life in martyrdom while protecting the Beloved Prophet and the House of the Beloved Prophet.

 

And this brings me to question I am most asked, which is, “Have you ever felt doubt insofar as your faith in Doctor Dahesh as a Prophet, and if not, how come?”

 

To that question, my answer is invariably along the lines of “I have no idea why I have faith. I wish I knew why, or how I could share what it feels like to have a true, albeit fleeting, moment of peace and clarity in the midst of the chaos that is life.”

 

And whenever I feel doubt, it is in my ability to honor the memory of a man without whom I would probably have given up on life.

 

After all, if, according to the Scientific Materialists, life has no objective meaning, then what’s the point of it all?

 

Why even try?

 

But, as I promised in part 3, The Dynamics of Life, I intend to show that well-practiced science is a gateway to the Divine, a persuasive testimony from which the open-minded truth seeker can infer true meaning of life.

 

As for Lebanon…

 

Once again, there is the matter of the other conditional prophecy that was also published in Strange Tales and Wondrous Legends, part 3.

 

I know I said it before and it bears repeating!

 

This one is even more worrisome than the one what foreshadowed the Lebanese Civil War, as it warns of the utter destruction of Lebanon if despicable lies are published about the Beloved Guiding Prophet.

 

This conditional prophecy says that, just like Atlantis, Lebanon will become a myth.

 

Again, and according to the text, the people of Lebanon would suffer the fate of Atlantis if they reverted to planting their despicable lies about him.

 

I can’t stress this enough, but I have a sinking feeling that the devastating explosion that occurred in Beirut on August 4, 2020, which according to Reuters could be one of the strongest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded, in my opinion, was yet another wake up call.

 

And by the way, when Doctor Dahesh was persecuted, and suffered misery and hell in Aleppo, Syria, not only was the governor of Aleppo in on it, the government of Syria was also complicit. And until I tell you all about it in a special series I am dedicating to telling the story of the persecution of Doctor Dahesh, which will also include how his reputation was tarnished in Palestine, before the “Nakba,” otherwise known as “The Catastrophe,” you fill in the blanks...

 

And as someone who is part-Armenian, I am ashamed at the way the Armenians—our people—treated Doctor Dahesh while he was in Aleppo, supposedly in their care.

 

Again. It’s the combinatorial power of the spiritual fluids.

 

All it takes is a few rotten apples to destroy a whole country.

 

 

GOD HELP US ALL!

 

And speaking of wake-up calls, and as I talked about it in Part 3, when one takes into account that his namesake, the Dahesh Museum, as though existing in a parallel universe, has never once issued a public apology or acted contrite for having publicly disavowed him as a prophet in 1996, what sliver of hope is there for a Daheshist Temple?

 

Fortunately, though, I have to believe there is hope for on that fateful night in New York City, when I froze for a brief moment on my way to the kitchen with a plateful of Feta Cheese and Pita Bread, Doctor Dahesh had just uttered the following words,  إنت بتعرف یا أستاذ إن رح یصیر عندنا معبد؟, which translates into, “Do you know, sir, that one day we shall have a temple?” “Do you know, sir, that one day we shall have a temple?”

 

 

MARIO HENRI CHAKKOUR, AIA

May 23, 2021

 

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