CHAPTER 1
Birth of a Miracle
His little hands hold the plate delicately as his eyes survey its smooth perimeter. His mouth curls in delight. He is setting the stage. This is his moment, as was the last and each before. This is the beginning of his entry into the solitude that has become his world. Slowly, with a masterful hand, he places the edge of the plate on the floor, sets his body in a comfortable and balanced position, and snaps his wrist with great expertise. The plate begins to spin with dazzling perfection. It revolves on itself as if set into motion by some exacting machine. And it was.
This is not an isolated act, not a mere aspect of some childhood fantasy. It is a conscious and delicately skilled activity performed by a very little boy for a very great and expectant audience – himself.
As the plate moves swiftly, spinning hypnotically on its edge, the little boy bends over it and stares squarely into its motion. Homage to himself, to the plate. For a moment, the boy's body betrays a just perceptible motion similar to the plate's. For a moment, the little boy and his spinning creation become one. His eyes sparkle. He swoons in the playland that is himself. Alive. Alive.
Raun Kahlil – a little man occupying the edge of the universe.
Before this time, this very moment, we had always been in awe of Raun, our notably special child. We sometimes referred to him as "brain-blessed." He had always seemed to be riding the high of his own happiness. Highly evolved. Seldom did he cry or utter tones of discomfort. In almost every way, his contentment and solitude seemed to suggest a profound inner peace. He was a seventeen-month-old Buddha contemplating another dimension.
A little boy set adrift on the circulation of his own system. Encapsulated behind an invisible but seemingly impenetrable wall. Soon he would be labeled. A tragedy. Unreachable. Bizarre. Statistically, he would fall into a category reserved for all those we see as hopeless ... unapproachable ... irreversible. For us the question: Could we kiss the ground that others had cursed?
* * *
The beginning. Only a year and five months ago. It was 5:15 in the afternoon, a time when leaving New York City for home is like trying to pass through mechanized quicksand. Outside, the rush of metal monsters and the scattered hustle of fast-walking, blank-faced people pushed toward their daily release. The rush-hour climax had spilled into the streets, marking the last ejaculation of energy to be spent in the day.
I sat quietly in my office eight floors above Sixth Avenue, exploring ideas and images as I searched for the essential theme of yet another film – now one by Federico Fellini, yesterday one by Ingmar Bergman, last week a Dustin Hoffman film, last month another in the James Bond series. We viewed ourselves as members of a think tank whose mandate was to extract the heart of someone's cinematic statement and design a marketing campaign to reach a targeted audience.
It always began in a darkened theater. Sometimes, at the request of a client, I would sit with four or five members of my staff in the midst of five thousand empty seats at Radio City Music Hall and preview a film in the early morning hours. At other times, we would sit in a private screening room filled with cast members, producers, the director and the writer, as well as executives from the motion picture company involved. I would try to catalog each unfolding scene. I felt like a detective, looking to freeze-frame the heart and soul of a story, hoping a compelling concept or image would emerge, which we would then re-form into concrete marketing tools for that particular movie. I loved the cinema and, oftentimes, felt honored to work on some of the projects we had been assigned.
On this particular afternoon reams of crumpled sketch-pad paper decorated the top of my desk and spilled out of a cavernous wastepaper basket onto the floor. They represented hundreds of rejected ideas that had come to life only fleetingly as a doodle on a white sheet of paper. I kept at it, pushing myself over and over again to search through the nooks and crannies of my mind. For me, the endeavor was at once challenging and totally absorbing. I felt high on the freedom to originate and create. Turning the words. Hypothesizing the pictures and graphics. And, then in the end, mothering their execution in photography, film, sculpture, or illustration. My office had become the birthplace of the favored ideas that survived as well as the graveyard for all the marketing concepts that fell before the commercial firing squads of my clients and bled to death on the floors of smoke-filled conference rooms.
As I finished contemplating the solution to yet another project, I prepared myself internally for the evening commute – my daily hustle through the crowds of humanity that I would encounter in the street. Wanting to energize myself with a more attractive scenario, I refocused my attention, now thinking of my wife, Sa-mahria (who in those days was called Suzi), whose warm embrace would be a welcome and soothing nightcap to my day. I thought of my daughter Bryn, a seven-year-old young lady who did Chap-linesque routines on the kitchen table at the drop of a hat. I envisioned my daughter Thea, whose dark probing eyes and tiny three-year-old form embodied the presence of a little mystic. And then, as always, there would be crazy Sasha and majestic Riquette, two big, bold, bearlike 130-pound Belgian herding dogs who would pounce on me as soon as I entered the front door. Friends suggested laughingly that these animals bore an uncanny resemblance to me.
Suddenly, the piercing ring of the telephone crashed through my veil of concentration. The buzzer rang – for me.
"Now ... it just started, and already the contractions are only four minutes apart. I'll get someone to watch the girls and somebody else to take me to the hospital. Are you okay? Don't get upset. Just take your time. I'll wait for you. Everything will be okay.... The nurses are trained, and they'll help me until you get there."
Samahria seemed so in control. Waves of excitement heaved through my body. At the same time, I could feel my abdominal muscles tightening. Not now, Jesus, not now during the rush hour. As I flew down the stairs, I chuckled at the irony. We had prepared for this moment with months of practice. Every week, we attended classes...
