Here this extract is: “My sweet king, there is no past and there is no future. There’s only a present and it goes right up to the end. Everything is in the present. Be present. Pause. Stop torturing yourself. “Existence,” that’s just a word. “Death,” just a word. These are just formulas and ideas that we create for ourselves. Once you understand that, nothing can hurt you. Life is only an unanswered question: what is it… what is? That you can’t answer the question is the answer – let yourself drop into the infinite wonder and chaos and then you too will be infinite. Be amazed! Be dazzled! Everything is strange! Don’t let words define you, break through the prison bars and escape! Breathe! Pause. Let yourself be inundated by joy, be amazed and dazzled by the energy. Its glare penetrates your flesh and bones and flows through you like a river of bright light. If you want to.
Remember, please, that morning in June by the sea, the two of us… you looked out and you were filled up with an indescribable joy, something you couldn’t describe, you felt it, you said it was unchangeable and inexhaustible. If you felt it then, you can feel it now because the light comes from inside you. Look for it inside yourself.
Love insane. If you’re in love perfectly and madly the death is moving away. If you do love me, if you do love everything, the fear let you go. Love takes you, you forget yourself, and the fear goes away. The Universe fills. All rises from the dead. The hole gets vanish.
Hold me tight, don’t let me go. You’re alive because of me. I give life to you, and you give life to me. Do you understand? If you forget me, if you leave me, I won’t be able to exist any longer, I will turn into nothingness.”
After the exam, I felt delighted, felt triumph, and now I feel rather confused and all my thoughts messed up. Now is the real life. Everything I needed, what I really longed for and worked on, buries deeper and deeper under the avalanche of injustice. Breaks apart between two realities – this world and another one which is also visible here but imperceptible. The split happened not with me but in the Universe. And I just felt the fork in the Universe, going into nothingness.
But till that time we had been living incredibly beautiful and happy story of our love. I constantly thanked my God – the Universe without separating it into borders, states or religions. Since early childhood, it seemed to me that that one is more happy who sing, dance, smiles and laughs more. Without sideshow and cheating, without hierarchies and money-driven lifestyle, without certificates of birth, marriage, divorce or death.
Borges wrote: “I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.”
Each day spent with Abu I perceived as the entire life. When he used to forget to shave for a few days I called him my hedgehog from “Hedgehog in the Fog”, and he corrected me laughing: “I’m a porcupine.” And we remembered a story when in some Goan cafe after lunch Abu asked me: “How did you like the porcupine? Was it tasty?” Now I can’t say even what I ate then. I always loved to bite my Abu a bit like a dark chocolate. He liked my wild caress and I worshipped not only his soul and mind, but also his body. Feeling exhausted after our amatory exertions we continued our conversation:
– So was the porcupine tasty? You have tried his meat.
– I like everything with you, absolutely everything without exception.
– Do you know why Abu Sufiyan had converted to Islam? He just didn’t like pork. He was a Muslim ksatriy. And in Russia, you like lard as well as bear meat, moose and horse meat.” Abu teased me. And what will be next, Abusha? Cannibalism? Maybe you’re hungry?
– I’m hungryonly about you. Do you know another Abu? Abu Bakar, Mohammed’s disciple and companion. He said, that- God is a woman.
– No, you’re the first Abu I know. Even not the first but the only one. And, you know, sometimes I really feel like a cannibal, like those aborigenes from the Hawaiian islands who ate the Captain Cook, by the way exactly on 14th February 1779, St. Valentine’s day. You’re my alive feast.
And we were laughing and biting each other like puppies.
– Thanks, Alona, you’re my most mysterious manuscript. It’s a challenge for me myself to decipher you. I’m grateful to you for that gift. “Kuskus” in Russian means “kusat’” (to bite)?
– “Kuskus” is not a Russian word, it’s a name of the dish made of semolina and wheat cereals. I tried kuskus in Morocco, Tunis and Italy. And “kusat’” (to bite) is a Russian verb.
And we went to a restaurant for dinner, both really feeling hungry after all that conversation.
Abu was really easy to connect and talk to. He treated any meeting like a friends gathering. It was only because of his own positive attitude and the goodwill toward humans. He had a high degree of confidence in people. Abu was trusting, accommodating, comforting and the easiest man to deal with. And he always left only positive impression. He made others happy, and that made himself even happier. Emotions are contagious. He never was worried about anything, he knew that any anxiety is just wasting of energy and time, and the same was true for taking life with all its problems too seriously. “Alona, why you have to worry about that? Most of your today problems you will hardly remember in a couple of years. And even if you do, you can unintentionally hurt yourself.” He made it easier for me, and I felt good getting another grade of joy from my man’s wisdom.
I was glad for my previous experience and thankful that many lessons we had already digested in our past and separately from each other. Our family was that perfect example where a couple prepared for a relationship before the relationship. Surely all of us have different fates. Someone is able to acquire all necessary knowledge before the fateful meeting, and others have to obtain it together through thick and thin. Sometimes you have to win your happiness back from the fate. We all need time to become mature. Mature for each other. Many are afraid of a breakup, but the level of fear to bring closer is even greater. But we always have to choose the lesser of two evils. Each step towards each other pushes the limits, dissolves your ego, arouses your fear. The weak ones are tended to pull back, stepping backwards or hiding in safety they were used to. But we were already mature, experienced and were not afraid of our love. We had already learned through the self-discovery, how to allow another come closer.
“Love is not passion, love is not emotions. Love is a very profound understanding of the fact that another completes you. The presence of another expands your own presence. Love gives you the freedom to be yourself, it has nothing to do with possessiveness.” Osho.
Sometimes it happened that someone called Abu and he passed the phone to me as if something important had happened. I took it naively, and after had to listen to Hindi music on the voicemail. He always liked to play jokes on me. Like a little girl, I would run after him to catch, punched his chest and arms with my small fists. and our bodies merged. The question of irritation or complaints on Vodafone obtrusive customer service was left back. Abu made a game of everything, was tolerant of any invasion into our private life. We didn’t want children, it was too late already, but Abu made jokes even about that: “If we had kids, they would be zebras.” And before I asked “why?” he already gave an answer: “Because you’re fair, and I’m dark-skinned.” And we laughed again and played horsey, riding each other.
At some point I was beginning to think that I became to understand the way the world works, people and, in particular, men’s emotions, what principles communication rests on, how people interact with the cosmos and it with them, in return, and many other things. It was as if existence itself through India, through Abu revealed to me the new immense knowledge, the new layer of reality. It was like a new birth for me, and I started from scratch. Enlightenment came. Many issues were resolved